18 Comments
User's avatar
Tom buskey's avatar

I'm hoping Katherine has some books someday. I've been enjoying her style of writing and humor in the Apprentice sub stack.

Helene Kennedy's avatar

An online English class with an ESOL tutor from the UK would be more suitable to non European students. I hope they find the help they need from someone understanding.

Carrie R Bartlett's avatar

‘They know they have a problem calling a project “finished.”’ This is what gets me in painting sculpture and woodworking, too. I am currently holding myself to selling a piece sometime this year to help overcome it.

Katharine King's avatar

I would be interested in writing a book if I thought I had anything to share that isn’t already done. I wrote SOPs and operating instructions in previous jobs and enjoyed doing it. Something about figuring out how to explain things step by step in a way others can easily follow is oddly satisfying. Maybe someday . . .

Margarita's avatar

Who wrote the book you’re holding up art decorations applied to furniture?

Christopher Schwarz's avatar

Harriet Prescott Spofford. Harper & Bros., publishers, 1878

Tom Bittner's avatar

Let’s see #2,3,4 and 7 are my reasons, once I started writing a book spent a month of hunt and peck typing on my iPad only to have the whole disappear with the wrong swipe. I really admire people who write a book, any book. I promise if I ever get to talk to an author I will never ask them what the next book is about!

David Cockey's avatar

There are folks who fundamentally do not enjoy writing even though they have the ability. They may have had unpleasant experiences previously, in school, college or work, and are not interested in repeating the experience. Not enjoying writing may be difficult to understand for those who enjoy writing.

David Garner's avatar

Or they have ADHD and struggle with that type of project.

David Cockey's avatar

I would not assume not liking to "write" means someone has ADHD.

Helene Kennedy's avatar

David Garner is giving an example.

David Garner's avatar

I wasn’t assuming that if someone didn’t like writing that they had ADHD. It was the opposite some people with ADHD, not all, struggle with writing.

Darrell Collins's avatar

For me, your original words were closer. It's the long term project, not the writing.

To be more specific: writing a book vs writing.

I don't struggle with writing. I struggle with keeping interest in investing more time and effort into long term projects.

I can buckle down with ferver to solve an issue (I guess the equivalent for writing is a topic or chapter, my writing was mostly technical reports and a couple chapters in a regulation).

Writing up the results was relatively easy. Turning that into a reference technical report with the context to be honestly used 50 years later was a slog. Turning a bunch of topics and chapters into a cohesive whole book seems like something similar - I don't see being done in a marathon session or two.

It's an especially harder to keep at the larger project once I have worked out the issues/results that attracted my hyper-focus, after that, the rest just seems anti-climactic and arguably not worth the bother. (The equivalent for writing a book is probably getting down the topics/chapters).

Sean Parker's avatar

"I’m not trying to tease you; that’s not my style."

???

The hell it's not!

<sigh>

;-)

Chip Koval's avatar

Now, that was a tease.

Stephen Alexander's avatar

Came to say exactly this