What the meaning of "writing is the hardest work in the world not involving heavy lifting"?

Question

quotation

Answer 1

Writers have to deal with a lot of things to succeed. They must come up with an original idea, and submit it before anyone else comes up with it. They must deal with editors and publishers that are constantly tweaking and trying to change their work to make it readable and pertinent to a mass market. Writers have to have tons of unique ideas, have a thorough understanding of grammar, punctuation, and word usage. A lot goes into being a good writer. Like many jobs where your creativity pays the bills, writing is a hard job.

Answer 2

Have you ever tried to write a long piece? 100 pages or more? It's hard, whether you're writing fact or fiction.

First, you have to know all the facts, or at least where to find them. That's research. Even if you're writing fiction, you have to do research. Writers are always looking things up.

Sometimes you have to interview people to find facts or to find other kinds of information. If you tape the interview, you have to transcribe the tape, which takes a long time. If you don't tape it, you have to take notes of everything they say while they're saying it. You have to keep the people talking about the subject you need to know about. Sometimes you have to interview them more than once.

Then you have to organize your notes and think of a way to write whatever you're planning to write. The planning is often very detailed (different writers will do this differently. Sometimes, for short pieces, I don't do much planning. For long work, writers plan and then, when you're in the middle of wriiting, you realize you have to plan again.

The writing -- or drafting -- part is the most fun for most writers. This is where you can let one idea lead you to the next. It's great. Sometimes it's so great it takes you miles away from where you thought you were going.

All the while you're doing this, you're using all the grammar and language skills you ever learned in your life. And everything else you ever learned. Plus, whatever your imagination might offer you.

After you finish drafting, you have to look at what you wrote critically. Usually, the draft is ok, it just needs some cleaning up, proofreading, tweaking. Move a paragraph here or there. Take out things you don't need.

Sometimes, the draft is horrible or not what you really wanted to do at all, but you couldn't see that while you were writing it. Then you have to scap it and start over.

I haven't even started on publishing work, because that's a whole 'nother process.

When you do all the above, you're almost always all alone. You have to be judge, jury and executioner of your work. Occasionally you find a friend who is willing to give you good constructive criticism, but then you go back to the desk and ... it's just you and the writing.

After you do all this day in and day out and realize that nobody wants to pay you very much to do it, you realize that writing is the hardest work in the world not involving heavy lifting.

Charles Dickens, one of the most "successful" writers ever, said that he wrote every day "until I can no longer lift the pen." It gets heavy. Heavy lifting.

Answer 3

hi! i think of it means that writting is hard because of the fact it is composed of a great style of artwork (study, an exciting and conceivable tale, properly-equipped characters, infinite rewrites and reformating so as that each little thing is wise) yet in spite of the undeniable fact that it is long and confusing, it would not require actual capability like workers of a shifting organization (which is composed of a great style of heavy lifting). Cinemeow

Answer 4

it sounds pretty self explanatory to me. Heavy lifting is the hardest, but writing is almost as hard (to do well at least)

Answer 5

Means there's a lot of serious mental processes going on; conceptualization, organization, communication, clarity.

Answer 6

It very simply means that using one's brain power is sometimes more exhausting that physical labor.