Write and Wrong

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This week's prompt from Dani and Jackie's Express Yourself blog hop is ...

What is the most frustrating/satisfying thing about being a writer?

Hmm, this is a tricky one.  I have a love/hate relationship with writing.  I do it for two main reasons; I enjoy it, and I'm not much good at anything else.  I guess that's why people do most things, right?  But it doesn't come without its struggles.

Writing enables you to invent worlds for yourself that you'd never be able to live in real life.  You can create people and places and events that extend far outside the realms of reality.  And by doing this, it helps you to escape your own life for a short while.

I also get very excited when I have an idea and I can't wait to get it down on paper (well, computer screen).  And then the story takes on a life of its own and goes off in unexpected directions.  At that point, I get really excited.  I always have an idea of where I want a story to go, but most of the time it flips and turns and twists and I just let it flow.

And then when I've completed something, I love love love getting hold of my red pen and editing everything.  I think editing is the best part of writing.  You get to mould and shape everything until it's perfect, and then you work on it some more to make it even more perfect.  It's a bit like raising a child, but you get second and third chances if anything goes wrong.

On the negative side, I think my main frustration is people.  And by people, I mean people who aren't writers or readers.  

People:  So what do you do?

Me:  I'm a writer.

People:  Yeah, but what's your real job?

*grr*

Yes I have a day job, and thankfully it's one that I really enjoy.  But I do that to pay the bills.  My job is a writer.  I don't make money from it, but it's my raison d'être, it's my focus and my aim and my drive.  People who aren't writers (or artists of any description) don't seem to understand why people want to be writers.  They seem to question the point in it all.  I am confident-ish, but criticism from a non-writer is always difficult to deal with, and I feel like I have to apologise for what I do, and justify it somehow.  I know I should ignore them, but sometimes it's not that easy.

So that's why I'm so grateful for any support I get, and I always try to support writers whenever they feel a bit defeated.  Writing isn't easy, but things are often made more difficult by critical non-thinkers.