I actually say this all the time. I say it to newbie writers, to readers curious about how I keep writing more and more books, to just plain interested people who ask if I’m exhausted with writing all the time.
“Each book gets easier,” I tell them.
And it’s not like I’m deliberately lying. It’s not even always necessarily a lie.
But the truth is that although certain things about writing get easier all the time (editing, the publishing process itself, getting early reviews, getting the first draft written and out) there are certain things that change, and thereby get more difficult.
As you write, you’re always going to get better at writing.
Your process becomes more streamlined, your prose becomes better and better, your thematic unity and even the presence of a thematic system in your writing becomes more sophisticated, and you get to know your weak points when it comes to editing, which means you can fix stuff as you go, or just not make those mistakes while you’re writing.
But as you write, because you’re getting better, some things paradoxically become more difficult.
Now that you know how to write themes into your books, suddenly you have the challenge of deepening those themes and making them more satisfying. In a word, it becomes harder. Now that you know how to write more complex relationships or characters, you can’t be satisfied with writing simpler or less nuanced ones. Again, you’ve made your job harder.
Now you have the tools to write better books; to write more complex, deep, and satisfying books.
But because you know how, you have to write them.
And because you’re still learning those new things, those new depths, it’s harder again. And with each book that you write better, and learn new ideas and nuances, you have to become adept at using those things.
It’s a never-ending process of writing (hopefully) better and better books.
So here’s to the never-ending complexity of the writer’s life, and here’s to better and more difficult books in 2020!