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Comment by goto11 | Hacker News Reader

Apparently Douglas Adams found it very difficult to write. According to the biography by Neil Gaiman it was almost painful for him, every book or manuscript a chore. I'm happy he didn't follow the advice from Bukowski to just give up!

Bukowskis poem seem to represent the romantic idea that art is divinely inspired and the artist is just a vessel. Maybe it really felt like that for Bokowski, while for others writing is just hard work.

It is funny that Adams who have such a playful style of prose found writing torture, while the much more self-important and edgy Bukowski find it easy. (Assuming the poem represent his own experience.)

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> romantic idea that art is divinely inspired

I certainly believe that is true.

When I do my best work (programming, not poetry) I feel like I was inspired. I always get inspired in the same way, by doing the hard work for as long as it takes, and that usually feels like torture.

Perhaps Adams and Bukowski use a simmilar method to each other, but is just presented differently.

> Charles Bukowski:

> if you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen or hunched over your typewriter searching for words, don't do it.

> if it's hard work just thinking about doing it

I read this as "if you don't want to do it, then don't", not as "If it is hard work then don't do it". Thinking about doing it, and doing it are different things.

I really don't believe that any world class writer (or world class anything) got inspired before doing the hard work first. That is a romantic idea, not the inspiration itself.

I read recently about how tribal people dance until total exhaustion, after which they enter a trance and see visions.

Then recently I sharpened my knife for 2 hours straight, and somehow managed to write something that seemed to be relatively divinely inspired (compared to my usual crap).

There might be a pattern where some kind of physical/mental exhaustion would induce the people into a trance like state under which inspired worked could be “channeled” through.

I use these mystical terms somewhat loosely, but I would say that after an actual channeling experience (not very successful but one nonetheless) the act of writing feels weirdly similar to the point that I suspect they could share some similar processes underneath.

My most recent episode of "divine inspiration" was in the last months of my PhD. I felt like both a sponge where everything I was experiencing could be spun into a relevant idea and a faucet on full blast where I couldn't stop the flow of ideas if I tried. I had several sleepless nights and work binges that left me more energized than tired. Graduating and getting my work published were somewhat validating that the ideas weren't totally manic and made sense to at least some audiences.

The flip side is a hypersensitivity I've experienced from other periods of artistic zen (photography, music). Everything, good and bad, gets cranked up to 11 and the pendulum breaks off its carrier eventually. And so it did.

Well, Adams books appear that way too. The writing is very contrived and stiff (even as comedic writing) - so it's all about the jokes. They're still great jokes and funny characters, but what's left as the strongest impression is them, not the writing flow, turn of phrase, or even plot.

I mean that in the same sense a movie like Airplane! is just about stringing jokes together, and has no deeper plot or "cinematic" qualities (compared to a comedy like Shaun of the Dead or Young Frankenstein).

Thank you for your comment. It made me think.

Although I do think it's a bit harsh to call his writing contrived or stiff, I did get a sort-of similar vibe of "individual moments stringed along" when I first read his books.

I do disagree when it comes to overall themes. Granted, he was not the masterful storyteller along the lines of Terry Pratchett, but I do think he nailed some of the general sci-fi satire points.

I like Adams, Pratchett and Gaiman separately (see comments by others for context). Perhaps my fondness for Adams is that I discovered him first.

I started with Adams, and I still like him, just think he's not much for prose - whereas other comic writers are. That said, many sci-fi writers I like weren't much either, e.g. Asimov is very crude, it's all about the plot and ideas.

I think Gaiman is the best of the three in that aspect.

Pratchett is somewhere between Adamd and Gaiman in that respect imho. Though I could never like any of his work...

I don't think Bukowski did find it easy. He's saying he could only write poetry for its own sake and for no other motivation whatsoever and reaching that point is hard and may never come but realizing this essential point saves you a lot of time and crap poetry!

He said that writing poetry is easy, "it just pours out of him", but writing prose is hard work, essentially "like working in a factory". He didn't like that very much, but eventually wrote more prose when he got older - perhaps eventually took a liking to longer projects which don't produce immediate gratification.

It also overlooks the fact that if you don't put the hours in you will never be divinely inspired.

I'm reminded of the outcome of the two groups of potters in a pottery class, one group challenged to make a perfect piece and the other to make as many pieces as possible:

https://excellentjourney.net/2015/03/04/art-fear-the-ceramic...

> Apparently Douglas Adams found it very difficult to write. According to the biography by Neil Gaiman it was almost painful for him, every book or manuscript a chore.

As an author of many years and thousands of pages, I can relate to this. There is an oft misattributed quote on the matter, "I hate to write, but I love having written." In my case "hate" is too strong a verb, I merely find it exhausting. And yet somehow I wish I had more time to do it.

Hang on. This sounds like something I'd like to read. Is this a Douglas Adams bio or a Neil Gaiman one?

Both! It's a biography of Douglas Adams written by Neil Gaiman (pretty early on in Neils career). It's called "Don't Panic".

How did I not know about this?! Fantastic!

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