Something that's been knocking around in my head for a while: I think a lot of new writers get thrown off by their assumption that writing will be anything like reading. Reading is a dreamy, passive experience--scenes, dialogue, and description flow over you as you are taken under the writer's spell. Writing, on the other hand (with the exception, sometimes, of the first draft), is the laborious, almost mechanical-like task of putting narrative elements together so that the reader can lose themselves in your story. In short, reading and writing are very different experiences, and the assumption that they will be, or even should be, the same, is cause for much angst among new and experienced writers alike. It's a frustrating thing, because a love of reading is usually what gets people interested in writing in the first place. I've been writing for several decades and I still feel confounded by this clash--it's part of why I don't read much when I'm deep into my writing, and vice versa. And when I am writing, I constantly have to remind myself: Writing is not watching a magic show. Writing is figuring out how to smuggle the rabbit into the hat.
