Ask any writer with an ounce of respect for the craft what the hardest part of being a writer is, and they’ll probably tell you, “Sitting down to actually write.” Some of them will even follow up with, “I know, how cliche, right?” before getting back to Facebook or looking at Internet pornography. Writers are told at all cost to avoid cliches while becoming living, breathing cliches themselves because someone once said, “The hardest part about writing is sitting down to write,” and we believed them.

I might tell you the hardest part about being a writer is being a writer. If history proves anything, the life of a writer is a constant struggle. A struggle to get published. A struggle to find work. A struggle to get our prose read by someone other than our wives and mothers. We go from clinically depressed and self-loathing to invincible and high-as-an-addict twelve times a day. We face constant rejection and feelings of inadequacy.

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