The Art of Writing

Shouldn't your writing reflect the hard work you put into it? Shouldn't readers know how you struggled and fought and scrapped to make your writing the best you could make it? Actually, it should be just the opposite. If readers can see that you've struggled, then your writing is not as polished as it should be. If they can see the cracks and chips, then you've not yet done enough to hone your writing. You want your finished work to be so good that readers don't notice the writing itself. That's right. You don't want readers to notice your writing. If they do, there's something amiss. Instead, you want them to be so absorbed, so transported by your words that they're not even aware of the vehicle that is moving them. You want the mechanics of how you move them to be invisible. Readers should be aware of the impact of your writing, not the structure of it. You want your writing to be so seamless that it looks to readers as if it was very easy for you to write, that it took no time at all, that the words just flowed from your mind to paper. And when you get that kind of feedback, you just smile, because that means you've done your job. You've created your work without revealing your tools, and that's what makes you an artist.