It just seems to me a perfect unwonder that writing's almost never terrific fun. If it's not the hardest of the arts -- I think it is -- it's surely the most unnatural, and therefore the most wearying. So unreliable, so uncertain. Our instrument is a blank sheet of paper -- no strings, no frets, no keys, no reed, mouthpiece, nothing to do with the body whatever -- God, the unnaturalness of it. Always waiting for birth, every time we sit down to work.
- J.D. Salinger to Joyce Maynard, 1972
descensus Averno facilis est