I have just spent three hours finding the right words for a paragraph in a novel I have been working on for years. In those three hours I typed probably five hundred words and kept thirty-six. I hear about writers turning out 500 words a day. I don't envy them. I'd love to find that many right words in a day's working session, but I never do. Sometimes I grind out as many as fifty. Sometimes I delete a week's worth of words I was once content with.

No editor will care how diligently I grind out what I accept. No reader will care whether I used this phrase or another. But I care.

Writing is a challenge. Accepting that challenge every day for three hours is the joy of my life. Nothing, except sharing my life with my family, gives me greater pleasure than finding the right words to express a good idea.

I want other people to mirror my pleasure, but I don't expect them to. I write because I love writing, not because I want to please anyone but myself.