The Slog Becomes No Simpler With Practice

The slog becomes no simpler with practice and when we stop it's a burden of extra time.  We find we have not prepared ourselves to see how to deal with it.
   

This individual was not famous or brilliant.  He was one who needed to persevere anyhow.  He had nothing better to do with his freedom than to keep working.  Routinely he replied to people who asked if he was at work on anything new: Of course - I have nothing better to do.  They supposed his answer was a characteristic joke.  He had no choice.  

   

Like others with the same elevated calling, there was not much else he fancied in the way of physical pastime or diversion.  Hunting seemed brutish, fishing was silly – you could buy fish.  Tennis, golf, skiing, sailing, although reliably time-consuming, did not strike him as activities suitably decorous for a thoughtful person.  Hiking maybe, but he detested rambling and was in fear of bodily distress.

   

A singular fact about the making of literature is it turns out to be more difficult with seasoning and achievement.  For verification, review the closing chapter of the lives of famous authors.  And then still that awkward amount of extra time to fill one way or another if you do dare to stop.  Minutes take hours.  Hours last months.  

   

Even dalliance engages fewer afternoons and evenings as lust fades to wish, and wish to sentiment.  After that predictable move to the country, where logistical snags and cautious prospects are scarce.  And so even our highest and most faithful literary achievers come upon a leaden sadness in later life as they fade into dormancy and inhabit a desolation that too often turns out to be the endgame.