There’s this obnoxious old saying I’ve heard so many times, said by people trying way too hard to be clever, that it makes me want to puke. Ready?

If it wasn’t hard, they wouldn’t call it work. Blech!

Can’t you just feel the bile? Feel that tickle in the back of your throat?

The work is the third step in the book writing process—or art creation of any kind process. It’s Part the Third. It’s also part the longest, aka the longest, loneliest part of the process. It can take months, even years, and you can lose friends, family, and the ability to wash or feed yourself. It’s like being trapped in a coal mine, inside your head, trying to extract the coal and, at the same time, turn it into words.

Oh yeah. And the words have to make sense. And be interesting. And tell a story worth telling to someone who isn’t drunk or high.

Which is why I’m tempted to say the work is the hardest part, and I frequently do. But that’s only because I’m in the midst of it. I’ve taken my idea, made a decision to write it, and now I’m toiling through the daily grind of it. The crippling doubts haven’t fully descended—another blog and several nightmares from now—so I’m just trying to find the story in all the coal-dusted words.

Like so many things in life, the work is different for different people. Some writers are really big planners: They outline and create “beat sheets” so they know when the big cool action parts are supposed to happen. I don’t do that. Sometimes I wish I could. In case you don’t remember, these types of writers are called plotters.

I’m what’s known as a pantser. Meaning, I sort of discover what’s happening as I go. I sit down with my characters and follow them where they take me. Occasionally we get lost or go down a blind alley and have to backtrack or regroup, but it’s exciting.

And I can’t tell you how many epiphanies I’ve had in the shower. When you’re a pantser, you’re somehow always connected to these characters.

In truth, I think none of us are pure pantsers or true plotters. I know pantsers who whip out a notebook and outline from time to time. And every plotter has periods of discovery.

The work is really the thing that separates a writer from someone who wants to be a writer. In the movies and on TV and even in books, writing sounds exciting and glamourous. It’s not. We’re not the jetsetters, the fancy restaurant eaters, the studs on parade. We’re the big sweat-streaked guy shoveling coal into the engines in the bowels of the Titanic—my favorite scene in that movie by the way.

It’s a hard, long, misunderstood, and thankless task to create art.

That’s why we call it the work.