On ugliness

Ugliness: even the word looks ugly. It sounds ugly. Say it. Ug, ug, it's a caveman throat-choke, a gag-reflex. The awkward ending, -ness, is glued on there as if it might fall off. A hack job of a word. Beauty, by comparison, is, if not a beautiful word, then a graceful one. The B leans back as if to admire its odalisque tail, the down-stroke of the y swings like a cat's tail, balancing the stretched ballerina arm of the B's up-stroke. In between is eau, water - pure and clean, a tasteful colour, like eau-du-nil. A word composed purely of vowels seems to vanish into its own transparency. Eau is a sigh, a zephyr breath.
Maybe it would be different if ugliness meant beauty, and vice-versa. Maybe then I would be admiring the mirror back-to-back symmetry of the gl, that in Italian is transparent as eau. I might admire the curling fronds of the ness, its curling over itself, its hissing train. But it still begins with a grunt, not a sigh. Maybe if ugliness meant beauty, ugliness would be beauty.

Writing is work, a lot of people say so. I say so. Writing is hard slog, nose to the grindstone stuff, it's technique, you work at it, you're not born with it. Talent doesn't exist, persistence does. Remember this is hard work, lad, tha'll have to put in the elbow grease if tha wants to be a writer. But is it really this much hard work or are a lot of people embarrassed about how easy it is? Male children's writers, in particular, adopt hard frowns, talk about paring down sentences, talk about people not realising how difficult it is, how they are in for a nasty shock. Women are more likely to talk about how much fun it is. I think it's okay for it not to really be that hard either. Don't hate yourself for being a writer, just forget about it and write.