Writing Can Be Hard Stuff

"His final downfall was his complete inability to attend to a question put without suggestion. If he had to write a formal composition on the Army, he did at last learn to repeat the facts he knew: "You can join the army at eighteen. You have to be over five foot eight." But he had all the time a living conviction that this was a dodge and that his commonplaces were beneath contempt. Then he reddened furiously, felt his bowels sink with shame, scratched out what he had written, made an agonized effort to think of something in the real composition style, failed, became sullen with rage and humiliation, put the pen down, and would have been torn to pieces rather than attempt to write another word."

D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow