Writing is the hardest work I have ever done. I’ve worked 60-hour weeks in marine construction, building docks and floats, cold, wet and tired in the rain. I’ve worked 80-hour weeks in fish processing plants in Alaska, where you work till you’re soaked and cold and covered in scales and slime. I went to a fancy college and a top graduate school where students competed, coldly, for the attention of professors. As a reporter I called the father of a girl killed in a car crash and asked him, “How do you feel?” and in business I’ve pulled all nighters before presenting to venture capitalists who held the future of our company in their hands and I’ve walked into rooms of 20 people and told all of them, “I’m sorry, go home, because I’m laying all of you off.” But writing is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
