it still takes work

Thanks for the comment, Etc-- feel strongly about that, too (not that I would call myself an artist).

There are a lot of subissues going on here that are specific to my mother and my relationship with my mother. A recurring theme--especially every time that she asks me to write a complaint letter for her-- is, "writing comes so easily to you!" Well, no, not really, nor does it to many people who are actual writers.

Furthermore, the things she's heard about Pushkin and Bulgakov, even if they were true, hardly inform on the creative processes of every writer, ever.

But it's easy (as well as a cop-out) for mom to go there, because she doesn't write at all; it's convenient to generalize, to "other" those that do write, thereby removing any expectation that she should put some effort into writing herself.

There was another article worth mentioning, although I can't find it (maybe it was in the Times?), about how there are some people who don't believe they can learn. They think we're good at what we're good at and won't get better at the other stuff. I'm not one of those people, and those people drive me nuts (especially when I'm responsible for teaching them something). In various language classes that I've taken, I've been amazed to find people who think that they don't have to do the work, that it will just come to them. Yes, I am somewhat naturally predisposed to picking up languages, but it still takes a f*load of work. It's not absorbed by osmosis, unless you're little.

The creative process is interesting to me. I'm not great at it, and I have in the past dismissed it as something that's out of my reach, but as an avid consumer of its products, I'm fascinated by the mental mechanics of its producers and I've enjoyed the New Yorker and other articles that shed light on how it works. So it's that much more frustrating to hear mom basically dismiss the artist as a mere transcriber of a message that comes from outside. And it would be one thing if she said it but didn't spray it, i.e. lecture me about it for half an hour at a time without meaningfully considering what I have to say on the matter.

By the way, Jonathan Safran Foer is a really good writer, I really enjoyed his book (I've not read "Everything is Illuminated" but "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Up Close" was very good). I haven't read the book about Haiti, but, getting back to the New Yorker, last week's fiction piece, "Ghosts", is excellent.