I don't know about novels, but I do know about a Ph.D. thesis. You start with great ideas, high hopes, and an intention to produce something wonderful. By the

I don't know about novels, but I do know about a Ph.D. thesis. You start with great ideas, high hopes, and an intention to produce something wonderful. By the end you're just desperate to get shot of the damn thing and move on. The level of detail, the irrelevant nit-picking, the positioning of the diagrams, the alignment of the text, the wording that jars the senses, chosen to be more correct and more precise, but nevertheless an insult to the lover of decent prose, and so on. I can imagine that a novel is the same, and to quote transmit101: > Coding is pretty straight-forward in comparison. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2313149 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2313149) Yes. Yes it is. And to reply to beaumartinez who said: > I find coding elicits the same things > you've mentioned about composing. Perhaps, but unless you've experienced both, it's hard to appreciate the sheer intensity. Many people express doubt without themselves having the experience.