From Neil Gaiman’s blog:

“I’m reading Samuel R. Delany’s _About Writing_ right now….  _About
Writing_ is a wonderful book that should be read by anyone who wants
to be, or is already, a writer. It contains seven essays, four letters
and five interviews.

“I was just struck by this paragraph from one of the letters — to
someone who wishes he or she was a writer, but probably isn’t. And I
thought, I should put it up here for all the people who write to me
convinced that they would be happy if only they were writers.

    Writers are people who write. By and large, they are not happy
people. They’re not good at relationships. Often they’re drunks. And
writing — good writing — does not get easier and easier with
practice. It gets harder and harder — so eventually the writer must
stall out into silence.The silence that waits for every writer and
that, inevitably, if only with death (if we’re lucky the two may
happen at the same time: but they are still two, and their coincidence
is rare), the writer must fall into is angst-ridden and terrifying –
and often drives us mad. (In a letter to Allen Tate, the poet Hart
Crane once described writing as “dancing on dynamite.”) So if you’re
not a writer, consider yourself fortunate.

“(Hey, I thought when I read that, at least I’m not a drunk.)”