Doing hard time in writer's jail

Blogging has been relatively light these past few weeks -- a heavy travel schedule combined with a general surge in business activity has kept me busy with little time to reflect in this space. Writing is difficult work, especially if you have a weekly deadline to fulfill like I do with my InfoWorld column. Writing a column for print is uniquely challenging because space constraints mean that sometimes you have to cut a word here and there to make it fit properly, or add a sentence of a certain length. I can spend hours staring at a single sentence trying to craft it to deliver the intended meaning more clearly. Writing is hard work, verging on absolutely maddening at times.

Former President Bill Clinton emerged recently from the completion of his memoirs and referred to the confinement of his writing deadline as "writer's jail." I don't think I've heard such an apt phrase to refer to how I feel when I'm writing my weekly column (and a Google search suggests that the term "writer's jail" is a Clinton invention).

Nice term, President Clinton. I feel your pain.