A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

The remark overturns the romantic notion that writers are simply people to whom language comes effortlessly. Mann suggests that the defining trait of the serious writer is not ease but heightened difficulty: greater self-criticism, sharper awareness of nuance, and a stronger sense of responsibility to form and truth. Writing becomes harder precisely because the writer cares more about precision and effect than ordinary communicators do. The line also implies that struggle is not evidence of incompetence but a mark of vocation—an index of ambition and standards. In this view, the labor of revision, doubt, and dissatisfaction is not incidental to authorship; it is what distinguishes it.