The entire reason for the Highly Flavored Novel experiment was to enjoy writing fiction for a while, because I was in the "dislike writing; like having written" category. Much to my surprise, it's solving many other issues, too. I thought it was going to be a temporary thing and I'd have to move on.
Douglas Adams had to literally be held hostage by his publisher before he would write. This is made even more amazing by the fact that I know what the word "literally" means. http://www.cracked.com/article_24778_5-geniuses-with-slowest-dumbest-creative-processes.html
But there's nothing in the OP which suggest that's what this Kurt Vonnegut was saying. Like you say, why do it if you hate it? I'm sure he must have been referring to the physical process.
But Douglas Adams' problems weren't to do with writing per se, they were to do with dealing with deadlines and pressure. He was a writer before he wrote HHGTTG, not a famous one, but he wrote for some radio shows and such and had some comedy chops. And when HHGTTG (which was a radio show first remember, which was Adams' 'home' medium) was a project that only he cared about then it wasn't a huge problem to get it done. But once it was a project that had a lot of people involved in it, with money and deadlines and everything then he started having problems. He wasn't hugely keen on writing the later episodes of the show or of writing the books and primarily it was because he suddenly had a lot of people and a lot of money counting on him and pushing him. And again, that's not quite writing really, it's more the things that surround writing.
It doesn't sound like he's talking about the physical process. Would you say "I'm sick of writing" if you meant you need to take a break from the typewriter? I think I'd say "I love writing, but I hate that typewriter". I mean, it's possible. But Vonnegut was reportedly a manic depressive; he wouldn't be the first of us to feel that everything he created while manic was worthless when he was depressed. And you would be surprised how many people say they hate everything they write. I've had exactly that argument on this forum, pressing people to tell me why they do it if they hate it and they told me that they just had to no matter how much they hated it. To which all I could say was "Oh...". Either that's them being pretentious to an extreme and vomit inducing degree, or it's them having a mind set that I simply will never understand. In either case; you would be surprised how many people apparently do things they hate.
I love creating my characters and imagining them in scenes from their stories. I hate connecting those scenes with other necessary plot devices. Writing a scene I'm inspired on is akin to reading a story as it flows from my fingers, but writing the scenes that are meant to "cure" writer's block or fill gaps in the plot is like... pulling my fingernails off.
I like writing. I guess I haven't become jaded yet? Cynical? I don't know what to call it. I would think it happens when you've been at it for a while. I don't know I'm not going to pretend to know. I just know I love writing, and that I wouldn't do it if I didn't like it. I even like my crap writing, I think maybe because I can be proud of the fact that I did it even if it's awful.
I think you've hit on something there. It's possible that Vonnegut was in one of his downward spirals when he made that remark to his brother. He approached his writing the way a stand-up comedian would write a monologue, as a series of well-crafted jokes, and he was never sure whether the jokes would work or fall flat. (I remember him grading his own work, and handing out a few Ds and Fs along with the As and Bs.) He once described that when he was interacting with people, he was constantly plagued with stage fright; he felt that he would be momentarily exposed as an imposter. It was a personality trait he gave his main character in Slaughterhouse Five. What's interesting is that when he wrote Slapstick (which he considered one of his lesser works), two of his best works ... Bluebeard and Galapagos ... were ahead of him.
