"Хорошо, когда писателю хочется писать."

Translation: It is good when a writer wants to write.

[ncolvin]

Why is писатель in dative case here?

[deactivated user]

Because «хо́чется» is a subjectless verb, which works very much like «на́до». If you used «хо́чет», then «писа́тель» would be in the nominative case.

There's a very blurred line between treating the desire as something we can control, our action (therefore «я хо́чу») and as something that happens to us (therefore «мне хо́чется»).

Compare English 'I think' and 'it seems to me' (and archaic 'me thinks') — both mean roughly the same thing, but in the first case it's described as our action and in the second it's described as something that happens to us.

[sdelta1]

Speaking as a writer, writing is painful and awful and we never actually want to do it!

[susanashe]

Ditto

[KosztolanyiG]

Looking at you, GRRM

[JulieLam4]

Why would it be incorrect to translate this as "It is good when a writer would like to write."

[Bogus779729]

I would say "feels like writing."

[Uses_Clozemaster]

Хорошо, когда пилоту хочется управлять самолетом.

[susanashe]

when is хочется used rather than хочет

[DanielNiet910846]

How about "OK, when the writer wants to write"?

[LebronAnd1]

And one more.. пИсать is meaning - to Pee

[ricojes]

it's good when a writer would like to write?

[RussophiliaSux]

So I'd say it's more like "feels like writing" vs. "wants to write..." though as with a lot of dative and accusative in Russian, something's lost in translation to English. The flavor of being helpless is lost...

[Mariduoling]

I have tha right answer...

[RomanaBojk]

hochetsya should be correct writing