therkalexander:
mollyringle:
I couldn’t be the only writer who really *doesn’t* like the famed...
I couldn’t be the only writer who really *doesn’t* like the famed quote attributed to Hemingway:
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
Which apparently was originally by sportswriter Red Smith, but that’s not the point.
The point is: sure, writing is HARD, in the sense that anything worth doing is hard, but I’m sorry, I’m not going so far as to say that it’s PAIN AND SUFFERING and you are being some courageous wounded soldier by persisting in putting words on paper.
Because for me, NOT writing hurts a lot more than writing. Without writing, adventures and emotions are trapped inside me, where they fester. I become crazy if I don’t give them an outlet.
So, okay, in that sense, I’m lancing my psyche and “bleeding” these ideas onto the page? Is that the idea? I still don’t like the metaphor. It’s not like draining a freaking wound. It’s like planting a seed that would otherwise rot, but with your care and diligent work it grows instead into a magnificent tree.
Besides. There are harder jobs out there that do in fact require blood. So let’s just not take ourselves quite so seriously, eh, authors?
I 100% agree with this. Are there difficult things to write? Sure. Of course. Does that make all writing an intense emotional labor?
Nope.
Now, If I’m being unflinchingly honest, writing doesn’t feel at all like suffering to me. When I go on a tear and bang out 10k words in three days that’s not suffering. That’s a high.
It’s a high more exquisite and vibrant than the best drug I ever took in my younger years. I have done 100% of my writing sober, but being in the zone and just siphoning words from my brain to the page? A perfect drug.
I’m not even talking about getting the climax and denouement of a story written, or the satisfaction when you type “the end”. I’m talking about the minutiae, the build up, and even the really fucking tragic parts. Still the same high.
NOT writing hurts. It feels like sickness, or worse, an ever present ever deepening numbness. The longer I go without writing, the harder it is to get back into the grove.
But the act of writing itself? Ecstasy.
The typewriter and bleed quote? Doesn’t resonate with me at all. I’ve never felt like the act of writing was akin to martyrdom.
