“There is nothing to writing.”
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
- Ernest Hemingway
“I understand Ernest. You bleed. There are times when writing is torment. It won’t let you take the easy way out. Believe me, I’ve tried many times. But you’re haunted with thoughts of settling, not getting it right. It’s not perfectionism; it’s that you have to fight and claw to the real, raw, naked truth of a thing. You can use the word “sadness” and walk away, but is it really that? Or is it deeper than that, wider than that, bigger than that, more painful than that. Maybe it’s “anguish.” Or maybe there is no singular word and you have to describe it. Maybe it wasn’t sadness, maybe it was” feeling like you were going to die or wanted to.”
You put your writing out there for public consumption and it seems simple enough, but people don’t see the ache that sometimes goes into each word. It’s not only that you’re dipping your pen into the bottle of your own heartache, if that wasn’t bad enough, but it’s the unrelenting demand not to cheapen it with the wrong words. You have to honor what’s in that bottle of pain by getting it right – you owe that much to yourself.
Writing is not gourmet coffee, rainbows and ponies. There are times when writing is maddening. Sometimes I want to scream! Writing is unforgiving. You’re typing away and suddenly an unwelcome memory is thrust upon you, and you think to yourself, “Not going there!” But the writing gods aren’t so easily appeased. They will push and pull you to it, kicking and screaming the whole way. You can fight it; they always win.
Sometimes I wonder why I keep writing. I didn’t really choose writing, it chose me. It’s not just that I “want” to write. There’s a way I don’t have a choice – I “have” to write. I can’t not write. Some days that’s a blessing, other days a curse. It’s work. Sometimes the muse feels like wrestling an alligator. I’ve written chapters, and practically wept the entire way through it. Sometimes I’m utterly exhausted and drained at the end of writing just one paragraph. Cathartic??? It’s more like death by writing.
And then at the end of all of that, if you survive it, you lay yourself bare in words for the entire world to see, all the while knowing you didn’t succeed to even satisfy yourself, much less others. You tell yourself you did the best you could and move on.
For all the erroneous thoughts people have about the life of comfort, ease and fame of an author, people can’t see that it’s more or less a thankless endeavor. For what can you really receive in exchange for the blood you lose that Hemingway referred to? For the rare and few writers who make it big financially, there are a million others like me who struggle to make ends meet just like you.
But just when you are stuck in that moment of frustration and discouragement, ready, willing and begging to walk away from it all, you receive an email from someone who shares how something you wrote helped them… encouraged them, freed them, emboldened them, inspired them, gave them hope, made them feel understood and accepted, or opened their eyes to see themselves differently.
And that’s enough to sign up to bleed another day.”
- Jim Palmer
