“There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” ~Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith
I hate writing. I love having written, and I’m in good company. Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Dorothy Parker-all have been credited with this widely quoted line. I happily credit them all because I understand. I stare at the blank screen. I write an opening paragraph, but I change my topic, and now it doesn’t fit. I delete it. I wish I had not. I start over. I hate writing.
I hate writing so much that I thought I should write a regular column. So that I wouldn’t be alone in my misery, I convinced Kasey to suffer along with me, because she hates writing too. We do, however, love books, and Ray Bradbury, a well-known and prolific writer, gives the advice of “Write only what you love, and love what you write” and so the column was to be about books, or rather reading, or maybe it should be writing about reading. Basically, if there’s a topic we wanted to write about, there was sure to be a book about it. “We won’t ever run out of material,” I pointed out. “Why, we could write for years on the books we have already read.”
Now, we only had to get someone to buy the idea. Luckily, the editor of the Wellsboro Gazette hates writing, but loves reading. “Sure, we can give it a shot, but I’m going to need something by this afternoon.” I remember that first column, punched out on the keyboard, making sure to spell every word correctly and not use the word ‘very’ in a sentence. I finished with minutes to spare, and with a satisfied click, thumped my first deadline. It was my best column, because it was my first column.
I couldn’t write a second, or a third, or fourth years’ worth of columns until I wrote that first one. Many authors attempt a “starter” novel, to prove they can create a narrative that will actually be read. Often that first work is safely squirreled away in a dark, inaccessible spot, so that no one will be forced to say that it is merely “good,” or if they are honest, that they didn’t like it, not at all. Only with experience and effort does a writer learn to “leave out the parts that people skip.”
Rereading my past work can be overwhelming. I see lines I wished I had omitted, an awkward phrase. What was I saying here? What was I thinking? There was a better way I could have expressed that, and it will never be exactly what I wanted to say. It will never be perfect. But I also gain much satisfaction. This part almost captured exactly what I was seeking, and here I was able to say the same thing with fewer words. I’ve read that “being a good writer mostly means being a good observer and a good thinker”, and with work, zest, gusto, and a good editor-I still hate writing, but I love having written…