“Write drunk, edit sober.”
Ernest Hemingway never said this.
“If you are going to do a Mathematical Deep Think, it is best that you be sober…and around 22 years old.”
Buford Lister (personal communication)
I am not that big a fan of Ernest Hemingway or his writing. That said, there are a couple of quotes attributed to him that keep coming up in my day to day life. The first is the title of this post. There is no evidence that he ever said it or that he endorsed such a thing. Apparently, he wrote in the early morning when he was stone sober. As for the second quote, well… let’s say that string of letters is just as problematic. We can start with a little quiz.
Who was it who said the following?
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
Most people that I know attribute that quote to Hemingway, the problem is that it is not apparent that it belongs to him. I did some searching, and it appears that many people said similar things, but it is not clear if Hemingway ever said it at all. So, who should we attribute the quote to?
Red Smith was one of the finest sports columnists we have ever seen. He was so good that he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1976. When asked how difficult it was to churn out a daily column, Smith replied that is wasn’t hard at all. He said:
“You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed.”
That might be the origin of the quote. I guess people attributed it to Hemingway because it sounds like something he should have said. It’s always about what makes for the best story, right?
Paul Gallico, the author of The Poseidon Adventure, a movie I just watched the other day, wrote this in 1946:
It is only when you open your veins and bleed onto the page a little that you establish contact with your reader.
Smith’s quote is probably a few years older than Gallico’s. I guess it really doesn’t matter who we attribute the quote to, it is the sentiment that is important. So, what exactly does it mean to sit down at a keyboard and bleed? I have a few thoughts on that.
In my recent past, I have come across many young people who want to be writers. I always tell them the same thing. “If you want to be a writer, you have to know how to write. More importantly, you need to have something to say.” As for the bleeding part, I let them in on that a little later. If they prove that they are serious, that they really are willing to sit down at a keyboard for hours a day, I tell them that every writer must decide how much of themselves they are willing to reveal to their readers. If they are ready to totally expose their inner being, then they are on the cusp of opening a vein over their keyboard.
Sitting down and bleeding means (at least to me) that you are writing with such depth and feeling that the reader can’t help but be impacted by the words. Such a thing is much easier for musicians, all they have to do is switch to a minor key, and they can evoke emotion. It is not nearly that easy for a writer, there aren’t any special keys to press on our keyboards that can instantly conjure a specific mood. It is much harder than that.
If you sit down at a computer with the express intention of exposing your inner being to the world at large, then you are bound to bleed. The bloodletting can be barely noticeable, or you may need to keep a supply of reasonably priced keyboards in your closet. That is the decision any serious writer needs to make.
There is one aspect of this topic that I find fascinating, I am curious about what compels a person to do such a thing. The implicit question is: How can a writer possibly be inspired to such an extent that they feel it is necessary to sit and bleed. For me, that is the interesting part.
Sitting at a keyboard and bleeding is not an everyday occurrence. Nor is it reasonable to expect such a thing from a writer. It seems unnatural and unnecessary; after all, most of today’s best selling authors write uninteresting genre fiction. The only bleeding they do will be the result of things like paper cuts.
Typing and bleeding is a very tough thing to do, I know…I have done it. I do not think you have seen it yet in these posts, but that is about to change. I will be posting one or two chapters a week from a book I wrote over the course of many years called Random Thoughts From A Nonlinear Mind, Volume 2: The Athena Chapters. That fancy little tale is about…well, you’ll find out soon enough.
