The Blue Collar Bookseller: I hate writing

“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. I 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 I wanted to write about, there was sure to be a book about it. “I won’t ever run out of material,” I thought to myself. “Why, I could write for years on the books I have already read.”

Now, I only had to get someone to buy the idea. Luckily, the editor of NorthcentalPa.com hates writing, but loves reading. She had read the two sample columns and talked with the staff. She loved the fresh idea of a book review geared toward regular working people.

It was my best column, because it was my first column.

I couldn’t write a second, or a third column, 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…