Hemingway

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed,”

-I’m afraid that one day I will discover the hard way that I am a hemophiliac and write my own ending.

Ursula K. LeGuin

“Writing makes no noise, except groans, and it can be done everywhere, and it is done alone.”

– ….and you can’t get arrested for it, not yet.

Robert Heinlein

“Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.”

-Am I doing it wrong?

Sedaris

“Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it’s just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.”

-Just leave your stuff at home people. You have too fricking much of it. (I just added “fricking” to my dictionary. It might as well learn it and stop bothering me.)

Franz Kafka

“Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.”

-I have nothing to add. He lived a tragic life and who am I to pile on.

Henry Miller

“Writing is its own reward.”

-Ok, he had a lot of sex with hot women and it influenced his writing. I have a hard time thinking that he did it solely for the reward of writing. Any hot actresses want to have an affair with me? Really, I am just trying to become a better writer.

Doris Lessing

“I’ve always disliked words like ‘inspiration.’ Writing is probably like a scientist thinking about some scientific problem or an engineer about an engineering problem.”

-Um, no. Sorry Doris, I was an engineer for over thirty years and it’s nothing like writing. Inspiration is definitely appropriate when it comes to writing. Hey I stayed away from the word “fricking”.

Harlan Ellison

“People on the outside think there’s something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn’t like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that’s all there is to it.”

-Now you tell me, what do I do with all the bones in my loft?

Catherine Drinker Bowen

“Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind.”

-Um, no. If I were experiencing anything close to what I write about I wouldn’t be writing fiction. I couldn’t write about my life. Living it once is putting me to sleep.

Jules Renard

“Writing is the only way to talk without being interrupted.”

-Well they didn’t have duct tape back then.

Jules Renard (Yea he was prolific when it came to useless thoughts)

“The truly free man is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving an excuse.”

-I don’t think there is anything wrong with giving excuses. Is it wrong to say “I won’t be hungry two weeks from now”? Beats the hell out of directly insulting the chef.

Perhaps one day my words will inspire people….to get me committed.

This may become a series, or not. It could go either way.