Member-only story
The Art of Writing
There is nothing to it
There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
Or in my case, a laptop — same thing, I guess. A row of keys that I constantly tap at breakneck speed (being a touch-typist helps when writing) — the words flow quicker than my fingers can dance across the keys sometimes — but here they are: words on a screen. As if by magic. If only it were that simple.
The part where we bleed
Yes, we think about something, formulate it into a semblance of order and then get it out on paper or, mostly today, on a screen. Then what? Here comes the hard part - the part where you bleed, as Hemingway so eloquently put it. That is exactly what it feels like when I have written, edited, honed, edited again, polished, fretted, and re-read it for the one-hundredth time. I don’t hanker after a piece going viral but I do want my work to be read consistently and, more importantly, to be enjoyed.
The subjectivity of art
Art is subjective, so they say — what one person sees as a masterpiece another sees as a patch of weird brushstrokes. I guess you could say the same about writing. I have been known not to finish a book because…
