Having Written

Dorothy Parker was famously quoted as saying, “I don’t like writing; I like having written.” Did it really start with her? No one knows for sure, in large part because it’s been echoed again and again over the decades by writers both famous and unpublished. That’s understandable. The quote succinctly captures the sharp contrast between the formless agony that is staring at a page with no idea how to proceed or if what you’ve written is of any value at all, and the relief and satisfaction that comes when you push back from the desk having by the grace of some deity actually done it. But will you be able to do it tomorrow? Maybe go to the Algonquin* and knock back a few and try to ignore that unanswerable question.

I get it, except that as-of-yet unanswered questions are the whole reason we write in the first place. I know we prefer when the answers come quickly, when as soon as we ask, “What should happen next?” an idea arrives in our mind with the speed of a Google query. I know it’s fantastic when you’re flowing so effortlessly you don’t even notice you’re asking questions, you’re just hearing answer after answer after answer. We prefer it, and it happens. I’m sure Parker had days like that, days where it came easily. We all have. So why all the whining?

For the same reason, I believe, that authors will quote their bad reviews verbatim and forget the raves. Pain and discomfort are memorable. You ignore all the days your toes felt fine but remember the time you stubbed your pinky on the ottoman. It can be uncomfortable not knowing what to write next, just like it’s uncomfortable not knowing if you can afford a new car, or if you should take that job in Portland, or if there’s anyone out there you’d actually want to spend the rest of your life with.

Parker might as well have said, “I don’t like living; I like having lived.” Living, like writing, is the discovering, the finding, the learning, the growing. Get rid of that and there’s not much to do besides chop wood, eat, sleep, and eventually croak. Given the options, I’ll take the occasional discomfort and try not to complain too much about it. Complaint is just selective forgetting anyway, choosing to remember the suffering and not the satisfaction, the grief and not the joy, the ending and not the beginning.

*Dorothy Parker was a part of the Algonquin Roundtable, a regular gathering of authors and thinkers who sat around drinking, discussing art and politics, and trying to be cleverer than everyone else. Or so I’ve read.

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Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
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