Gene Fowler said, “Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.” Ernest Hemingway said, “There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” Or maybe it was, “Writing is easy. You just open a vein and bleed.” Maybe they both said those quotes, maybe neither one of them said either quote. Maybe it was NY Times sports writer Red Smith.

Maybe several writers independently came up with their own version of this notion of bleeding onto the page. It’s poetic, perhaps too poetic. Look, the quote can’t be, “Writing is hard. Staring at a blank page and it’s frustrating.”

Maybe there was something more visceral about it when they were staring at a typewriter instead of a computer screen. Hitting the keys, putting ink on paper.

But blood? Really? It ain’t surgery.

I think it’s funny that this quote keeps getting used but each bastardized quote keeps the essentials: writer, sit, typewriter, blood.

It’s like Kerouac said, writing is easy, you just bleed on a typewriter. It’s like James Baldwin said, there’s nothing to writing once you wipe the blood from your forehead. It’s like Shakespeare said, writing is ease personified, sit as thy quill drips with blood. And on and on and on.

Writing isn’t hard. Dealing with fear is hard. Writing badly and sharing it so everyone can see what an idiot you are is hard. Sitting down and thinking, “I’d like to try to write something funny,” and then retrieving nothing from your head but the lamest ideas, one by one, is hard.

Coming up with a pithy quote that’s better than the one that’s been recycled for years to end your blog post is hard.

There’s nothing to writing. Just sit down at your laptop, open a browser window, and hope you don’t lose all your friends.