Chamblee54

#WhyIWrite is trending on twitter today, the #NationalDayOfWriting. A lot of the tweets are the sanctimonious, pseudo-inspirational crap that you might expect. A few others are posting inspirational thoughts by famous authors, usually with a picture in the background. Posting memes about writing is not the same as writing. Especially when the famous author never said it.
@girlsreallyrule “In honor of this National Day on Writing, I submit this quote from Dorothy Parker, who sums it up perfectly. #WhyIWrite” This tweet gets the party started. The *quote* was a bit of photoshop nonsense that PG has written about before. There is no source for the quote, “I hate writing. I love having written.” (If someone knows a source, please leave a comment.) PG left a comment. @chamblee54 “Dotty never said that. An old school manual typewriter only produces one size of text. I have learned when someone says _____ _____ perfectly, then the object in question is full of errors.” When writing this report, PG clicked on the link to the original tweet. “You are blocked from following @girlsreallyrule and viewing @girlsreallyrule’s Tweets.”
The next meme is blamed on Ben Franklin. “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” Quote Investigator has a report on this Benjaminism. It turns out that the real quote is better than the meme. “If you wou’d not be forgotten, As soon as you are dead and rotten, Either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.”
@Gaming_agent99 “You can make empires rise from ashes. You can make heroes fall and villains rise. You can bring all your thoughts and ideas to life, what’s more fun than that. #WhyIWrite” This thought was illustrated by a C.S. Lewis meme. “You can make anything by writing.” Once again, the manual typewriter produces perfectly centered text, in two sizes. @chamblee54 I searched the C.S. Lewis wikiquotes. I used make, anything, and writing as search words. This quote did not appear. @chamblee54 #WhyIWrite I found this in my search “The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.” The Magician’s Nephew (1955), Ch. 10: The First Joke and Other Matters.
@simpsonlibrary posted a tasteful graphic featuring this quote: “I think all writing is a disease. You can’t stop it.” William Carlos Williams. PG had never heard of Dr. Williams, and thought the quote was real. Usually, the less famous the name, the greater the chance that the quote is legitimate. A bit of research turned up page 498 of The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams: 1939-1962. Dr. Williams had translated Fragment 31 of Poems in Folio, by Sappho. “I’m 73 years old. I’ve gone on living as I could as a doctor, and writing poetry on the side. I practised to get money to live as I please, and what pleases me is to write poetry.”
“I don’t speak English, but the American Idiom. I don’t know how to write anything else, and I refuse to learn. … All my life I’ve never stopped thinking. I think all writing is a disease. You can’t stop it.” Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.