Dorothy Parker famously quipped, “I hate writing. I love having written.”
While I adore the Queen of Wit, her and I part ways on this subject.
So often, in the literati parlance, you hear the same sorts of adages. People down through the ages have echoed the same mentality. Some famous examples to illustrate the point are as follows:
“I am not at all in a humor for writing; I must write on until I am.” – Jane Austen
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at the typewriter and bleed.” – Ernest Hemingway
“I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.” – Gustave Flaubert
A large quantity of writers throughout the years have seemed to prefer “having written” to writing. On the surface, it’s pretty easy to understand why. There’s nothing quite as dopamine-inducing as looking down at a completed manuscript and knowing that it only exists as a fruit of your labor.
Still, I can’t quite agree with the sentiment.
For me, the writing–the actual act of putting pen to paper or clicking the keys with my fingertips approaches sacramental. Perhaps you can chalk it up to my affinity for poetry, but I actually prefer the “main event” to the moment when I can throw my pencil down with a sigh.
At the risk of sounding reductive, I think there’s a fairly black-and-white distinction to be made between two types of writers. Much like you can supposedly divide novelists into the two groups “plotters” or “pantsers,” I think you can divide writers by those who enjoy the writing and those who enjoy “having written.”
You can think of the writing/written binary as Apollonian vs. Dionysian.
The Apollonian writers enjoy having written. The process is but a means to the end. What really counts is having the ink dry. Each of the quotations above illustrates this point of view.
Certainly, there’s nothing wrong with Apollonian writers! I, too, love checking boxes and hitting deadlines. With that said, I think there’s another (perhaps rarer) type of writer that doesn’t fit this schematic.
The Dionysian writer revels in the process. The actual intoxicating act of thinking up new ideas is where it’s at for this type. The writing is as important or more important than the finished product. I believe myself to be among these types.
Here are a few quotations from the greats that serve as a sort of “counterweight” to the aforementioned “Apollonian” writers:
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” – Anais Nin
“I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.” – Anne Frank
“If I knew where the good songs came from, I’d go there more often. It’s a mysterious condition. It’s much like the life of a Catholic nun. You’re married to a mystery.” –Leonard Cohen
“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” – Ray Bradbury
What about you? Do you think that this division of writer-types is valid? If so, which do you count yourself among?
Bez&Co 
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