Challenge for Garson, Stephen, and Others

[Gordon, Matthew J.]

It's not helpful to your challenge, but the Steve Martin version is too fun to not mention:
http://tinyurl.com/4vx3qf5

Matt Gordon
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From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Shapiro, Fred [fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU]
Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2011 2:21 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Challenge for Garson, Stephen, and Others

In The Yale Book of Quotations, I list the following under Thomas Wolfe:

Writing is easy.  Just put a sheet of paper in the typewriter and start bleeding.
Quoted in Gene Olson, Sweet Agony (1972)

This is often attributed to Red Smith.  An alternative wording is "There's nothing to writing.  All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein."

Can anyone find pre-1972 evidence of any variant of this?

Fred Shapiro

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