Attributed without citation in Janice R. Matthews et al. (2000) Successful Scientific Writing. p. 53
Sometimes attributed to Douglas Adams.
“Writing is simple. First you have to make sure you have plenty of paper… sharp pencils… typewriter ribbon. Then put your belly up to the desk… roll a sheet of paper into the typewriter… and stare at it until beads of blood appear on your forehead.”
Prof. Cosmo Fishhawk, in Shoe
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Jeff MacNelly 1
American cartoonist 1947–2000Related quotes

Letter to Bernard Berenson (24 September 1954); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker
Context: You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not have the reference, the old important reference. You have the sheet of blank paper, the pencil, and the obligation to invent truer than things can be true. You have to take what is not palpable and make it completely palpable and also have it seem normal and so that it can become a part of experience of the person who reads it.
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

“What you have in your head, put down on paper. The head is a fragile vessel.”
Page 229
Testimony (1979)

Books, What's So Great About America (2003)

“Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.”