On writing one true sentence. And becoming.

Hemingway said just write one true sentence. But sometimes, we struggle

All you have to do is write one true sentence.

Hemingway said that, in his Paris memoir, A Moveable Feast. Just write the truest sentence that you know. It’s what he told himself when he was overthinking. Overwriting. Just write the truest sentence that you know.

But why, I ask myself, would I run so naked in public?

Because you know he didn’t mean to write that the sun will come up again tomorrow, nevermind that it will. He didn’t mean some personal revelation acknowledging the universal fact that we’re all going to die, nevermind that we will.

No. by one true sentence, he meant cut a vein.

And bleed.

In words.

And sometimes, we do. Some of us, at least. But wait. Let me try make sense.

I read a story about a man who swallows days without chewing.

The phrasing stops me. I’ve done that, I think. Entire days, swallowed whole.

He stares into a corner until he finds a spot on the wall, tiny like a birthmark he said, and focuses on that spot until the world disappears and a new world appears. A world where no one uses a little boy like dry twigs to light their own fire.

The words leave me breathless.

I don’t even realize I’m not breathing until I stop to inhale.

I have been that child. Been dry twigs used to light someone else’s fire and I don’t know how to read words like that and remain unchanged. Which is why Stephen King says if you don’t read, you don’t have the tools to write.

Or the one about growing up poor in a trailer wearing second hand clothes or the one about the little girl standing by herself with a flower in her hands and her lips don’t say nothing, not a single word, but her eyes? They scream.

And you keep reading and know why her eyes are screaming and I think to myself that I love the way some writers pluck words from the air and use them to paint pictures on my mind that I will feel in my bones. Skeletons rattling.

Then I saw another piece by another writer and it used the word twat at least seven times, plus in the title for good measure (not to mention clicks) and it had a thousand hearts and got comments that said omg, rofl, lmao, funniest word, like, ever.

And I just… I don’t know.

We are what we are, yeah?

Mary Oliver wrote that she dreamed someone she loved gave her a box of darkness and it took her years to realize this, too, was a gift.

Sometimes, I feel like algorithms are a box of darkness.

The way they lean into engagement. The way engagement leans into the dark side of humanity, not always but so often. Rage bait is a term for a reason. You know? But it wasn’t anyone who loved us who gave them to us. They’re just — profitable.

Then I remember that algorithms just hold up a mirror. Show us to ourselves. Look. Look! Mirror, mirror on the wall, and we grumble about sycophancy in AI, but algorithms are maybe the bigger sycophant, I think.

I’m just not sure how long it will take to see the gift in the darkness. A lone hand, reaching up to turn on a light in the attic so we can see what the shadows are.

But here’s the thing that gets me.

The person bleeding on the page will look at the response they get and wonder. Am I even any good? Because twenty three hearts and five comments is enough to make even the best writer feel a little beat up. For writing one true sentence.

And the irony? Is that the person writing about twats and Trump, Einstein and oligarchs, they don’t really need to wonder that, do they? Because hearts.

Because hot buttons and algorithms and sometimes I wonder what would happen if we took away hearts and social proof but that’s a non issue, because the truth is that titles would still win the day and there’s a writing lesson in that if you think about it. But if you think long enough and hard enough, what you think changes.

. . .

Here’s a crazy fact that sounds irrelevant on the surface but it’s not.

Do you know what the most common use of AI is, outside of business and rich men who want to replace humans with machines? You might think it’s writing, given all the AI we’re all seeing in the feeds, but no. It’s companionship. Someone to talk to.

And I use the word “someone” lightly.

But if you think about it, you can use AI on your phone and it looks astoundingly similar to texting another human being. You can talk about movies or your fears, or talk about what you read in the news and it will reply in a way that can feel astoundingly human to someone who doesn’t have companionship.

It undoes me, a little. To think so many of us are that lonely.

In a world filled with beautiful words that make you laugh or make you cry. Words that push you off a cliff and then fly down, winged, to catch you and hold you tight. And we’ll forsake those words for companionship. Even with a machine.

Or rage, and how am I to fault anyone responding to something that pushes their hot buttons when I believe that any conversation with any human is preferable to conversation with a machine? It’s complicated because we’re complicated.

. . .

And look, so you understand what I’m trying to say here—

I’m not riding any high horse about hot topics versus art, because I write another Substack called Baba Was A Witch and the piece about the rape academy got over four hundred comments but the most beautiful poem I’ve written got thirty three.

Neither is better than or worse than the other. You know?

I write things that matter to me. Sometimes it’s a poem. Sometimes it’s a protest at the horrible and heinous things humans do to each other. Neither is less than or greater than. Humans aren’t made of math. Only machines are.

I read that outrage is more powerful than inspiration in the engagement cycle.

Like, if someone can make you mad, you’re more likely to do something. Read. Comment. Share. Restack and add your opinion. And on a logical level, I understand that. But as a writer, and as a human? I’m not sure it works the same way.

I think maybe it works exactly the opposite.

Let me tell you about my best friend. He sends me poetry, sometimes. The kind of poetry that cracks me open. And laughs when I have no words except maybe something trite like omg, or wow. And yet? It changes me.

The mind, once stretched by a new idea, can never return to its original dimension. Oliver Wendell Holmes, I believe. But I could be wrong. I didn’t google it.

Words must be the axe for the frozen sea inside, Kafka said. The caveat is that no one gets to define the frozen sea for me. Or for you. Or for anyone else, really.

I don’t know if this is even making any sense.

What I do know is that like the Velveteen Rabbit, we are all slowly becoming.

And what are we becoming? Real.

Which is to say finding our way back to the soul we were born with before the world pushed us onto the path of productivity, checkmarks and performing on command.

Before the world taught us social proof and claps and hearts.

And they’re nice to have. The claps, the hearts, the comments. The following and the followers. But they’re not part of becoming. Becoming is a solitary journey.

One true sentence at a time. That’s how we writers become. And it doesn’t matter if our fur is a little matted or worn, or if we’re a little saggy in the joints, because once you’re real, you can’t be ugly. Except to someone who doesn’t understand.

And I really I hope you do…

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