Louis Roney: And then I wrote...

“Nothing is really work unless you'd rather be doing something else.” — James M. Barrie

My whole life I have been getting people to pay me to do things I love to do, so that I wouldn’t ever have to work for a living.

I had the pleasure of teaching singing at a university so others wouldn’t have to work for a living, but do as I did — sing! All of the sudden I was 85, the age that I had decided to retire as a professor at the university. Party over.

I started writing this column some 34 years ago. I continue to write — not so much for you — but for myself. My mind’s private Ayn Rand tells me to get up out of bed and write a column, not to build a skyscraper. But do something, I must! Use it or lose it.

As an opera singer, after the final curtain fell, I left tragic plots in an ash can on the way back to real life. A retired operatic tenor on the way to graceful antiquity shouldn't bring his histrionics into the house with him. Ain't no wife gonna put up with an old guy carrying a dagger around with him, or, as Cavardossi, practicing how to fall without really killing himself after he's been shot by a firing squad. Come to think of it, retired operatic heroes are pretty useless, and I decided to let writing be my ultimate mode of expression.

After all, I had been singing for many decades the words that other writers had supplied to composers.

And back in the antediluvian days of my youth I had studied writing at the knee of several noted successful writers. Some three-odd decades ago I began to write this column made up of thoughts lodged in my mind.

Occasional wit is a worthy aim. As Alexander Pope put it, “True wit is nature to advantage dress'd. What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd.”

Spontaneity of thought is a boon to the reader and writer, each of whom has a kind of “blind date” with what's going to appear on stage in the theater of the inventive mind. Every artist has some of his best moments when he is acting as a conduit for creative inspiration that no artist can fully comprehend.

“I have tried simply to write the best I can; sometimes I have the good luck to write better than I can.” — Ernest Hemmingway

Hemmingway, the most controversial novelist of his day, told us college boys, “The wastebasket is your best friend, use it! For God's sake, don't fall in love with stuff you write late at night — read it three times over coffee the next morning before you show it to anybody.” He added, “Watch out for jealous ‘wannabe writers’ who think your demise is their success!”

Moliére remarked with humorous acuity that one first writes for pleasure, then for friends, and finally for money. The applicability of Moliére's words to more salacious undertakings is hard to overlook. To the writer, writing is both his work and his life — and at the end, his writing is his eternal legacy.

Work without the joy of creation is mere drudgery: As J.P. McEvoy aptly said, “Life is just a dirty four letter word — w-o-r-k.”

Mark Twain, the consummate satirical humorist, said of work, “I do not like work, even if someone else is doing it.” Twain exemplified the fact that both brains and sweat go into the creation of mankind's most memorable products.

Don Marquis added this observation: “When a man tells you he got rich through hard work, ask him whose?”

When I was young, an older friend who had tried it, told me that, “marrying for money is the hardest way to earn it.” I took him at his word, and after further education, was glad I hadn't decided to learn that truth the hard way.

Poet-genius Ogden Nash quipped, “When you don't want to work, you have to work to earn money so that you won't have to work!”

Marriage doesn't just “work out” — two people have to make it work out by working at it. But that kind of work can be fun if the marriage was meant to be:

“A woman's work is never done—especially the part she asks her husband to do.” — Anonymous

“Some advice is very hard to take literally: “Keep your eye on the ball, your ear to the ground, your shoulder to the wheel — now in that position, try to work!” — Anonymous

“Doctors think people ought to work after retirement. Employers think it would be better if the work were done before.” — Anonymous

“In the good old days, after a days work, a man needed rest, now he needs exercise!” — Anonymous

Dorothy Parker, sharp-tongued wit of the Algonquin Hotel's “Roundtable,” wowed her brilliant companions with such off-the-cuff bon mots as, “He is a writer for the ages — the ages of four to eight.”

“Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.” — E.B. White

“People do not deserve good writing, they are so pleased with bad!” — Ralph W. Emerson

And after all, McDonald’s does outsell Ruth's Chris!

“Write without pay until someone offers to pay; if nobody offers by three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for.” —Mark Twain

“If a writer can resist writing, he shouldn't hesitate to do so. Without the urge, writing is misery. — André Gide

“Two wrongs don't make a writer.” — Anonymous

Amen!