why moist ink?

Write till your ink be dry, and with your tears

Moist it again, and frame some feeling line

That may discover such integrity.

— WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

I love these lines from Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona. (If you want to read the quote in context, it comes from Act 3, Scene II, in the Duke’s palace, where Proteus is giving Thurio advice on how to win the heart of Silvia, including how to write love sonnets to her.) These short few lines encapsulate all you really need to know to be a good—even a great—writer. Why? Let’s break it down.

First, “write till your ink be dry” captures the hard work and toil it takes to be a writer. You must write, and write some more. Write until there is no more ink in your pen. Write till your pen be dry, till your fingers ache, till your eyes need rubbing, till you realize hours have gone by while you ignored the clock. There is no way around this. Even the most naturally gifted writers spend countless hours at their desks or their computers writing, rewriting, editing, obsessing, changing until they finally feel that maybe, just maybe, they got it right.

Second, “with your tears moist it again.” Good writing is emotional writing. Emotional writing appeals to our subconscious. Psychologists estimate that was much as 95% of our cognition is subconscious, and our subconscious is very much ruled by our emotions. It doesn’t always have to be tears and sadness. Your writing can appeal to other parts of our nature: compassion, joy, love, fear (I’m not a big fan of using fear in my writing, although it has certainly been shown to motivate people to take action). You don’t have to cry over your writing, but good writing should move you, and by extension your reader.

Third, “frame some feeling line that may discover such integrity.” We just addressed that your writing should have feeling, but what about “discovering integrity?” This is the heart of the matter. Your writing must be true, in many ways. It should be your voice, a voice that comes from deep within your innermost, truest self. A voice that is only found by peeling away layer after layer of protection and pretense, the mask we have learned to wear in order to “fit in.” But more than that, your writing must be in tune to the universal truths of human nature. (Truths that hold true no matter what kind of writing you are doing. The best science fiction writing, for example, is not the best because it has the most imaginative planets or the coolest spaceships, but because it explores universal themes of human nature.) Your writing must have integrity. If any part if it feels false, you will lose your reader.

How many times have you heard someone say they felt an apology wasn’t genuine? Of that a person was “full of s@#t?” Readers know. Ernest Hemingway once said in an interview in The Paris Review:

“The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it.”

You can find many different variations of this quote; I have the feeling Hemingway said it many times, in many different ways. You will usually see “shit” replaced with “bullshit,” but the idea remains the same. You must listen to your gut, be ruthless with your pen and strike out anything in your writing that feels false.

Shakespeare’s writing—and this quote about writing—has stood the test of time because it is so true, so right that we immediately recognize its integrity. That is why this website about writing is called “Moist Ink.”