Walter ‘Red’ Smith

1905–1982 · American sportswriter & Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist

Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith was one of the most admired American sports columnists of the 20th century, syndicated nationally and awarded the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. Asked in 1949 whether grinding out a daily column was hard, he gave the wry answer — “you simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed” — that is the best-evidenced ancestor of the line later, and wrongly, handed to Hemingway. An even earlier earnest version of the metaphor came from novelist and sportswriter Paul Gallico in 1946.

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“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed”

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