I am part of a Monday night writer's group. We meet twice a month, teach each other lessons on writing, and then read our pages of our works in progress.
This week, one of my partners shared what he learned from author ernest Hemingway's book on writing. So I thought I'd share it with you.
There's no rule on how to write. Sometimes, it comes easily and perfect. Sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges. I love to write, but it has never gotten any easier to do and you can't expect it to if you keep trying for something better than you can do.
As a writer, you should not judge. You should understand.
You see I'm trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across-- not just depict life-- or criticize it, but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing.
Hemingway on Being Critiqued:
I like to have Gertrude Stein bawl me out because it keeps one's opinion of oneself down-- way down. She liked the book very much she said. But what I wanted to hear about what she didn't like and why.
Hemingway On Writer's Block:
I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know." So finally I would write one true sentence and go on from there. If I started to write more elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple sentence I had written. (A Moveable Feast)
I recommend reading this book. Ernest Hemingway on Writing edited by Larry W. Phillips (Scribner Press).
Posted By: Marsha Jones
Thursday, March 18th 2010 at 8:38PM
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