Ernest Hemingway on Writing
Books | Literary Criticism / Modern / General
3.8
Larry W. Phillips
A collection of reflections on writing and the nature of the writer from one the greatest American writers of the 20th century.Throughout Hemingway’s career as a writer, he maintained that it was bad luck to talk about writing—that it takes off “whatever butterflies have on their wings and the arrangement of hawk’s feathers if you show it or talk about it.” Despite this belief, by the end of his life he had done just what he intended not to do. In his novels and stories, in letters to editors, friends, fellow artists, and critics, in interviews and in commissioned articles on the subject, Hemingway wrote often about writing. And he wrote as well and as incisively about the subject as any writer who ever lived… This book contains Hemingway’s reflections on the nature of the writer and on elements of the writer’s life, including specific and helpful advice to writers on the craft of writing, work habits, and discipline. The Hemingway personality comes through in general wisdom, wit, humor, and insight, and in his insistence on the integrity of the writer and of the profession itself. —From the Preface by Larry W. Phillips
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Author
Larry W. Phillips
Pages
115
Publisher
Simon and Schuster
Published Date
2002-07-25
ISBN
0743237366 9780743237369
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"This book was basically just a big compilation of Hemingway quotes from some of his books and personal correspondence. Not a great book to read through all in one sitting, but sort of a fun thing to read in bits and pieces. I've included some of my favorites below:<br/><br/>The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, **** detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it.<br/><br/>MICE: What is the best early training for a writer? Y.C.: An unhappy childhood.<br/><br/>As a writer you should not judge. You should understand.<br/><br/>The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck. That is the most valuable thing I can tell you so try to remember it.<br/><br/>The best way is to read it all every day from the start, correcting as you go along, then go on from where you stopped the day before. When it gets so long that you can’t do this every day read back two or three chapters each day; then each week read it all from the start. That’s how you make it all of one piece. And remember to stop while you are still going good. That keeps it moving instead of having it die whenever you go on and write yourself out. When you do that you find that the next day you are pooped and can’t go on.<br/><br/>Taking refuge in domestic successes, being good to your broke friends etc. is merely a form of quitting.<br/><br/>All art is only done by the individual. The individual is all you ever have and all schools only serve to classify their members as failures.<br/><br/>Invention is the finest thing but you cannot invent anything that would not actually happen.<br/><br/>The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing<br/><br/>Hope this doesn’t sound over-confident. Am a man without any ambition, except to be champion of the world<br/><br/>“Tell me first what are the things, the actual, concrete things that harm a writer?”… “Politics, women, drink, money, ambition. And the lack of politics, women, drink, money and ambition,” I said profoundly.<br/><br/>is better to produce half as much, get plenty of excercise and not go crazy than to speed up so that your head is hardly normal.<br/><br/>I don’t know about that. I never went to college. If any sonofabitch could write he wouldn’t have to teach writing in college.<br/><br/>But if the book is good, is about something that you know, and is truly written and reading it over you see that this is so you can let the boys yip and the noise will have that pleasant sound coyotes make on a very cold night when they are out in the snow and you are in your own cabin that you have built or paid for with your work"
Max Nova
