Tag: Hemingway

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Write the truest thing…Hemingway

“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.” 

Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

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This quote is from one of my favourite books from Hemingway. I have always sought to do this in my writing and fiction, write the truest sentence I know. 🙂

Go well. Suzanne

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A Farewell to Arms…

…reading A Farewell to Arms, and I am struck by Hemingway’s use of repetition with imagery (dust, dusty, leaves) “green branches and green leafy branches and vines laid over the tractors.” When I was a young writer I felt a good writer must not repeat the same words. This is true to some degree. Hemingway uses poetic repetition of leaves falling early in the autumn and repetition of words almost as poems in his work to provide emphasis; “sure this was all and all and all and not caring” (p.13). I love it.

I am struck by the brevity of his chapters only five or less pages a chapter. This to me seems very relevant today, with our short attention spans, and I must say I like short chapters. I always have and I told Peter Carey that when I was a young Uni student interviewing him for the newspaper. Carey likened his chapters to being mosaic tiles, this has always stayed with me, the tile is beautiful on its own but perceived together with all the others becomes a masterpiece taken in as a whole.
Brevity and beauty. These observations I take with me as I am writing my novel. Short chapters as long as they are rich, pertinent and as with Hemingway, economically, minimalist are beautiful, like a rich French tart. One doesn’t have to have a whole mud cake only a tiny piece of it to be satisfied as it is rich in its own right.
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HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Happy New Year!

I am excited cause I have started writing my novel. 🙂 I have decided to not apply any rules at this point or to exercise an editing focus at all – yet. I am in creation mode and I’m enjoying the fact that it is flowing cause I am allowing it to be what it will be… 🙂

I decided to implement Hemingway’s method of finishing the narrative every day when you want to keep going and are still excited by it, he said at this point put down your pen. If you leave the well with some water left in it the next day it will be full again and fresh and you will look forward to it and long to write more. This will mean the narrative will remain exciting to you as a writer and therefore will maintain its energy for the reader as well. I can testify that this method works! It is definitely keeping my energy and my creative focus remains captivated by this narrative.

I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

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ANYWAY APART FROM THIS HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! MAY PEACE REIGN THIS YEAR AND MAY YOU HAVE A BEAUTIFUL YEAR. 🙂
Thanks for reading 🙂

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