Papa was right

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

Ernest Hemingway, father of Writer’s Melodrama!  He gave us all some anguish to latch onto, right? 

We are bleeding!  We are suffering!  We are writers!  Nobody knows the trouble we’ve seen!

Hemingway inspired me when I was in 7^th grade and first read his short story “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.”  That one stuck with me as a prototype for exterior action revealing interior life. 

And his style!  So direct, so clean, so free of the extraneous that I just knew I could do it.  Why, he’s just telling the story, I thought!  How hard can that be?

Good thing I didn’t find out until later how he met his demise…I might have been dissuaded!

As it was, I sat down and wrote.  My stuff at that time was full of teenage angst, but it didn’t have the surplus of adverbs and adjectives that some beginners pepper through their pages.

Papa remains a good model for rookie writers and a good one for apprentice editors as well.  

But maybe you have another favorite in mind.  Jeannette Walls comes to mind as someone who strips away the frills and seizes her readers with unflinching accounts of her wild early life. 

Frank McCourt, same thing.

But here’s the deal ~ you cannot let yourself be distracted by the story!  As writers we have to learn to look at the what and the how of it: 

Ø  What does Walls choose to show and what does she leave out? 

Ø  How is McCourt’s use of language riveting? 

Ø  How does Hemingway reveal his character’s inner life?

Put on your analyst’s cap and give your favorites a second read.  This is one of the best ways to quit bleeding and learn the craft.  


Matter of fact, for all his drama, Hemingway also said, “It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write.  Let them think you were born that way.”