HOW TO WRITE
Not Only Was Earnest Hemingway a Liar, He Was a Hack
Maybe he just should have stuck to booze
When Earnest Hemingway and some drinking buddies challenged one another to write the shortest possible short story, the old man himself took the prize with these now famous six words:
‘For Sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.’
Of course, even the most cursory Google search lays waste to this fish tale. Never happened. But for the sake of this exercise, I’ll humor the legend.
Nevertheless, a close reading of the above text reveals this ‘masterwork’ is merely a shoddy, unpolished rough draft unworthy of its lofty stature in the literary canon. Indeed, with only minimal editing, the ‘author’ could have elevated an already dark story with an even darker twist:
‘For Sale. Baby shoe.’
And with only a single additional pass, he could have cemented his immortality by cutting the original word count in half while doubling down on the pathos, delivering the purest tragedy in the briefest whimper:
‘For Sale. Baby.’
Writing is rewriting.
Suck it, Papa.
