Ernest Hemingway’s Advice about Writing You Must Not Ignore
Every writer must have a built-in shit detector
Ernest Hemingway, one of the greatest American writers, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 “for his powerful, style-forming mastery of the art of narration.”
Hemingway thought that it was, somehow, 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 having this baseless belief, he did write about writing. In his novels and stories, in letters to editors, fellow artists, friends, and critics, in interviews, and in commissioned articles about writing. Hemingway wrote incisively about the subject — better than many other writers.
Ernest Hemingway on Writing, by Larry W. Phillips, is a compilation of his reflections on his writing process.
Larry W. Philip says in the preface of the book, “This book has Hemingway’s thoughts on the nature of the writer and on elements of the writer’s life, including specific 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.”
