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The Hemingway Expedition
Daily Readings |
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For the month of
March 2002
Written by Ernest Hemingway
You must be prepared to work always without applause. When you are excited about something
is when the first draft is done. But no one can see it until you
have gone over it again and again until you have
communicated the emotion, the sights and the sounds to
the reader, and by the time you have completed this the
words, sometimes, will not make sense to you as you
read them, so many times have you re-read them. By the
time the book comes out you will have started something
else and it is all behind you and you do not want to
hear about it. But you do, you read it in covers and you
see all the places that now you can do nothing about.
All the critics who could not make their reputations
by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting
hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and
general drying up of natural juices. Not a one will wish
you luck or hope that you will keep on writing unless
you have political affiliations in which case these will
rally around and speak of you and Homer, Balzac, Zola
and Link Steffens. you are just as well off without these
reviews. Finally, in some other place, some other time, when you
can't work and feel like hell you will pick up
the book and look in it and start to read and go on and
in a little while say to your wife, "Why this stuff is
bloody marvelous."
And she will say, "Darling, I always told you it was."
Or maybe she doesn't hear you and says "What did you say?"
and you do not repeat the remark.
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.
Ernest Hemingway, P185 By-Line.
For the month of
March 2002
Written by Charles Scribner Jr.
Ernest Hemingway's public image as war correspondent, big-game hunter and deep sea
fisherman has tended to obscure his lifelong dedication to the art of writing.
Only those who knew him well realized the extent of that commitment. To Hemingway,
every other pursuit, however appealing, took second place to his career as a writer.
Underneath his well-known braggadocio, he remained an artist wholly committed to the
craft. At some times he showed an almost superstitions reluctance to talk about writing,
seeming fearful that saying too much might have an inhibiting effect on his muse.
But at other times, when he was not caught up in the difficulties of a new work, he was
willing to converse freely about theories on the art of writing, and even his own
writing methods. He did this often enough in his letters and other writings to make it
possible to assemble this little book.
For readers of Hemingway who would like to know more about his aims and principles as a
writer, this collection of his views will provide an interesting side light on his books.
For aspiring writers who are looking for practical advice on the demanding task of putting
words together, these pages will be a gold mine of observations, suggestions, and tricks
of the trade.
As Hemingway's publisher and friend, I think it would have pleased him to know that some of
the things he learned about literary creating were being shared with writers of another
generation. I'm sure he would have come out with some wry or disparaging remark about his
own work, but deep down I think he would have been grateful to Larry Phillips for collecting
his views on writing in this useful and interesting way.
Exerpt comes from the forward of the Simon and Schuster book, Ernest Hemingway
on Writing, edited by Larry W. Phillips.
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