The writer of "A Farewell to Arms" and "The Old Man and the Sea," was a foul-mouthed, charmingly genuine man, with a love of the written word and grain alcohol. Never short on opinions, he contributed some of the best advice on writing I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, the incorrigible Ernest Hemingway.
“The first draft of everything is shit.”
“The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in,
shockproof, shit detector. This is the
writer's radar and all great writers have had it.”
“Write drunk, edit sober.”
“There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily
and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and
then blasting it out with charges.”
“Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.”
“In order to write about life first you must live it.”
“Eschew the
monumental. Shun the Epic. All the guys who can paint great big pictures can
paint great small ones.”
“The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to
learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep
really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your
might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good
and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.”
“It’s none of their business that you have to learn to
write. Let them think you were born that way.”
“I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of
shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.”
