Ernest Hemingway on Writing

Edited by Larry W. Phillips

More Advice from a Working Writer – I picked up this book in the gift shop of the Hemingway House in Key West and was surprised to read so much sound advice packed into such a slender volume. From a 1959 letter to L.H. Brague Jr.: “I love to write. But it has never gotten any easier to do and you can’t expect it to if you keep trying for something better than you can do.” From a 1934 letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald: “That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best – make it all up – but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.” From Death in the Afternoon: “When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters.” From a 1925 letter to Fitzgerald, discussing the importance of subject matter: “Love is also a good subject as you might be said to have discovered. Other major subjects are the money from which we riches and poores. Also avarice. Gentlemen the boy lecturer is tired. A dull subject I should say would be impotence. Murder is a good one so get a swell murder into yr. next book and sit back.”