Ernest Hemingway Quote in Any Art Youre Allowed to Steal Anything if You Can Make It Better

A couple of years ago, Mitch Joel shared "Hemingway's Advice on Writing, Appetite, the Art of Revision, and His Reading List of Essential Books for Aspiring Writers."

His caption on it was, "This is rich and yummy."

Rich and yummy is exactly right.

Because it'due south and then rich and so yummy, I've kept it in Pocket and so I can re-read it every so frequently.

And, as I was thinking about what to write about today, I went dorsum into my favorites list to conjure some ideas.

In that location information technology was. The story of Arnold Samuelson, a and then 22-twelvemonth-old who decided he wanted Hemingway to be his mentor.

Because, you know, that'due south just something yous determine and brand happen.

Merely arrive happen he did when he traveled to Cardinal Westward and showed up and proclaimed to be Hemingway's apprentice.

Hemingway couldn't turn him down and he was with the writer for more a year, which he chronicled inWith Hemingway: A Year in Key West and Cuba.

Books to Read and Journaling

It's said to be the closest thing to a psychological profile of Hemingway written…and it does not disappoint.

Hemingway gave Samuelson a list of books and said:

Here'south a list of books any writer should have read every bit a office of his didactics… If you haven't read these, y'all just aren't educated. They represent different types of writing. Some may bore you, others might inspire you and others are then beautifully written they'll make you lot feel it's hopeless for you to try to write.

This is the list:

1. The Blue Hotel
2. The Open up Gunkhole
3. Madame Bovary
4. Dubliners
5. The Red and the Blackness
6. Of Human Bondage
7. Anna Karenina
8. War and Peace
9. Buddenbrooks
10. Hail and Bye
11. The Brothers Karamazov
12. The Oxford Book of English Poetry
13. The Enormous Room
14. Wuthering Heights
15. Far Abroad and Long Ago
16. The American
17. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Some of these were high schoolhouse required reading and some were part of my university degree, but still, I've read only half.

I gauge I'yard non educated.

But that's non the cease of information technology. He advises Samuelson read those books and so he says:

Never compete with living writers. You lot don't know whether they're good or not. Compete with the expressionless ones you know are expert. So when you can pass them upwardly you know you're going good. You should accept read all the good stuff so that yous know what has been done, considering if you have a story like one somebody else has written, yours isn't any good unless you lot tin write a better one. In any art you're allowed to steal anything if you can arrive better, but the tendency should e'er be upwards instead of down.

Read the listing of books above—all of them—and journal what you like about each one. Y'all already know they're good so, every bit y'all develop content—if it'southward fiction, business, content for a blog, or poetry—compete with the things you journaled.

(I would argue you could also read some Pulitzer Prize winning books, even if the writers are nevertheless alive, and practice the same exercise.The Goldfinch and A Little Life are both swell starts.)

On Writing

With Hemingway also offers communication such as:

• The psychological bailiwick of writing, or what we know today as "catamenia" and how important it is to practise it every 24-hour interval.
• How to overcome writer's block.
• How much you have to revise and revise and revise to get to something people want to read.
• Why failure is good and how xc percent of what you write won't always come across the light of twenty-four hour period.
• How to manage through other people'due south jealousies.

If With Hemingway is TL;DR (as well long; didn't read) for you, bank check out the Brain Pickings article linked to at the beginning here.

It's rich with quotes, photos, and anecdotes from the book, which will inspire yous to exercise your craft right this very second.

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Source: https://spinsucks.com/communication/ernest-hemingway-writing-advice/

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