27 Secrets to Writing like Hemingway
“There is nothing to writing” he wrote. “All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
If that advice isn’t giving you the breakthrough you’re looking for, here are 27 other gems from Hemingway on writing:
1. Start with the simplest things
2. Boil it down
3. Know what to leave out
4. Write the tip of the ice-berg, leave the rest under the water
5. Watch what happens today
6. Write what you see
7. Listen completely
8. Write when there is something you know, and not before
9. Look at words as if seeing them for the first time
10. Use the most conventional punctuation you can
11. Ditch the dictionary
12. Distrust adjectives
13. Learn to write a simple declarative sentence
14. Tell a story in six words
15. Write poetry into prose
16. Read everything so you know what you need to beat
17. Don’t try to beat Shakespeare
18. Accept that writing is something you can never do as well as it can be done
19. Go fishing in summer
20. Don’t drink when you’re writing
21. Finish what you start
22. Don’t worry. You’ve written before and you will write again
23. Forget posterity. Think only of writing truly
24. Write as well as you can with no eye on the market
25. Write clearly – and people will know if you are being true
26. Just write the truest sentence that you know
27. Remember that nobody really knows or understands the secret
The tips, suggestions, ideas and writing advice are culled from Ernest Hemingway On Writing, a selection of material from Hemingway articles, interviews, letters and books.
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Article: Confident Writing
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21 July is Ernest Hemingway’s Birthday
