"I Always Worked Until I Had Something Done"

"It was wonderful to walk down the long flights of stairs knowing that I'd had good luck working. I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day. But sometimes when I was started on a new story and I could not get going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.'

"So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut the scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written." - Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Ever Want to Quit Writing?

Found this on Salon.com; adviser Carey Tennis's worthwhile answer to a letter from a self-confessed "failed" novelist, age 60, who wants to give up writing because it just doesn't pay. It caught my eye because one rarely hear about anyone "quitting writing."

That individual letter writer, who signed himself "Lost on Boulevard of Dreams" has cancer, has a disabled wife who needs him at home, so can't hold a day job, and needs money. Maybe the view is different from age 60. But I know so many happy writers 60 and over -- some just finding their voices, getting involved in projects, mastering their craft, getting happily published; publishing themselves too. But "Lost" is actually considering suicide.

The adviser's answer says writing is about having a dream. I agree, but prose writing can be jimmied to be somewhat practical. I would have suggested to the novelist a few courses in journalism or creative nonfiction so he can write saleable things. If he says, "I can't, I'm a fiction writer," I would tell him he's creating his own artificial difficulty when he's got difficulties enough.

Fiction Writing Tips: The Rules of Three

Drab? Unexciting? "Shallow"? My short fiction was. As so much of it is! Why?

The questions of art are big, but the answers are small. Story writers, try these (my original discoveries):

1. Give three traits to every character, including the walk-ons.
2. Take your main characters to three distinctly different settings.
3. Have no more than three main characters.