A Writing Quote from Ernest Hemingway
“Write hard and clear about what hurts.”
~ Ernest Hemingway, 1899 – 1961
~*~
I’ve featured another Ernest Hemingway quote before, but this is also a good one.
I believe it’s another way of saying that it’s important to write stories that really matter, as well as to entertain.
I also detect resonances to Haruki Murakami’s observation that:
“I like to write. I like to choose the right word, I like to write the right sentence… in the right place. That kind of engineering is exhausting, though: a daily trip to the “basement of the mind” and back up again. …You have to dedicate yourself to that work. You have no extra space to do something else.”
Hemingway is talking about subject matter, Murakami about writing process. The overlap lies in the absolute, unswerving commitment to the writing as a whole. (Mostly novels in the case of both authors, but also shorter form works.)
Author Kate Forsyth calls it “dangerous writing” and I suspect she is quite right.
