hemingwaywantabes

Writing Tips, Publishing Strategies, and 101 Literary Ideas for Aspiring Authors

Archive for December, 2008

Hemingway and Holiday Love

Posted by Mark Shaw on December 21, 2008

Hemingwaywantabes:

During this holiday season, let us join together in joy and love for all of those who touch our lives.I’m sure Hemingway would agree.

As Thomas Merton wrote in No Man Is An Island:

“We do not exist for ourselves alone, and it is only when we are fully convinced of this fact that we begin to love ourselves properly and thus also love others. What do I mean by loving ourselves properly? I mean, first of all, desiring to live, accepting life as a very great gift and a great good, not because of what it gives us, but because of what it enables us to give to others.”

When you celebrate this holiday season, be sure to count the blessings and to truly enjoy the gift of life by helping others.

Blessings and good wishes,
Mark Shaw

Posted in Hemingway and Holiday Love | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Hemingway and Lonely Writers

Posted by Mark Shaw on December 6, 2008

Hello hemingwaywantabes. Feeling down, feeling depressed, feeling lonely. Then listen to what the master, Ernest Hemingway had to say about the writing process:

“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness but I doubt it they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.  For the true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries for something that has never been done or others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck he will succeed . . . It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.”

Wow, now you understand it – you cannot be a great writer if you are not lonely.  So cast away your family, your friends, even that canine pet by your side, and close yourself in a room of choice and write, and write, and write some more since the more you write, as Stephen King points out, the better you get.  And, finally, as Hemingway says, you will succeed and then you can afford not to be lonely anymore.

Your thoughts, hemingwaywantabes!!!

Posted in Hemingway and Lonely Writers | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »