Writerly Advice from Hem

In truly good writing no matter how many times you read it you do not know how it is done. That is because there is a mystery in all great writing and that mystery does not dis-sect out. It continues and it is always valid. Each time you re-read you see or learn something new.

-Ernest Hemingway

No Large Words, No Despair, Just Hats and Caps and Shoes

The blue costume, the greasy hair, are details, signs of a moderate realism. Supply the particulars, allow the significations to emerge of themselves. A procedure pioneered by Daniel Defore. Robinson Crusoe, cast up upon the beach, looks around for his shipmates. But there are none. "I never saw them afterwards, or any sign of them," says he, "except three of their hats, one cap, and two shoes that were not fellows." Two shoes, not fellows: by not being fellows, the shoes have ceased to be footwear and become proofs of death, torn by the foaming seas off the feet of the drowning men and tossed ashore. No large words, no despair, just hats and caps and shoes.

-J.M. Coetze from his novel Elizabeth Costello

Beyond Harry Potter - The Importance of Imagination

Though I personally will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense.


Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation, in its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

-JK Rowling from the remarkable Commencement Speech she gave at Harvard in 2008.

Even Gladwell Needs 10,000 Hours

"I don't sit down and it flows out. The first eight drafts are terrible ... It's never come easy."
-Malcolm Gladwell (in conversation with Charlie Rose)

If It Were Easy ...

"Beginning writers must appreciate the prerequisites if they hope to become writers. You pay your dues—which takes years."
-Alex Haley

"I'm sorry. How many years, exactly?"
-Jonathan Mendelsohn

Writerly Advice

A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?
-Albert Einstein

Writerly Quote of the Month

There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money either.
-Robert Graves

Writerly Quote of the Month

Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.
-Matthew Arnold








[Pictured: Arundathi Roy]

Writerly Quote of the Month

"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are."
-Somerset Maugham

[pictured: Haruki Murakami]

Writerly Quote of the Month

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. ~Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith

Writerly Quote of the Month

"A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit."
-Richard Bach






[Pictured: Jerome David (J.D.) Salinger]

Writerly Quote of the Month

"Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it."
-Sidonie Gabrielle



[pictured: Ernest Hemingway]

On Writing

When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.
-Raymond Chandler

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof shit detector.
-Ernest Hemingway

If you really want to hurt your parents and you don't have nerve enough to be homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts.
-Kurt Vonnegut