A Written Influence: Ernest Hemingway

So few writers had the impact and influence Hemingway had on prose of the 20^th century. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature in 1954 for the short fiction piece, The Old Man and the Sea. His short, athletic, to-the-point style would go on to define how later writers looked at sentence construction and formatting.

Married four times with the final marriage ending with his suicide, attributed to hemochromatosis. He left behind a legacy in the words of his famed characters and his globe-trotting life style. Hemingway ultimately ending up in Idaho, in the town of Ketchum.

His writings are constantly on the “greatest books” list time and time again. Many are considered classics and taught in institutes of education all over the country. With novels such as The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell To Arms, For Whom The Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the Sea, among his best known. Also a master short fiction writer, particularly with the stories, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place and The Snows of Kilimanjaro. Hemingway set himself a part and it is this particular method of pulling from his own experiences that gave his novels and shorter fiction breath and liveliness.

As a degree holder in journalism, I’ve been directly influenced by Papa (as he like to be called, among many other names) and his short style of writing. Even though he only worked a short while at a Kansas City newspaper before traveling to Italy, and farther developing it through his many publications, the style he developed is familiar with almost every reporter in the world.

The life Hemingway lived has also had a big impact on how I see the world. He was a man’s man. Though he was known to be an introvert, such as myself, he threw himself into wild adventures. He would venture outside his comfort zone so much that he ended up almost dying in plane crashes—Twice. Consecutively.

The image that he kept around him, of the war correspondent, the deep sea fisherman, and African hunter fire the imagination. As a guy who grew up in small towns, Hemingway is larger than life. But I must remember that the time in which he wrote and lived is much different than my own. And when I do a sense of sensucht comes over me. But I feel that happens to many of my generation and it is Hemingway that triggers it for me.

Hemingway has also influenced me with my own style of writing and because of that I feel I am a stronger writer than had I not had his influence.

He’s one of the reasons I have a fascination with typewriters and enjoy working on one. The clack-clack of the keys have brought me joy since I began taking writing serious as a pastime. The use of a typewriter for short burst of writing makes me feel good once I pull the final leaf through the machine.

As the first in a series about select authors and how they have influenced me, I felt Hemingway was an obvious choice to kick off this series.

His life was full of such detail and vibrancy, even towards the end when he slowly faded into the shadows of his former glory.

Making A Scene

Recently I had a friend reach out to me. He mentioned that he had a lot of stories inside him that he wanted to get out, but he just didn’t know how to go about it. It’s a complicated process—getting these living things that are bounding around in your head to live their lives on the page.
Having written for the majority of my life almost continuously with minor breaks here and there, and genre flipping and market jumping because my curiosity got the better of me, I learned an important lesson: Write scenes and experimentation only helps you grow.
There is a lot of work that goes into a story, or can go into a story far in advance of actually writing it. For nonfiction writers, this is basically the whole book, everything needs to be boiled down and condensed to understand the material and relate it to your audience in an easy to digest nugget, think about all the Idiot’s Guide books on all manners of topics.
Historical fiction and period pieces also require a Herculean amount of research just to make sure all those nifty details that you are including in the work are correct. For example, outside of alternative historical fiction, President Lincoln wouldn’t be listening to the radio because he ended up six feet under in 1865 and the radio wasn’t invented until much later, though the mathematical proof of wave propagation came about with Maxwell in 1864.
Even things that we might take for granted—wifi for the younger generation—We have to clarify and understand when they came about less we really want to mess things up. And even then we have to understand how they might affect our characters. If you’re writing a piece and they are just getting a radio, to continue the example, they would be amazed by it. I raise this point to get to another, namely, that looking into journal and newspaper articles and how people actually reacted to the invention of the radio can breathe a deep flushing life to your characters instead of them acting as though you might have grown up with the radio and never known a time without it.
I’m glad he reached out to me. I have a lot of knowledge to share on the craft of writing.
I remember when I was younger and took up photography. I used an analog system for the longest. I felt that it allowed me to create the truest image possible because I used real halide. But, and here is the true draw back for many, shooting film is expensive.
Writing a book and doing it off-cuff because you think that’s how it works is a total joke. When people start to write books, the failed abortions that are stuffed in the back of a draw or tossed into the trash are rightly so, shit.
Doesn’t mean the idea was totally bad, just the execution. You’re too green, which brings me back to my original topic, write scenes. Learn what actually works and how you can bend the rules. But learn those rules before you do.
No one likes a pretentious writer claiming that you the reader didn’t understand what they were saying because it happens to be too high of a bar for you to get. This is total bullshit. You understood the story. The story was crap, the idea was okay, but it ended up bogged down and lost any edge it might have had long ago. Write scenes. Write smarter, not harder… That’s your editor’s job. Write scenes and see what you have. Who knows you might just stumble upon a really kick ass idea and already have the basics out of the way. And don’t think of scenes as chapters. Scenes can be anything from chapter long actions to a four line packet of dialog that tells the reader a lot about the characters.
But keep on writing. Write scenes, write trash, write anything you can think of, but get it out.

A Bone To Pick

Voltaire did it. Hugo did it. Hell, even Kafka wrote in a coffeehouse. The stimulation brought on by those beans can be magical– I suppose.
I’ve switched jobs, and I think my current style of employment might just be what my writing needs. It’s different than what I’m use to. I’ve only ever written in coffee shops, never worked in one before.
But I’ve got a bone to pick with my creative process. When I happen to be younger, I would venture to the coffee house and only stay long enough to finish a coffee, maybe two if I pushed it. I would scribble something down and make it look like I happen to be writing the next great American novel, when in fact I was basically drawing a shitty stick man– only with words and three-dollar words at that.
But boy, let me tell you. Working the graveyard shift at a coffee house and getting there super early has allowed me to do something I normally can’t, actually write scenes. Instead of writing basically garbage on a legal pad, I’m fleshing out actual character details and writing scenes that contain substance, that contain backbone.
When I’m at home, I certainly think about the books that are planned and what I want to accomplish with them, but there are so many distractions that I quickly get off task and find myself in Wikipedia Loops. This isn’t always a bad thing, sometimes I find things that actually help add depth to the story.
At a coffee shop there is just enough distraction with the added bonus of being a plentiful supply of caffeine for me to slurp up. Since starting my Sci-fi project I’ve noticed that I really get things done while in the coffee shop. Without it I don’t write anything worth a damn. I’ve accepted this, I’ve moved on since then and understand what I have to do to get everything I want done– Did.
I’ve also come to terms with what it means to work towards developing new skills as a barista and know that my next few books will be written on a high dosage of coffee and tea. But even though I know what it’s going to be like, I will always have a bone to pick with my creative process, especially when it rapidly changes on me.