Lary Bloom, a writer and also my first editor says, “You can teach that writing is a religious experience. You can help the writer reconstruct what it was that moved them about their own experience, but you can’t teach a person to be Hemingway.” So maybe a good beginning is accepting the fact that you’re not going to be Hemingway. Great! You’ll live longer and you won’t have to waste your time shooting cougars and cleaning your gun. So, right away, you made a good choice.
— Nancy Slonim Aronie, Writing from the Heart
It’s the halfway point! If you haven’t already accepted the fact that you’re not Hemingway, now would be the time. Put the shotgun away! You have chosen well.
(Writing from the Heart is a lovely book, btw — funny, honest, and wry. The title is just awful.)
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