Hemingway Week Day Two: The Modernistic Renaissance

Hemingway was the leader of the modernistic Renaissance when writers discovered the power of realism. I love the movement more than just about any other, so I’ve spent many years trying to learn how to remove myself from my fiction and poetry so the story could feel real to others. For those of you who speak to me one-on-one, you might have noticed that when I recommend a book, it’s one that keeps the rules of that era. I like my fiction and poetry to be utterly immersive, sparse, and unpretentious.

“Watch what happens. Then get into somebody else’s head for a change. Listen now. When people talk, listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say.”

“You see I’m trying in all my stories to get the feeling of actual life across – not to just depict life or criticize it – but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful. Because if it is all beautiful you can’t believe in it.”

Much of the writing process happens when you’re not holding a pen. Writing is looking. Writing is listening. Writing is smelling and touching and sensing. You should be so full of observations that they burst from you and onto the page. The more attention you pay to the world, the better you will write.

Hemingway brings up another interesting point. In fiction, and even in poetry, you are only as bold as your lack of judgment. If you attach negative criticisms or distaste to the world you’re writing about, a little of you will rub off onto your page. It will be there, inevitably, reminding your reader that they’re not living inside your story, but reading it.

We don’t want our readers to be aware that they’re reading. We want them to be utterly lost in the world you’ve created, so do as the Buddhists do and greet all things, good and bad, as though they are all equally acceptable and valid. Remove your opinion from your text and simply observe. That’s your role. Judgement? Well, that’s your reader’s role, so give them absolute power to make that judgement on their own.

Honestly, if you all had infinite time available to you, I’d send you reams and reams of books on Zen because so many of its practices are wonderful for writers. Be in the moment without judgment. Then write it without judgment. That’s Zen, but it’s also literary greatness.