Tag Archives: Ernest Hemingway

Greater Is The Art Of Ending

“Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.” Longfellow Years ago, after reading my short story in my first writing class, the teacher asked, “Why this ending?” “Because while I was still writing I realized … Continue reading

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The Right Word And The Almost Right Word

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” Mark Twain   The other day while I was writing my daughter came into my room. She asked if I was busy, and … Continue reading

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Why Do We Write?

Decades earlier when I was working and living in Dubai, with a small group of friends we formed what was then the first writers’ circle. We were all expatriate women, coming from different cultural backgrounds with one thing in common, … Continue reading

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Never Talk To Anyone

“However am now going to write a swell novel- will not talk about it on account the greater ease of talking about it than writing it and consequent danger of doing same.” Ernest Hemingway (in a letter to F. Scott … Continue reading

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Not Once Not Twice

“People say that I write simply, but they don’t realize how much I rewrite.” Brian Moore Years ago when I was teaching mathematics in high school, I used to tell my students that each time they wrote an exam, they … Continue reading

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Would You Like To Be A Thing?

Margaret Atwood’s New York based editor asked her once, “What are you in Canada now anyway? I mean, here you are a writer but what are you up there? Are you a thing?” “I used to be a writer, and … Continue reading

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If Only The Two Had Met!

“No son of a bitch that ever won the Nobel Prize ever wrote anything worth reading afterwards.” wrote Ernest Hemingway. “Faulkner was a no-good son of a bitch. All a man needed, in order to do 5,000 words a day … Continue reading

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Did Nicholas Sparks Copy?

When I first read “A Walk To Remember” in 1999, by Nicholas Sparks, I was reminded of another novel “Love Story” that I had read decades earlier. “Love Story” is a novel written by Erich Segal in 1970, which was … Continue reading

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Your Writing Can Be As Good As

Novels or stories belong to two categories. Either driven by character or driven by plot or story line. Of the novels based on character, who can forget Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, or Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, or The Brothers Karamazov, or Charles … Continue reading

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I Was Afraid

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once wrote: “To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking.”  Have you ever thought about the many people you have come … Continue reading

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