Hemingway’s 3 Tips for Aspiring Writers Are Also Valid for Everybody Else
By: Christian Soschner
Tags: Entrepreneurship, Writing, Self Improvement, Success, Writing Tips

Inspiring personalities

Hemingway’s 3 Tips for Aspiring Writers Are Also Valid for Everybody Else

Here is why

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Every human being is born into this world without a manual.

Everything else comes with a solid manual. Just think about all this stuff that you have.

Television: A manual that describes how you should use it and what you must avoid

Washing Machine: The same. The producer informs the customer what you should do with the Machine and what to avoid to ensure longevity.

Mobile Phone: Pretty much the same. Please don’t throw it out the window when you are in a skyscraper on the last floor. Sound advice

The human body and life? Nobody has ever written a solid manual. The only thing we get is two mentors — we call them usually parents. And that's’ it.

Right after birth, we are bound to accept our parent’s truth, regardless of whether they are right or not.

One of my biggest questions in life still is:

How the hell should I live this life so that I am happy most of the time and go to sleep with a smile on my face — most of the days.

It was tough to find answers before the internet started, and even 10 years ago, almost nothing was published that provided answers to the questions.

But times got much better. Today many people post YouTube videos or write Articles on platforms like Medium with inspiring content from people who achieved success on all levels of life:

Family

Friends

Arts

Business and

Health

Recently I came across one of these masterpieces.

I loved reading the article as it provided sound advice from one of the writers I admire the most — Ernest Hemingway.

The article is based on the book With Hemingway: A Year in Key West and Cuba. Unfortunately, it is out of print, and the second-hand versions are not shipped to Austria. I can trust Tom Beck — the author of the article — that he cited accurately. The third quote is from the article “Monologue to the Maestro: A High Seas Letter,”

While reading the article, one feeling grows stronger. It started with the first quote, and after reading the whole piece, I am confident that these three quotes are not only for writers but useful for everybody.

So here is my interpretation of the quotes:

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Learn to Understand Your Emotions

“Watch what happens today. If we get a fish see exactly what it is that everyone does. If you get a kick out of it while he is jumping remember back until you see exactly what the action was that gave you the emotion. Whether it was the rising of the line from the water and the way it tightened like a fiddle string until drops started from it, or the way he smashed and threw water when he jumped. Remember what the noises were and what was said. Find what gave you the emotion; what the action was that gave you the excitement. Then write it down making it clear so the reader will see it too and have the same feeling that you had.” — Ernest Hemingway

Tom Beck states that good writing comes from real experience, and good writing centers on objects in the world, not abstract ideas.

Ernest Hemingway’s quote is not only for writers. Matthew McConaughey makes a similar statement in his book “Greenlights.”

Matthew describes his method of journaling that he practiced for more than 30 years. He recommends observing what the environment and activities cause on an emotional level.

I agree with that. Whenever I go to a new bar and eat some new food, I try to figure out what happens. The next morning I write it down. Did you ever have this experience that you go out without drinking alcohol the next morning, you feel a huge hangover?

The questions are:

What did you do the night before?

What did you eat?

Whom did you talk to?

What topics did you talk about?

Once I sat in a bar and started talking with a stranger. For hours I heard how miserable his life was, how unfair he was treated by everybody in his life, and how miserable our society is in general.

The next morning I felt simply horrible, which is in my eyes a natural result of too much negativity. Whenever I experience something, I write it down and do my best to navigate around such problems.

Don’t get me wrong. I do not talk about giving up being empathetic, but human beings — especially strangers are no emotional garbage bins in which everybody can pour in their negativity at will.

On the contrary, write down what feels good. Every year I try something new to find out whether it improves my life or not. By doing so, I found out that learning new things is pure joy for me and adds tremendous quality to my life.

Not necessarily to master everything I learn, but getting more insights into life itself is worth the learning process.

I practice guitar for years, yet I don’t think it has created a notable skill. But whenever I am worried or sad or anxious, and I pick up the guitar to practice, I feel better 5 minutes later.

How I found that? By trying new things and writing down how it makes me feel.

Probably not in that great detail that Ernest Hemingway referred to, but I am working on it.

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Try to Understand the Situation Before Judging People

“Then get into somebody else’s head for a change. If I bawl you out try to figure out what I’m thinking about as well as how you feel about it. If Carlos curses Juan think what both their sides of it are. Don’t just think who is right. As a man things are as they should or shouldn’t be. As a man you know who is right and who is wrong. You have to make decisions and enforce them. As a writer you should not judge. You should understand.” — Ernest Hemingway

How often are we trapped in the simplified judgemental thinking of true and false?

How often are we quick in judging and labeling any behavior as right or wrong.

Judy betrayed her husband with a family friend; it made her a slut and ruined the family. The poor abandoned and betrayed their husband.

We hear parts of a story and come up with a definite solution thinking it is right.

Ernest Hemingway describes not to do that. Life is a complex process of actions and reactions that create events that are events.

We, humans, give them meaning and assign emotions to the outcome of events. Sometimes it is good to have a certain situation correctly labeled. For example, a funeral is a sad event as a beloved member of a family passed away. Everybody has somebody who loves them. Showing respect and understanding for such a sad situation is the right thing to do.

And yet, in other situations, we come up quickly with a definite solution while we have not really tried to understand the situation as a whole.

What about Judy? How would it be instead of being judgemental behind her back to ask her why she did it?

Maybe she tells you a sad story about how her husband abused her daily, told her that she was an ugly fat cow when nobody was watching. That it would be best for her to leave the house and be gone forever.

Does that make the husband a bad man? I mean, man is overly expressive in their emotions. So what might be the reason he acts that way? Maybe they lived in a time where Judy accidentally got pregnant, and out of social standards, they felt the need to marry and move in together.

But on a human level never were a good fit. Maybe the part of the story Judy would never tell was that she told her husband daily that he is the sole reason for her miserable life. Wouldn’t she have conceived a child from him? She would have met a better man.

Maybe it is just that they tried their best to be there for their child, but never were a perfect fit, so separation is inevitable, and by changing their life circumstances, they met people afterward that bring out the best in them.

I learned not to trust the first reaction to a story and to start digging deeper and trying my best to see the entire picture before making a judgemental decision.

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Listen! Listen! Listen! … don’t speak.

“Listen now. When people talk listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe. You should be able to go into a room and when you come out know everything that you saw there and not only that. If that room gave you any feeling you should know exactly what it was that gave you that feeling. Try that for practice. When you’re in town stand outside the theatre and see how the people differ in the way they get out of taxis or motor cars. There are a thousand ways to practice. And always think of other people.” — Ernest Hemingway

Walking through life, labeling everything, and judging a person before the person has said anything.

Do you notice this pattern in your own life?

The white man in the new suit must be a rich millionaire coming from wealth. Probably he had a great childhood with loving parents growing up on the bright side of life without having anything to worry about.

Or maybe the white man has lost everything during the corona crisis, job, savings, and family as his wife left with the kids and vanished without notice.

He pulled himself together, bought a new suit with his last money, and is on the way to a job interview that hopefully works out as otherwise, he will not have enough money left to pay for his rent.

Who knows. We often see another person and immediately connect the impression with past experiences trying to make sense of what we see. These experiences can also be social stories we get told via social media.

We judge quickly.

Ernest Hemingway points at the importance of working on perceiving reality as it is without making judgments.

Listen first. Listening means when somebody says something to clear the mind and consume the other person's words.

When I sit in a bar watching people, I often see people in conversations. Well, it is not really a conversation. I like talking with people, listening to what the other person says, making one or the other note — and when the person is finished phasing out a response in my mind and then starting talking.

It is a prolonged process to let people speak without interrupting, thinking about a reply — which creates a moment of silence and the moment can be long — and then starting to reply.

Or not saying anything at all -just listening.

But in bars, one person speaks, and the other person speaks at the same time. Both tell stories from their lives, but none of them actually listens to what the other person says.

When did you really listen lately to another person?