How Earnest Hemingway Taught me to Live (And other tall tales)

Today, we discuss this guy:

(Ernest!)

Hemingway.
It's Hemingway.
How do you write like Hemingway?
And by that I mean it literally.
I don't have answers in this post.
This is me banging my head up against a wall.

See, Hemingway lived.
No questions asked.
My friend, who is a literal Spartan (every sense--yes, 300) idolizes this man.
And for good reason.
He fought in a world war as an ambulance medic.
Was at the storming of Normandy.
He chronologued the other as a journalist.
Was at the liberation of Paris.
Married and divorced four times.
Turned all the women into literature.
Wrote reams of material as a novelist, journalist, & short story writer.
Got injured in TWO SUCCESSIVE PLANE CRASHES IN THE AFRICA.
Got the Nobel Prize in Literature for his efforts.
As well as the Pulitzer.

This guy.
He is a legend.
And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
For a full reading of his biography, check out here.
For a close reading of his pseudo-biography, just read his books.

So how did he do it?
I have been trying to live like Hemingway.
Maybe not literally, but figuratively.
Consistently, the professional writers that I meet are lonely people.
Nanowrimo for writers is like Pokemon Go for depressives.
It just gets people out of the door to do what they love.

The problem with writing:

Is that it is enjoyable.
People who write or are creative genuinely enjoy it.
But, it is work.
But, most of the work is invisible or private.
Meaning, writers work

• inside their heads, 
• or in their notebooks
• or in their computers
• or on the Goggle machine

Nobody gets to see it until they publish.

AND once it is published:

• most of the books/audience is outside the realm of their experience.

Some nameless, faceless person downloads it off Amazon and reads it off their digital reader. Sure, the writer's salary is inflated, but the direct connection is with the book and not with the author.

The author doesn't get to see the well worn pages.

The author doesn't get to see someone cry and cradle their book late at night (I'm looking at you JK)

The author doesn't get to meet each and every single person.

(though they may be friends/family/acquaintances at conferences, and that is lovely. Sometimes the audience base becomes an extended family and that I think is beautiful and right and good)

At least in the performing arts, we get to meet our audience directly and immediately.

Our finished product is done for an audience that is physically there.

They pay before walking in the door and are present.

We can go up to them after and greet them.

Sure, it can be lonely, but those parties and meet and greets and student talk backs are great.

But, for anyone who doesn't perform...well...no wonder writers work at Starbucks and coffee shops.

They want to feel connected.

It can be incredibly isolating.

So Nanowrimo gets them out the door. 

But, what then?

So now, writers are writing out of doors. 

What else do they do?

To be honest, many of the professional writers I have met so far, that is about it.

They write.

For many it is a livelihood that takes up 10-14 hours of their day.

That leaves little enough time for 

1. exercise
2. family
3. cooking
4. cleaning
5. adventure
6. life

Most travel, but it is to conferences where they promote and sell their books.

They meet other authors in the area.

They work and collaborate together. 

On writing.

All of this sounds fantastic, but what about life?

What about adventure?

What about Hemingway's wars and the dames and the adventures (hunting in Africa)?

They are conspicuously absent. 

And that is not to say everyone has to hunt down wild game in Africa to be happy or as great a writer as Hemingway.

But, I am finding adventure to be incredibly enlivening in my life.

Every day I try to go somewhere new, try a food or restaurant I've never been, see new sights, go on adventures.

It takes up an exhausting amount of my day.

And when I come home at the end of it, I go to bed early and wake up late (10pm-8am).

Why?

Because I'm tuckered out (as Mum would say).

So where/how do I do it all?

How can I have adventure and make art and live with friends/family and eat my cake?

The answer according to Hemingway is pretty bleak:

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

That was at his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
Which, he couldn't attend.
He was still recovering from a plane crash (or two).
According to Hemingway, loneliness is the key to great art.
Staring into the abyss is what I call it.
Facing eternity is what Hemingway calls it.

"She does her work alone and good writers become worse ones as they shed their loneliness." (to paraphrase Hemingway...words I never thought I would say)

With all due respect to Hemingway, I think that that is bullshit.
There has got to be a way to balance the adventurous life with art and companions.
Even if you have to drag your comrades around the world while writing/dictating to a tape recorder (if those still exist) there has got to be a way.
I am committed to living by my own personal legend and that is my criteria for a successful life:

1. Adventure
2. Art/arting
3. Company along the road

If you have any thoughts or suggestions on how to do that besides "just doing it" (I'm working on that part), please leave your thoughts and comments here.
I love and adore each and every one of you.
I hope you're happy.