Writing lessons from Ernest Hemingway

For the first 5 years of my life, my young mother and I lived with my "uncle," a doctor with a big house and an even bigger heart. Parke Smith and his wife, Iva, were major figures in Miami society, back when it was a relatively small town.

"Doc" loved big game fishing and docked his boat in Cuba. The slip next to his was occupied by Pilar, the famous boat piloted by the even more famous Ernest Hemingway. The men were close friends, and family lore has it that Iva became a character in one of Hemingway's novels because of a daring bathing suit she wore.

I don't know if I ever met the great writer, but I do remember the day that "Mr. Hemingway" died. I was banished to the guest house while the Smiths mourned their friend. "To Dr. Parke G. Smith in admiration for his sportsmanship," Hemingway wrote in a leatherbound book he had given my uncle. It was "Big Game Fishing in America."

In college, I spent a summer reading Hemingway under the direction of a professor who looked much like Norman Mailer. He came to class in shorts and flip-flops but always seemed to be addressing the Roman Senate. The hot wind blew through his hair at all times. He was a fine teacher, even if he read an awful lot into Hemingway's mostly straight-up writing. That was a good summer.

Can't say how much of an influence Hemingway's books and wonderful short stories had on my writing -- probably some but not nearly enough. I often think of him while writing dialogue. A great place to start with Hemingway are the Nick Adams stories.

Hemingway often held forth on the subject of writing. Here are some quotes worth passing on:

• All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.


• There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.


• All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." (Have you read it lately? I have. Incredible.)


• It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.


• There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.


• Develop a built-in bullshit detector.


• Never write about a place until you're away from it, because that gives you perspective


• Poor (William) Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the $10 words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.