The Old Man And The Scene

On September 4th, 1929, Ernest Hemingway wrote a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald that included: “The good parts of a book may be only something the writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life — and one is as good as the other.”

Read that in Hemingway’s Selected Letters, 1917-1961. And damn if it ain’t hit home.

Who knows where the inspiration will come from, or when, or if you’ve earned it, or if it fell into your goddamn lap.

The cruel irony is as ol’ Hem said. You might wear yourself down to a nub of a man or woman, drinking heavily, muttering to the cat or dog or koi, bleary eyes squinting achingly into the vague glow ahead of you that might be your computer screen, might be the rising sun – all in an attempt to hone that perfect line, that ONE TRUE LINE that makes your scene positively radiate. Or you might hear that jackass automaton from accounting say the thing offhandedly while trying to hit on the new UPS girl by the smoker’s bench outside the building, her mannish brown shorts notwithstanding.

And either way counts. It’s just as valid. Don’t fool yourself into thinking something’s good just because you toiled over it. My friend Marc said Abe Lincoln wrote his Gettysburg Address in a couple minutes when he realized he was supposed to give a speech.

But then don’t fool yourself into thinking that the shit’s easy, that anything you write is good just because you LET IT FLOW. Ever read MLK’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail”? Probably the best thing ever written. That dude toiled and toiled over that. It’s goddamn perfect, every word. Plus, he was in a freaking jail cell when he wrote the first draft. That’s toil.

So it might be the wreck of your life, and it might come floating to you across the ether. Either way, grab it, and set it down. And make that fucking scene radiate.