{"id":123143,"date":"2013-02-04T13:16:25","date_gmt":"2013-02-04T21:16:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/heartifb.com\/?p=123143"},"modified":"2024-02-14T07:42:16","modified_gmt":"2024-02-14T15:42:16","slug":"quotes-from-the-lost-generation-on-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/heartifb.com\/quotes-from-the-lost-generation-on-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"Quotes from the Lost Generation on Writing"},"content":{"rendered":"
While fiction, it's in reading The Paris Wife<\/em> that I'm reminded of and learning so much about Hemingway's efforts to become a writer– how the path to greatness and glory is not easily found for anyone; how we all have to take jobs to pay our bills while spending our spare time pursuing our passions.\u00a0 With that in mind, here are 10 quotes from authors in The Lost Generation on the act of writing, reading, and creating.<\/p>\n You will write if you will write without thinking of the result in terms of a result, but think of the writing in terms of discovery, which is to say that creation must take place between the pen and the paper, not before in a thought or afterwards in a recasting… It will come if it is there and if you will let it come.<\/em> The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.<\/em> You've got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, when you have none of the technique which it takes time to learn. <\/em> I write one page of masterpiece to ninety one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.<\/em> Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.<\/em> The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.<\/em> All you need to do is write truly and not care about what the fate of it is. Writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done. It is a perpetual challenge and it is more difficult than anything else that I have ever done.<\/em> Writing and reading is to me synonymous with existing.<\/em> Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.<\/em> Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.<\/em> Cut out all of these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.<\/em> Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.<\/em> All good writing is like swimming under water and holding your breath.<\/em> As fashion weeks rears its head (and you're getting ready for IFB Con!),\u00a0 I hope these quotes prove as inspiring, perplexing, challenging, and moving as they are to me.<\/p>\n [Image credit: Hemmingway and a crowd, from Food Republic<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n
\nI've recently started reading\u00a0 The Paris Wife<\/a><\/em>; at 70 pages in, I'm completely captivated by this historical fiction piece and forgetting it's not an autobiography. More so, I'm reminded of my fascination and love of The Lost Generation<\/a>— an era of writers, poets, painters, sculptors and artists that occupied Paris in the 1920s.\u00a0 Many of the 20th century's greatest authors came from this era: Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck, and T. S. Eliot.<\/p>\n
\n– Gertrude Stein<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n– John Steinbeck<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n– F. Scott Fitzgerald<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n– Ernest Hemingway<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n– T.S. Eliot<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n– John Steinbeck<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n–\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>Ernest Hemingway<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n– Ernest Hemingway<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n-Gertrude Stein<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n– T.S. Eliot<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n– John Steinbeck<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n– F. Scott Fitzgerald<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n– T.S. Eliot<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n– F. Scott Fitzgerald<\/strong><\/p>\n