Advice from Ernest Hemingway

I’m wrapping up the next book – about 95% of the way there – and onto the stage of making each sentence as good as I can, and then being done with it.

While writing, I like to read about writing, so I warm up each morning with Ernest Hemingway’s “On Writing”. The following sentence made the purchase of this book a worthy investment:

“He never understood that it was just writing as well as you can and finishing what you start.”

I wrote this onto a notecard, placed it next to my monitor, and I read it every time I experience Resistance while writing.

…and it’s helped.

The nature of infinite pursuits is that you are always in the middle of them. The perfect sentence remains out of reach, the paragraph is never as good as it could have been. This can cause a freezing of the faculties, stagnation in the purgatory of the incomplete.

But it’s also one’s salvation.

The impossibility of a definitive end allows for the acceptance of the arbitrary finish.

Surrendering to fate, I refuse to die on the hill of perfectionism: it is better to die on the hill of having finished.

We all pursue some infinite thing. The magnitude of the task is often paralyzing, shining a spotlight on our personal limitation. But the antidote to this paralysis is movement.

Whatever we do, we do it as well as we can. And we finish what we start.

This is good. This is enough.

Your friend,
Chris Matakas