What Hemingway Knew

I am reading a book called "Coffee with Ernest Hemingway," by Kirk Curnutt, with the Forward by John Updike, and it's an interesting place to start if you want to read a good semi-biography. The premise is a kind of coffee convo between the author and Hemingway himself, in an attempt to give him a voice we all can hear.

So as i am reading this, I am taking note of the literary artists of his time what influenced his writing and development of the craft, so that I can read and learn from them, as well. No, I don't want to write like Hemingway. I don't want to write like Eudora Welty, either, though I accidentally found out that I do have her kind of voice. But all voices are not the same, no matter how similar the nuances. And all voices have an individual story to tell, and many different tools and experiences to bring the writing to life, in their own voice.

The best way to find your voice is to write. And sing. And talk, even when no one is listening. And read........everything..........or at least try to, for how will you know what you don't like if you never look at any of it?

Franz Kafka's 'Metamorphosis' made me cry and I haven't read it since, though I cherish it.

Charlotte Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" is the only love story I will ever read. Oh, and there is a ghost, too!

Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" intimidated me but by the third chapter I couldn't put it down and I finished it within a week.

Toni Morrison writes about a life I will never know, not by any means possible.........and she tells it with screams and curses and sex and secrets and poor black slaves, and the magic of just moving forward.

Maya Angelou knows why the caged bird sings, even though it longs to be free........it sings because it has a song. A voice.

And so have I.