Keeping the Well Full

This dashing young man is Ernest Hemingway as he looked during the 1920s when he was living in Paris, hopping from cafe to cafe to work on his writing. He's a man we would do well to emulate in many ways (well, aside from the whole multiple failed marriages, excessive alcohol consumption, and suicide thing). I read his memoir A Moveable Feast for book club last month and was surprised when I found little glints of wisdom that connected to my capstone projects. In this brief excerpt of his life, Hemingway recounts time he spent in Paris with his first wife Hadley, their son Bumby, and a host of other writers including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra Pound. It's a very insightful book on the lives of many famous authors and their writing processes.

Aside from many entertaining side stories, Hemingway does delve into his writing process here and there. One point that struck me most was when he spoke of "never emptying the well" of your writing. He says, "I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day." I was dismayed upon reading this to discover that I often let my well run dry and then wondered why I had such a difficult time the next day.

You see, Hemingway is one of those authors who tried his best to write every day. I usually roll my eyes at that bit of advice. "Of course," I'd think, "It's easy for him to write every day when he's lounging around Paris with a bunch of other talented writers and nothing else to do with his time than sit in a cafe and work." But then again, here we are, in a department full of other talented writers, with specific instructions to write as best we can for one whole semester, and two incredible professors dedicated to reading what we write and helping us improve upon it.

Our atmosphere couldn't be any better suited to write every day. And with that in mind, Hemingway's advice seems particularly wise. Whenever I sit down to write and find myself on a roll, I stay writing for as long as I possibly can, because who knows when it will come this easy again? But whenever I do that, inevitably, the next few times I try to write, there's nothing left. I've exhausted my creative supply. I think there's something to be said for writing small chunks every day, so long as we leave ourselves something to go on tomorrow.

Hemingway had one last piece of extraordinary advice: he said that when he wasn't writing, he would read and read and read so that he wasn't constantly thinking of his own writing and letting the well run dry. If we truly want to keep our writing fresh, we need to be continually reading new authors (or old favorites) to replenish the well. Sometimes that's the extra creative boost we need to keep going.

Do you find that capstone is leaving your well dry? Do you agree with Hemingway that it's better to stop when you know where you're going to go next? How does the quantity and quality of what you read affect what kind of writing you produce?