John's Writing Club

#3 Hold The Line

Previous Writing Club Sessions Index:
#1 Making A Statement
#2 A House Needs Walls
Your Writing Issue #1

There’s a story about Hemingway that someone once asked him how he wrote a book, to which he replied, ‘I write one line, then I write the next one.’ Hemingway was usually pretty truthful when talking about the art of writing, and there is much that we can learn from his advice. But this singular aspect of the line, I think, is one of his greatest contributions. We often don’t think about the line. We see so much writing where no consideration is given to it at all, and yet for the writer, it is one of the fundamental blocks of our expression and musicality while being the core container of our words. Hence, learning to work with it and its possibilities is so important. It is also tremendous to study as it gives us access to both poetry and prose and, along with a meaningful and authentic vocabulary at our disposal, gives us the means to communicate with our reader.