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Inclinations

This month's awesome Inclination comes from Ernest Hemingway: "Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing." (Nobel Prize acceptance speech, 1954)

Hemingway, the name alone is synonymous with Great American novels: A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Sun Also Rises. I read The Old Man and the Sea in school, though I can't say I was thrilled at the time. But what did I know? To think now I can actually compare my writing ability to his and all I have to do is go into my Tools' icon, click on Grammatik, click options, click analysis and finally click readability. Here I can compare the complexity of my own writing to the master, Ernest Hemingway. Papa. So, when I happened upon Mr. Hemingway's acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in 1954, I was waylaid by this opinion in literature.

Before I could begin to contemplate his statement, I had to look up the word "palliate" in my archaic college dictionary. Once armed with an increased vocabulary, it was obvious to me Hemingway never would have said such a thing if he had the Writer's Village to palliate his loneliness.

But he was Hemingway, how can I have the insolence to disagree? With my new observation I started to question my own opinion. Is my life lonely? Geez, my house is too busy with my grown kids coming and going, and two dogs begging to be taken out and a husband who can't understand why I'm still in front of the computer since he is now home from work and is feeling lonely. Ugh! No, I'm not lonely, I'm not allowed to be. But I do crave the aloneness I have when I am writing. I mean how can one be lonely when you have so many characters to keep you company?

I love my self-imposed solitary confinement when I'm writing. Did Hemingway loath his own lifestyle? Was he visited by the same demons that vex me when I sit back and take a look at what I've written?

As I finish my morning coffee, I look up at the clock. My mind is buzzing with thoughts that need to be written down. Why hasn't my husband left for work yet? "I vant to be alone," as Garbo supposedly said once. I need my sanctum where I can wrap myself in a cocoon until my everyday life intrudes upon me once again.

Hemingway was the master of simplicity. Did he doubt his ability even with all the accolades that came his way? Was his acute depression, that caused him to take his own life in 1961, due to a chemical imbalance or due to his lifestyle? Was he obsessed with loneliness or did he need something more than his writing could give him? These questions are plaguing me.

I need a boost. I need my peers at the Writers Village. I guess I have to agree with Hemingway in one respect, I don't know if the "organization" will help to improve my writing, I suppose that is yet to be known. But I do know that it will most certainly palliate my state of mind at the moment.

Til' next month I am determined to remain,
Priscilla - the eternal optimist