I never liked him. I thought his writing was masculine, arrogant and boring. I only liked his lifestyle and the places he hung out.

I owe my change of heart to a trip to northern Michigan, where bookstores displayed his works proudly. I got caught up in the charm and beauty of Petoskey and its independent bookstores. And I caved. I bought The Nick Adam Stories, which largely take place within the upper part of the Mitt. And I swore I wouldn’t just stick the book on my shelf. It took me a couple weeks to find the energy… and then… wow. Much to my surprise, I really liked the  series of short stories and partial essays, strung together chronologically to loosely tell the (at least partially factual) story of Ernest Hemingway, through his Nick Adams.

His On Writing essay is included in the collection. I’ve read it before without really appreciating. This time, I did. This time, I felt it. Thank God we do in fact grow and change.

Hemingway talks of “tricks” writers use to engage the reader. He’s not a fan of those. I saw that clearly today. His writing is stripped of all pretense, all subjectivity, most description, and all “tricks.” It contains only what’s essential to the telling of the action. It doesn’t try to manipulate. You learn about characters by what they do and say, how others respond to them. He lets the readers choose how they will respond. They can judge; he does not. He favors fiction over fact, believing facts can be too limiting. That’s what I felt and understood this time around anyway.

And this time, I might know what he meant by “holding something in his head.” For me, it’s when you feel an urgent physical need to write something, very specific, and at this precises moment. Or it’s gone. Nothing else matters. If you delay, it’s as though something dies. A bunny, in his case.