Your gut is usually right (and you should listen to it)
Easy Read
Back in 1920s Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald had a conversation.
(I’ve transcribed Hemingway’s recollection of it below)
This particular chat was about the opening of Hemingway’s short story “Fifty Grand”. He was showing to Scott for feedback.
At the time Scott was one of Hemingways mentors, a friend and champion of his work and the guy who got him in good with Scribner’s (the company that would become his lifelong publisher).
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So naturally, a trusted source.
It’s no secret, however, the two had a turbulent relationship. And ironically, Scott would become a source of regret. And the reason Hemingway would go on to advise:
“So do not be humble, gentlemen. Be humble after but not during the action. They will all con you, gentlemen.”
Yeeesh!
When Hemingway wrote “Fifty Grand” the story originally started like this:
“’How did you handle Benny so easy, Jack?’ Solider asked him. “Benny’s an awful smart boxer,’ Jack said. “All the time he’s in there, he’s thinking. All the time he’s thinking, I was hitting him.”
Hemingway confided the opening to Scott in Paris to give him the picture of how a boxer like Jack Britton functioned. He wrote the opening like that and he liked it and when he finished the story he was happy with it. And so was Scott, who praised Hemingway to the point of embarrassment.
Apart from the opening.
“There is only one thing wrong with it, Ernest, and I tell you this as your friend. You have to cut out that old chestnut about Britton and Leonard.”
This was Hemingways reaction:
“At that time my humility was in such ascendance that I thought he must have heard the remark before or that Britton must have said it to someone else. It was not until I had published the story, from which I had removed that lovely revelation of the metaphysics of boxing that Fitzgerald in the way his mind was functioning that year so that he called an historic statement an “old chestnut” because he had heard it once and only once from a friend, that I realised how dangerous that attractive virtue, humility, can be. So do not be humble, gentlemen. Be humble after but not during the action. They will all con you, gentlemen. But sometimes it is not intentional. Sometimes they simply do not know. This is the saddest state of writers and one you will most frequently encounter.”
Despite knowing he’d penned a gem, Hemingway (on the whim of Fitzgerald’s advice) removed the opening. Which I find fascinating. He knew to cut the material would hinder the story saying “It had been cut for keeps when I wrote it.” But he did it and later realised he never needed to. That it was a mistake to act on Scott’s words. It shows that even this literary giant gave in to outside criticism.
And we can learn something from that.
It could be Scott Fitzgerald, Bukowski, your Wife, Barber, the cat, whoever, WHAT-ever — telling you to make an edit. And when they do it’s easy to act on.
But when it comes down to it I want you to remember … the only one who truly knows what the writing should say is the one holding the pen.
So I'll leave it at this …
… do as Hemingway asks … be humble after the fact, not during. And if something feels like it belongs in your writing, keep it. No matter what the critic or feline tells you.
Your gut is right more often than not. Better you listen to it, than them.
