August 2024 – Page 2 – Andy writes!

A funny thing about writing funny things

Writing humor is harder than it looks

During my university PR/marketing career, I got to work with many talented people, including one of the funniest writers I’ve ever read. But the work being what it was — writing mostly about academics and their research, all very serious stuff — this writer didn’t have many opportunities to let his humor shine through. That is, until we decided to start a blog to highlight an annual tradition that brought hundreds of alumni back to our campus every month. We put this guy in charge of it and turned him loose.

Friday Five: writing wisdom from Ernest Hemingway

‘… a glimpse into the thoughts and ideas of one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.’

Not too long ago, on a whim, I was browsing a list of Kindle deals on Amazon and discovered the book Ernest Hemingway on Writing was available for less than a cup of coffee. (The price has since gone up.) This collection of quotes about writing, pulled from Papa’s letters, interviews, and writings and edited by Larry W. Phillips, offers a glimpse into the thoughts and ideas of one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, someone who took the craft of writing seriously. As Charles Scribner Jr. explains in his introduction to the book, Hemingway was “an artist wholly committed to the craft” who sometimes “showed an almost superstitious reluctance to talk about writing, seeming fearful that saying too much might have an inhibiting effect on his muse.”