Adam Renn Olenn

And then three dates later you realize you’re completely hooked?

Yeah, my writing group’s like that.

I know it’s good to keep plugging away, but three scenes in a row that need to be scrapped?

I just realized what it is that makes Hemingway so distinctive: he always sounds like he’s telling you a dream he’s had.

The sparsity of his description leaves a lot of room for the reader to imagine the rest, which makes the experience all the richer.

It’s as though he describes only that which is symbolically important, and you’re on your own for the other stuff.

When I was 21, I traveled around Europe with a flute strapped to my backpack.  A Dutch family told me that a career in music was a splendid idea, because, in their words “Even when there is no food and there is no eat, if there is music, the people will dance.”

Or as Barbara Ehrenreich said in “Nickel and Dimed,” her book about taking a whack at trying to live on minimum wage (spoiler: you can’t):

“On account of the heat, there are still a few actual bathers on the beach, but I am content to sit in shorts and a t-shirt and watch the ocean pummel the sand.  When the sun goes down I walk back into the town to find my car and am amazed to hear a sound I associate with cities like New York and Berlin.  There’s a couple Peruvian musicians playing in the little grassy island in the street near the pier, and maybe fifty people - locals and vacationers - have gathered around, offering their bland end-of-summer faces to the sound.  I edge my way through the crowd and find a seat where I can see the musicians up close - the beautiful young guitarist and the taller man playing the flute.  What are they doing in this rinky-dink blue-collar resort, and what does the audience make of this surprise visit from the dark-skinned South?  The melody the flute lays out over the percussion is both utterly strange and completely familiar, as if it had been imprinted in the minds of my own peasant ancestors centuries ago and forgotten until this very moment.  Every-one else seems to be as transfixed as I am.  The musicians wink and smile at each other as they play, and I see then that they are the secret emissaries of a worldwide lower-class conspiracy to snatch joy out of degradation and filth.  When the song ends, I give them a dollar, the equivalent of about ten minutes of sweat.”