Hemingway Was Right A 🧵 by L.T. Standing There came a time in my life when I had done the work one can do to become a writer. I had given decades to the craft and still wrote like crap. I couldn't understand why. So I did what people who want to be published authors do and I dug deeper. Who did I look up to in prose and why? It came down to two, Hemingway and one other. I chose Hemingway, so I looked at what he said. Basically, his advice was: Go To War. At the time there wasn't a war worth going to, but not even a year later one became available. I debated as I signed to an assault battalion, I could die trying to write. And I knew that. If I wanted to know, then I had to go. So I went. Very quickly writing became the least important thing in my life. Living was now my only concern. Sure, I have backgrounds in mental health, terrorism studies, and even professional violence. Ya, none of that prepared me for the process of war. Sure, it made me qualified, but one is never 'ready for it.' Not for the ups of the line and not for the incredible lows of life on the line. Nothing prepares you, but old Ernest was right, as the bombs fell the birds sang, the sun rose, the breathing paced our movements and we moved forward. He was right the dust makes glitter in the wind, the sorrow hits harder when you know the look that used to brighten their eyes. Kissing is deeper and honor is a moment not a lifetime. There were lots of things he failed to mention and those lessons I learned the hard way. Don't drink, not even on your time off, climbing out is much harder than climbing in. Don't look away from the shitty behavior and justify it in yourself or others, don't shy from the tears, don't cry just because you can. It all swirls like Dorothy's house in the cyclone and you land in a place where you can write. You can pace the climb up a mountain into an adventure. You can catch the deepest fish in the depths of an uncharted sea. Because after war fiction isn't the problem. Finding those threads to tug humanity out of themselves isn't the problem. No, the problem becomes you. Your dreams, your memories, your modest traumatic experiences you laugh about, traumatize other people. So much depth, and yet very little makes the page. End of days are near every day in Ukraine. What Hemingway didn't say is that the price you pay is dying. How could he, no one would take his advice if they knew the price was all they had become would be gone, but in this world you can sell your soul to the devil or the work. Either way it's going to be taken from you, reshaped into something that you weren't before. I don't play pretend time games, would have, could have is nonsense. I respect the craft enough to know what it costs me. To realize building a civilization takes watching one be destroyed, that is how you learn the yellow sweater that was so carefully packed and hangs half burned from the car, a child's hand still holding the doll with the matching dress she wore on what became her last day, this matters, tasting the tears is not the same as weeping them. You learn because you find out with your own heart, your own senses, then you look around and you see just how many people still can't write. Yet, they can live, they can sleep, they can't give you something you get so lost in the real world for a time becomes forgotten. They can't because they haven't lost themselves to the cause of the page. To the careless tossing of life and limb to the bombardments of hate and destruction. I can, the price was steep, so is the inkwell left behind in my soul.

12 hours of drone attacks in my neighborhood. 🙏🏽😔

"Humanitarian"

Walk by it on my days off... 😭 Finally remembered to take a video

😂😂