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November 15, 2010

Honoring Your Writing Gods

Do you have writing gods?  Writers whom you look up to?  How do you honor them?

My writing gods are Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf.  Two very different writers, but I have reasons for each.  EH for his spare style and his take on the world, which feels very Western.  VW for her domesticity and her nuanced style.  Both tortured in their own way.

I honor them and am reminded of them by the photos I keep above my writing desk at home.

Here's the one of Ernest Hemingway. I got it from the Hemingway Museum in Key West, Florida.  (A wonderful museum to visit, if you have the chance.)



Here's the one of Virginia Woolf.  I ordered it from the National Portrait Gallery, London.


Questions of the Day: What do you keep above your writing desk? How do you honor your writing gods?

2 comments:

David Abrams said...

I have a print of John Singleton Copley 's "Watson and the Shark. " But that Hemingway photo has always been one of my favorites. I should probably get that one and Marion Ettlinger's portrait of Raymond Carver.

Tamara said...

What a great image (the Copley)! I'd never seen that before. Tells such a story.

Oh, yes - the Ettlinger Carver. I think I need to hang that one too. His eyes.