Hemingway @ MindSay 
“I was the Lady Brett,“ I mused upon closing the last chapter. The promiscuous, the drunk, the loud, the flamboyant Lady Brett. Surrounded by men who adored her, men who lavished her, men who wanted her. At first glance one might say Brett is a strong willed, independent young woman, toting these men all across Europe like dogs on leashes. But it is only after careful consideration one can agree: she needed to be the center of attention more so than they needed her undivided affection.
Yes, I was the Lady Brett. I was the girl with all the guy friends. I needed to be the center of attention. I needed the booze and the parties and the nightlife to fill that empty void inside. I needed completion and searched for it.
It wasn’t until I surrendered my life to Christ did I come to the end of my search. The things of this world I had looked to were drops in the bucket compared to the overflowing grace of my Savior. For the first time in my life, I was complete. Not just complete, drowning in the love of Christ, the mercy of God and the peace of the Holy Spirit.
I no longer need the alcholol, the boyfriends, or the attention. I don't even need the roof over my head, the food in my stomach, of the money in my wallet. Those are merely extras. I have everything now that I have Christ. He is the answer, He is what you've been searching for all your life.
Yes, I was the Lady Brett, with emphasizes on “was.” But now I am a new creature in Christ, my Lord, God and King. Alleluia!
"So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." ~2 Corinthians 5:16-20
Ndosch
To live is Christ, to die is gain!
Phillipians 1:21
Below are some examples of truly communicative insults. They were sent to me by a writing colleague of mine, as she enjoyed them and shared them 'round. I, of course, had to do the same.
When Insults had class!
"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." -- Winston Churchill
"A modest little person, with much to be modest about." -- Winston Churchill
"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." -- Clarence Darrow
"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." -- William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)
"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?" -- Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)
"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it." -- Moses Hadas
"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know." -- Abraham Lincoln
"I 've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." -- Groucho Marx
"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." -- Mark Twain
"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends." -- Oscar Wilde
"I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend.... if you have one." -- George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill
"Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... if there is one." -- Winston Churchill, in response
"I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here." -- Stephen Bishop
"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial." -- Irvin S. Cobb
"He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others." -- Samuel Johnson
"He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up." -- Paul Keating
"He had delusions of adequacy." -- Walter Kerr
"There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure." -- Jack E. Leonard
"He has the attention span of a lightning bolt." -- Robert Redford
"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge ." -- Thomas Brackett Reed
"He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them." -- James Reston (about Richard Nixon)
"In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily." -- Charles, Count Talleyrand
"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him." -- Forrest Tucker
"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?" -- Mark Twain
"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." -- Mae West
"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go." -- Oscar Wilde
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination." -- Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
"He has Van Gogh's ear for music." -- Billy Wilder
Ernest Hemingway writes in short sentences. He often breaks up sentences. Puts long thoughts into short phrases. Combines ideas. He's a big fan of the periods. Uses them all the time. Must have worn out the key on his typewriter while his comma key was barely ever pressed.
Tolstoy is different; in fact, almost all the Russians writers, Dostoevsky being perhaps the most famous, are different. They prefer long, flowing, intricate sentences; broken up by pauses, by stops, but not by actual breaks: Not finite periods that seem to bring the thought to its full conclusion, almost as if they can't commit, as if they refuse to end the sentence, because then they won't be able to get the next one started: They need their momentum to continue or their creativity will be completely drained.
Cormac McCarthy's most critically lauded work, Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West, is a combination. He used short sentences. But he's also very frugal with his commas and often builds long sentences made of many seemingly random thoughts and he piles them all into one sentence and combines actions with descriptions and often mixes in beautifully written paintings of nature and includes unique metaphors like comparing the sun resting on the horizon to a huge phallus or someone's murder to the horrific nature of war itself. He'll cram anything into a sentence - like a group of schoolboys creating the most disgusting combination of food for a friend is eat for five bucks - as long as he doesn't have to use a comma.
Scott Smith's latest page-turner The Ruins is something entirely different, existing in an odd sort of limbo between past and present tense, using commas to work almost as periods, melding many thoughts and actions together, keeping the verbs as "ing's" so that they seem fluid, always moving, always forcing the reader's eye to the right until the last word is read, ending with one deep, black, triumphant period, signifying the satisfying confusion.
These are all examples of a writer's style, and sometimes that style is dependant on the book. Lisey's Story, for instance, is Stephen King's latest work. And as he is trying to be more literary in it, the language is more appropriate for that tone. The New York Times called it Joycean (as in James Joyce), which is a far cry from his preceding novel before that, Cell, about horrible zombie slaughter with gore serving as a substitute for prose.
Take my novels as another for instance - all three are different. The first takes on a purposely silly detective story tone, reading like a film noir spoof. My second is narrated in the first person by an advertising copywriter who was taught to write in short sentences with quick paragraphs, and therefore does so in his story. My third is supposed to echo two types of Shakespearean plays, switching from a sad romantic comedy in the first half to a terrible tale of violence in the second, and is written in an appropriately poetic manner. Sure, my particular style of writing still sneaks its way out of all three of these books, but they stand on their own as well.
One of the best pieces of advice I can give aspiring authors is to write as much as possible, as often as possible, until they find their own style. It exists somewhere. It's almost certain that when you first start you're going to find yourself borrowing from other authors, maybe some of the ones mentioned in this post, and using their style to make you feel like you are a real writer, like your books are real books because they sound like published authors' real books. But you don't want to mimic other writers. You don't want to copy what already exists - you can never do it better than the original, no offense. So find your own voice. Use your own style. Let your words flow out of you.
You don't want to end up as an impressionist novelty act in Reno; you want your own original spectacle in Vegas.
Hi Guys and Gals,
We've had 43 people add us as a friend since June 16. Thanks to all of you. I will do my best to post as many writing and publishing tips as possible during the coming months. This week I'm busy getting ready to launch our newly-updated site at www.authorlink.com. I thought you might like to know ahead of time that on the launch date, July 1, 2006, you can go and listen to an audio clip of FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS by Ernest Hemingway on our site (but only after July 1). It's free. Listen to the dialogue. It's a wonderful lesson in creating dialogue that really moves the story forward and gives the reader insights into the characters. I'll be back soon after the launch with more insights.Cheers- Doris Booth, Editor-in-Chief, Authorlink.