'How the hell can you bleed over your own personal tragedies when you're a writer? You should welcome them because serious writers have to be hurt really terrible before they can write seriously. But once you get hurt and can handle it, consider yourself lucky that is what there is to write about and you have to be faithful to it as a scientist is faithful to his laboratory. You can't cheat or pretend. You have to excise the hurt honestly.'

Ernest Hemingway to F Scott Fitzgerald as remembered by AE Hotchner

'All good books have one thing in common they are truer then if they had really happened, and after you've read one of them you will feel that all that happened, happened to you and then it belongs to you forever: the happiness, and unhappiness, good and evil, ecstasy and sorrow, the food, wine, beds, people and the weather. If you can give that to readers, then you're a writer.'

Ernest Hemingway to AE Hotchner

'Writing at its best is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writers' loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone, and if he is a good enough writer, he must face eternity or the lack of it each day. For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed. How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.'

Ernest Hemingway, a written statement of acceptance of the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1954

Ernest Hemingway is, of course, one of the most regarded and dissected writers of the last century. Perhaps the Old Man, better than anyone else, was able to succinctly summarize the life and work of a writer. Sharing his thoughts on writers and writing is a fitting way to start a piece reflecting on the craft and folks who flock to a life spent as wordsmiths.

The current essayist, struggling during his own tenure with the written word, has lumbered upon (through trial and error) three standards to consider when locked in the lonely pursuit of a writer.

First of all, I've come to believe that a writer well dedicated to his task should show and not tell in crafting a piece of work. In my mind's eye, it is vital for a reader to see the scene written by the writer, to see the characters that populate a parcel of work.

A writer should not be merely a lunk who strings words together with grammatical deft and accuracy. Rather, a writer should be a true artist and paint a picture with words from his pallet, a painting that a reader can actually see when digesting the words selected to fill a page.

Secondly, a truly disposed writer should write about only what he knows. While growing, a learning writer should stretch beyond his comfort zone at times, but he or she never should venture past what is actually known or understood through direct life experiences.

The flatest, most dishonest of writing is that scribbled by a person who scratches with words that he or she has not experienced and does not understand.

Finally, a true writer, understanding his craft, needs to appreciate that he knows about more than what he or she might initially realize. While a writer should not venture in his craft beyond what he has experienced or has learned from his experiences, the typical writer can glean much more from actual experiences than he or she might imagine on first blush, This expansion of the creative horizon can occur, with thought and without violating the standard about writing only of what you know and understand.

An example sticks directly on the surface of this essayist's thoughts. We often see written work from men and women confined in prison. They all understand the sense of isolation that a prisoner endures at the hands of their jailors. This writer has often imagined that prison scribes would also be uniquely qualified science fiction writers. The sense of isolation felt by a prisoner and a man orbiting in the sublime isolation of outer space are common experiences which a jail based writer can understand and appreciate from his or her own unique vantage point.

In summary, as kindly words to a writer from a writer, this essayist suggests that the following standards be considered:

1. In crafting words, remember to show, do not merely tell.

2. A writer should write only about what he or she knows and understands.

3. A writer knows and understands about far more than he or she might imagine on first blush.

Paraphrasing Ernest Hemingway, if a person follows these standards for the sake of the reader, then that person is, indeed, a writer.