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Text messaging Hemingway

I got a mobile phone very late on. Resistant to the charms, I held out until the looming birth of Henry, where being immediately reachable appeared crucial. Even now, something like 18 months later, I’ve perhaps made a total of 10 calls, maybe less.

Yet it is the art of the text message that has captured me. Routinely I converse with my wife throughout the day through texts. Yet not for me is the shorthand “text message speak“. I find "text speak" is almost impossible to interpret, let alone understand the sort of ADD-influenced logic that appears to determine most of coded messages.

So I choose to preserve proper standards of written English. Correct syntax and grammar should be maintained at all time, and spelling should not be sacrificed for speed or quantity. That’s not to say that my messaging does not differ from other modes of communication, because it does. And here is my point. Through no conscious effort on my part, text messaging is honing my ‘Hemingway”.

First a confession. As a younger and more innocent (naive?) chap, I harboured some pretension to great literary endeavours. I felt a masterpiece lay within me waiting to get out, but how? I studied the classics, but the Russians, Joyce, Nabakov or Hardy eluded me. They set the bar too high. Like most, I have been a victim of an overly florid style, but I like to think that I can recognise its defects and bin it. That’s why I always found myself drifting back to Hemingway.

Hemingway. The MAN. How I loved and still love Hemingway, I don’t care what the fashionistas say, the man can construct a story, and they hold up well today. Of course, in the folly of youth, and in the manner of many awkward and adolescent writers, I aped him. Not very well. Realising my foolishness, I stopped and moved on to something else. (I will leave my e.e. cummings period for another time, perhaps.)

But text messaging has dragged me back. The limits of this form of conversation dictate style, and verbosity is discarded like soiled nappies (as are tired metaphors!). In some small way, text messaging is turning me back into Hemingway.

Muscular, forceful language emerges when I text. Abstaining from obfuscation utterly, the compulsion is to write simply and clearly. Rules emerge: eschew unnecessary long words. Strike out all that is unnecessary. THERE IS NO TIME for detailed descriptions. GET TO THE POINT. Make it plain, make it clear. The trick is to make your writing look effortless. And texting does that.

“I am on my lunch break. A salad roll. I don’t know why.”

“Two tourists in the park. Fast asleep.”

“I am very tired. Henry looked handsome this morning. I will buy some grapes.”

If only it came this easy to me at 18.

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