He wrote most of his greatest work during the 1920s, a period he coined as "The Jazz Age". As depicted in the film Midnight in Paris, during the twenties, he frequently visited Paris with his wife Zelda and became good friends with fellow American author Ernest Hemingway.
To celebrate F. Scott Fitzgerald's birthday, blogger Maria Popova dug up some letters written by F. Scott Fitzgerald to a family friend and his daughter, Scottie, that offer some advice about what makes great writing.
Here are some excerpts from his letters, for all my aspiring student writers:
"You've got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, when you have none of the techniques which it takes time to learn. When, in short, you have only your emotions to sell . . . [Literature] is one of those professions that wants the 'works.' You wouldn't be interested in a soldier who was only a little brave."
– Letter to Frances, November 9, 1938
"Nobody ever became a writer just by wanting to be one. If you have anything to say, anything you feel nobody has ever said before, you have got to feel it so desperately that you will find some way to say it that nobody has ever found before, so that the thing you have to say and the way of saying it blend as one matter – as indissolubly as if they were conceived together."
– Letter to Scottie, October 20, 1936
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