Why Hemingway Repeated Words, Why We Learn from Teachers We Don’t Like, and Other Insights on the Craft of Writing

My writing studio in the attic of the Hemingway Birthplace Home, back when I was writer-in-residence .

While I didn’t particularly enjoy Roger Rosenblatt’s Unless It Moves the Human Heart – The Craft and Art of Writing, he did teach me something about Hemingway’s prose that I always wondered about:

Why does Hemingway use simple words over and over?

Here’s an example from The Snows of Kilimanjaro:

She shot very well this good, this rich bitch, the kindly caretaker and destroyer of his talent....