F. Scott Fitzgerald is often portrayed as a natural-born writer. “His talent,” says Ernest Hemingway in A Moveable Feast, “was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings.” But Fitzgerald saw himself in a different light. “What little I’ve accomplished,” he said, “has been by the most laborious and uphill work.”
We’ve selected seven quotations from F. Scott Fitzgerald on Writing, which was edited by Larry W. Phillips and published in 1985 as a companion to the Hemingway book.
1: Start by taking notes.
Fitzgerald made a habit of recording his stray thoughts and observations in notebooks. He organized the entries into categories like “Feelings and emotions,” “Conversations and things overheard” and “Descriptions of girls.” When Fitzgerald was giving writing advice to his mistress Sheilah Graham in the late 1930s, he advised her to do the same. In her 1940 memoir,
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Shruti Chaturvedi 