I was trying to write then and I found the greatest…
““I was trying to write then and I found the greatest difficulty, aside from knowing truly what you really felt, rather than what you were supposed to feel, and had been taught to feel, was to put down what really happened in action; what the actual things were which produced the emotion that you experienced. In writing for a newspaper you told what happened and, with one trick and another, you communicated the emotion aided by the element of timeliness which gives a certain emotion to any account of something that has happened on that day; but the real thing, the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion and which would be as valid in a year or in ten years or, with luck and if you stated it purely enough, always, was beyond me and I was working very hard to try to get it.””
About This Quote
This interpretation was drafted with AI assistance. It is one reading of the quote, not the author's own explanation.
He struggled to convey authentic emotion by describing concrete actions rather than prescribed feelings, emphasizing factual detail over timeliness.
In simple terms: He found it hard to write true feelings without relying on clichés.
Key Takeaway
Focus on specific actions to express emotions.
Themes
authenticity
writing
emotion
Mood
reflective
introspective
Type
literary
advice
When to use this quote
- journalism
- fiction writing
- personal reflection
- teaching writing
Key Concepts
narrative technique
emotional truth
Questions to Reflect On
- How can you capture raw emotion without over‑explaining?
- What concrete details reveal your feelings best?
A Different Perspective
Complex emotions may still be filtered by personal bias.