“Ding. Ding. Ding.”

The alarm insists that you snooze it or turn it off.  You are For Whom the Bell Tolls. It’s another day.

You told yourself last night, “When The Sun Also Rises, I’ll write those MPD letters I planned to send.” Yesterday, you started with good intentions for those letters, but MPD concluded with Death in the Afternoon. Not since The Garden of Eden has anyone resisted the guidance of God so strongly.

Hemingway Will Help You with MPD

I had a little fun with Hemingway titles for that story, but this also did happen two days ago (without the alarm).

I needed to write two similar letters to annual donors who were past their usual time. I planned for these letters to be handwritten, so I needed to figure out how to word them. I knew it would take some thought to compose a good letter. I wanted it to be “right” and then I wanted to save it as a template to use for possible future letters. (See NOTES for your downloadable copy).

I hammered at the words for about 20 minutes and then I remembered the free Hemingway app. I pasted the text into the Hemingway app and… “Oh, horrors! Adverbs and passive voice!” Also, what I thought was a fine letter had two sentences that were “hard to read,” according to Hemingway. Well, of course, I want my letter to be clear, so I started making a few changes and voilà! I had a zero score (which is the best) in a few more minutes. Here’s my screenshot:

More about the Hemingway App

The Hemingway app is great for prayer letters, blog posts, and anything you need to write. I love that Hemingway Editor looks for ways to make my writing more readable. For example, it suggests shorter sentences and replacing or removing adverbs.

The developers offer a paid desktop version. I use the free online version; I went from a score of 11 to 3 for this post. Just go to the Hemingway app (http://www.hemingwayapp.com/) and paste your content in the web page itself, replacing what you see in the middle of the screen.

I haven’t read any of Hemingway’s books, even for a high school assignment of For Whom the Bell Tolls (true confessions… I never finished my reading assignments). If you’re a Hemingway fan, send a recommendation in the comments. I’m a much better reader now and Hemingway is shaping me into a better writer.

NOTES:

• Want my template for a lapsed donor? Here it is on Google Drive (http://bit.ly/MPD_LetterTemplate). Please adjust the wording a bit to sound like it’s from you.
• I wanted to use Men Without Women in my opening story, but I’d already stretched my imagination.
• The vintage typewriter photo is by Patrick Fore on Unsplash.
• The photo of Ernest Hemingway’s desk at his home in Key West, Florida, is in the public domain.