“Easy writing results in hard reading” is a quote I saw attributed to Ernest Hemingway. However, upon a little investigation, it’s also attributed to several others, including Lord Byron, Samuel Johnson, Maya Angelou, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and others. QuoteInvestigator indicates it appeared in 1771, penned by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, an Irish poet.
It has also been set forth as the inverse: “Easy reading requires hard writing.”
No matter who may have first coined the phrase or the version, both iterations are true. No matter what you want to convey in your book, you must eliminate every hurdle that may occur between your idea and the reader’s understanding!
