Good Writing Is the Hardest Form of Thinking

Good writing is the hardest form of thinking. It involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear. If the writing is good, then the result seems effortless and inevitable. But when you want to say something life-changing or ineffable in a single sentence, you face both the limitations of the sentence itself and the extent of your own talent.

PAT CONROY

Feedback

Feedback is great, from your editor, your agent, your readers, your friends, your classmates, but there are times when you know exactly what you’re doing and why and obeying them means being out of tune with yourself. Listen to your own feedback and remember that you move forward through mistakes and stumbles and flawed but aspiring work, not perfect pirouettes performed in the small space in which you initially stood. Listen to what makes your hair stand on end, your heart melt, and your eyes go wide, what stops you in your tracks and makes you want to live, wherever it comes from, and hope that your writing can do all those things for other people. Write for other people, but don’t listen to them too much.

REBECCA SOLNIT

Dialogue Isn't Conversation

Young writers often confuse dialogue with conversation, under the assumption that the closer you get to reality, the more convincing you sound. But dialogue is not conversation. Dialogue is a construct; it is artificial; it is much more efficient and believable than real conversation. Just as fiction itself distorts reality in order to achieve a larger truth, so dialogue eliminates all the false starts and irrelevant intrusions of real life in order to reveal character and move the encounter toward a dramatic conclusion.

JOHN L'HEUREUX

Fluidity

The work likes to be fluid. Fluidity is joyful — if you are having fun you throw things at the page willy-nilly. Having said that, I generally write something, reread it, read it again, reread, read it out loud, read, reread, congratulate myself, castigate myself. Back and forth x 1,000. Phew. The first paragraph.

NICOLA BARKER

Poetry Is About What Can't Be Said

Poetry goes back to the invention of language itself. I think one of the big differences between poetry and prose is that prose is about something, it’s got a subject… poetry is about what can’t be said. Why do people turn to poetry when all of a sudden the Twin Towers get hit, or when their marriage breaks up, or when the person they love most in the world drops dead in the same room? Because they can’t say it. They can’t say it at all, and they want something that addresses what can’t be said.

W.S. MERWIN

Always Be Writing

When writing goes painfully, when it’s hideously difficult, and one feels real despair (ah, the despair, silly as it is, is real!)–then naturally one ought to continue with the work; it would be cowardly to retreat. But when writing goes smoothly–why then one certainly should keep on working, since it would be stupid to stop. Consequently one is always writing or should be writing.

JOYCE CAROL OATES

Accretive Details

Writing fiction is about accumulating stuff — details about setting, details about clothing and behavior and actions and speech patterns and all the rick-rack of objects that we surround ourselves with. If you don’t like amassing this barge load of material, you may not be comfortable with fiction itself, or at least realist fiction, which has a tendency to fill up the page with accretive details. 

CHARLES BAXTER