No Day Without A Line

It is helpful to write always at the same time of day. Scheduled obligations often raise problems, but an hour or two can almost always be found in the early morning-when the telephone never rings and no one knocks at the door. And it is important that you write something, regardless of quantity, every day. As the Romans put it, Nulla dies sine linea-No day without a line. (They were speaking of lines drawn by artists, but the rule applies as well to the writer.) As a result of all this, the setting almost automatically evokes verbal behavior. No warm-up is needed. A circadian rhythm develops that is extremely powerful. At a certain time every day, you will be highly disposed to engage in serious verbal behavior.

B.F. SKINNER

A Character Is Never A Whole Person

A character is never a whole person, but just those parts of him that fit the story or the piece of writing. So the act of selection is the writer's first step in delineating character. From what does he select? From a whole mass of what Bernard DeVoto used to call, somewhat clinically, "placental material." He must know an enormous amount more about each of his characters than he will ever use directly—childhood, family background, religion, schooling, health, wealth, sexuality, reading, tastes, hobbies—an endless questionnaire for the writer to fill out. For example, the writer knows that people speak, and therefore his characters will describe themselves indirectly when they talk. Clothing is a means of characterization. In short, each character has a style of his own in everything he does. These need not all be listed, but the writer should have a sure grasp of them. If he has, his characters will, within the book, read like people.

WILLIAM SLOANE

Children Like to Read About Success

Children like to read about success, whether it’s winning the hand of the best princess or prince, saving a life, helping people who need it, beating the other team in the game of the year, or discovering another universe.

JANET and ISAAC ASIMOV

Thou Shalt Remain Solvent

One of the basic commandments that a freelancer must obey is, Thou Shalt Remain Solvent. This commandment does not preclude getting into debt, but it does preclude a state of insolvency that destroys the freelancer’s ability to function. A writer is no better on a given day than his state of mind permits him to be, and if he allows himself to reach a point where, like an athlete in a slump who isn’t producing, he starts to press and even question his ability, then he falls victim to his insolvency. And the awful consequence of this insolvency is that he must get a paying job, God forbid, and turn in his free-lance medallion.

A.E. HOTCHNER

Never Fear the Audience

Never fear [the audience] or despise it. Coax it, charm it, interest it, stimulate it, shock it now and then if you must, make it laugh, make it cry, but above all . . . never, never, never bore the hell out of it.

NOEL COWARD

Be in love with yr life

Be in love with yr life

Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind

Blow as deep as you want to blow

Write what you want bottomless from the bottom of the mind

Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition

Write in recollection and amazement for yourself

JACK KEROUAC

Beware of Cleverness

Beware of cleverness; think of nothing but greatness. Make up your mind to write the greatest short stories in the world, and do not permit yourself even to dream that you cannot write them.

EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON

Character and Action

“Character is Fate,” said Heraclitus in 500 B.C. or thereabouts. But “Our characters are the result of our conduct,” added Aristotle a hundred years or so later. We will find character and action even more inseparably entwined in fiction than they appear to be in life.

RUST HILLS

Names Are Terribly Important

Names are terribly important. I spend forever coming up with names. Sometimes a character doesn’t work until I change his name. In Bandits, Frank Matusi didn’t work. I changed him to Jack Delaney and suddenly he opened up.

ELMORE LEONARD

You Must Have An Agent

First of all, you must have an agent, and in order to get a good one, you must have sold a considerable amount of material. And in order to sell a considerable amount of material, you must have an agent. Well, you get the idea.

STEVE McNEIL