Editors Make Mistakes

Editors make mistakes. By actual count, 121 publishers said “No thanks” to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Roger Tory Peterson’s Field Guide to the Birds and Lolita were turned down too, again and again. The Clan of the Cave Bear, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Peter Principle, Watership Down, To Kill A Mockingbird—rejected, every one.

JUDITH APPELBAUM

Writing Is A Form of Therapy

Writing is a form of therapy; how do all those who do not write, compose, or paint manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in the human condition?

GRAHAM GREENE

Everybody Is Talented

I have been writing a long time and have learned some things, not only from my own long hard work, but from a writing class I had for three years. In this class were all kinds of people: prosperous and poor, stenographers, housewives, salesmen, cultivated people and little servant girls who had never been to high school, timid people and bold ones, slow and quick ones. This is what I learned: that everybody is talented, original and has something important to say.

BRENDA UELAND

Be the Dutiful Journalist

The research in my novels is pretty carefully delineated. I have to do it: the OB-GYN with Dr. Larch in The Cider House Rules, the orthopedic surgery in A Son of the Circus, the business of granite quarrying and being a body escort in A Prayer for Owen Meany, even the prostitutes in A Widow for One Year. I feel I have to be the dutiful journalist. I have to put myself in the hands of someone whose life that is and learn it. You just have to know that stuff or you shouldn't write about it.

JOHN IRVING

A Novelist Is Stuck with His Youth

A novelist is stuck with his youth. We spend it without paying much attention to how it will work out as material; nevertheless, we must draw on whatever was there for the rest of our lives.

VANCE BOURJAILY

You Don't Always Have to Murder Your Darlings

You don't always have to go so far as to murder your darlings—those turns of phrase or images of which you felt extra proud when they appeared on the page – but go back and look at them with a very beady eye. Almost always it turns out that they'd be better dead. (Not every little twinge of satisfaction is suspect—it's the ones which amount to a sort of smug glee you must watch out for.)

DIANA ATHILL

The Artist Must Raise Everything to a Higher Level

The artist must raise everything to a higher level: he is like a pump; inside him is a great pipe reaching down into the bowels of things, the deepest layers. He sucks up what was pooled beneath the surface and brings it forth into the sunlight in giant sprays.

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Endurability

As far as I can tell, the decisive factor is what I call endurability: that is, the ability to deal effectively with uncertainty, rejection, and disappointment, from within as well as from without.

TED SOLOTAROFF

No Free Lunch

You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there's no free lunch. Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you're on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.

MARGARET ATWOOD

Write A Book that People Want to Read

There is no substitute for writing a book that people want to buy and read. If you can do that, you can get published. If you can't, no clever workaround will help, because we can't force people to buy and read books they don't like.

NEIL GAIMAN