The Ideal View for Daily Writing

The ideal view for daily writing, hour on hour, is the blank wall of a cold-storage warehouse. Failing this, a stretch of sky will do, cloudless if possible.

EDNA FERBER

Try to Develop Steady Work Habits

Try to develop steady work habits, maybe a more modest quota, but keep to it. Don’t be thin-skinned or easily discouraged because it’s an odds-long proposition; all of the arts are. Many are called, few are chosen, but it might be you.

JOHN UPDIKE

One Must Be Drenched in Words

One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment.

HART CRANE

Talk Yourself Out of It If You Can

My first advice to an aspiring writer is to talk yourself out of it if you can possibly do it, because you'll probably fail and make yourself miserable doing it. I feel about myself that I'm anomalous—a rare combination of fear, an affection for language, a reverence for literature, doggedness, and good luck. Plus, I married the right girl.

RICHARD FORD

Find the Right Word

A writer who has never explored words, who has never searched, seeded, sieved, sifted through his knowledge and memory…dictionaries, thesaurus, poems, favorite paragraphs, to find the right word, is like someone owning a gold mine who has never mined it.

RUMER GODDEN

Books Aren’t Written, They’re Rewritten

Books aren’t written, they’re rewritten…one of the hardest things in the world to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.

MICHAEL CRICHTON

Write

Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write. You feel dull, you have a headache, nobody loves you, write. If all feels hopeless, if that famous “inspiration” will not come, write. If you are a genius, you’ll make your own rules, but if not – and the odds are clearly against it – go to your desk, no matter what your mood, face the very challenge of the paper – write.

J. B. PRIESTLEY

Rewrite It!

The best advice on writing I’ve ever received was, “Rewrite it!” A lot of editors said that. They were all right. Writing is really rewriting—making the story better, clearer, truer.

ROBERT LIPSYTE

We Need Creative-Reading Workshops.

Creative-writing workshops have absolutely nothing to do with our nation's literature, though writers sometimes, more or less by chance, turn up in them, looking for an agent or romance or someone to start a new magazine with them. Creative-writing workshops mostly have to do with creating other creative-writing workshops. And this is all right, I suppose, because writing is good for people, or at least not seriously harmful. It teaches them to read, for one thing. We don't need more writers, but we do need more readers. We need creative-reading workshops. Students would still have to write in them, but for nobler ends.

ROBERT COOVER

Chekhov's Razor

Anton Chekhov gave some advice about revising a story: first, he said, throw out the first three pages. As a young writer I figured that if anybody knew about short stories, it was Chekhov, so I tried taking his advice. I really hoped he was wrong, but of course he was right. It depends on the length of the story, naturally; if it’s very short, you can only throw out the first three paragraphs. But there are few first drafts to which Chekhov’s Razor doesn’t apply. Starting a story, we all tend to circle around, explain a lot of stuff, set things up that don’t need to be set up. Then we find our way and get going, and the story begins...very often just about on page three.

URSULA K. LeGUIN