Metaphor is supposed to state the unknown in terms of the known. It is supposed to say X equals Y. Yet when we say “John is a lion,” we do not think of John with a mane, with four clawed paws, nor with a pompon tipped tail. We extract from “lion” the emotional equivalent we need and let the rest go. The real metaphoric formula is X does-and-does-not-equal Y.
JOHN CIARDI
The price of learning to use words is the development of an acute self-consciousness. Nor is it enough to pay attention to words only when you face the task of writing—that is like playing the violin only on the night of the concert. You must attend to words when you read, when you speak, when others speak. Words must become ever present in your waking life, an incessant concern, like color and design if the graphic arts matter to you, or pitch and rhythm if it is music, or speed and form if it is athletics.
JACQUES BARZUN
Writer’s block, how to overcome it: write something substantial every morning, and while doing so forget entirely the impression you’re creating. That is, overcome ego.
PAUL FUSSELL
You can get what you need to write (as opposed to what you need to make a big nuisance of yourself at cocktail parties) by shutting yourself in a room by yourself for twenty minutes a day and reading aloud from E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, and going on from that to other works of skill, until you begin to see, by hearing, how much the choice and arrangement of the words contribute to the impact of the story, even when no sound is uttered in its reading. And you will begin to see, very quickly—guaranteed.
GEORGE V. HIGGINS
Deliberately puzzling or confusing a reader may keep him reading for a while, but at too great an expense. Even just an “aura” of mystery in a story is usually just a lot of baloney. Who are these people? What are they up to? Provoking such questions from a reader can be a writer’s way of deferring exposition until he feels the reader is ready for the explanation of it all. But more likely it’s just fogging things up. A lot of beginning writers’ fiction is like a lot of beginners’ poetry: deliberately unintelligible so as to make the shallow seem deep.
RUST HILLS
Use a good-quality printer or high-quality copier. Laser printing or its equivalent. If it’s not crisp, clear, and clean, it’s canned. It’s fine to make multiple submissions in Hollywood, but producers won’t return a script without an SASE. Because it costs more to mail a script today, e-mail is the standard. And Hollywood appreciates confidence. So think positively and fire off your best and brightest work.
TONY BILL
You can’t tell or show everything within the compass of a book. If you try to tell or show everything, your reader will die of boredom before the end of the first page. You must, therefore, ask yourself what is the core of the matter you wish to communicate to your reader? Having decided on the core of the matter, all that you tell him must relate to it and illustrate it more and more vividly.
MORRIS L. WEST
After suggesting [that young writers] look into The Writer's Chapbook I recommend they keep a diary, at least a page a day, and faithfully, and also to get into the habit of letter writing to other writers. The advantages that come with doing this seem obvious—both are exercises which hone the communicative skills.
GEORGE PLIMPTON
Happy are they who don't doubt themselves and whose pens fly across the page. I myself hesitate, I falter, I become angry and fearful, my drive diminishes as my taste improves, and I brood more over an ill-suited word than I rejoice over a well-proportioned paragraph.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Most people quit. If you don’t quit, if you rewrite, if you keep publishing in fancier places, you will understand that “What’s the secret?” is not the question, which is, “Are you having fun?”
ROBERT LIPSYTE
Writerly wisdom of the ages collected by the author of Advice To Writers, The Big Book of Irony, and The Portable Curmudgeon.
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