Spend Some Time Living Before You Start Writing

Spend some time living before you start writing. What I find to be very bad advice is the snappy little sentence, “Write what you know.” It is the most tiresome and stupid advice that could possibly be given. If we write simply about what we know we never grow. We don't develop any facility for languages, or an interest in others, or a desire to travel and explore and face experience head-on. We just coil tighter and tighter into our boring little selves. What one should write about is what interests one.

ANNIE PROULX

Don't Leave A Word Misspelled

Don’t leave a word misspelled [in your script]. With spell-check programs on most computers, it is easier to produce perfect, clean scripts. But you still have to read every word carefully. It’s a safe bet that a script will be rejected if it has half a dozen typos or other errors in the first ten pages. If you don’t care enough to make it clean, the rest of us don’t waste time reading it. The same goes for grammar. No excuses here.

TONY BILL

If You Get Stuck...

If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don't just stick there scowling at the problem. But don't make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people's words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient.

HILARY MANTEL

You Must Let Your Poems Ride Their Luck

You must let your poems ride their luck
On the back of the sharp morning air
Touched with the fragrance of mint and thyme ...
And everything else is Literature.

PAUL VERLAINE

If You Nurture It, It Will Expand

What I've learned is simple: if you nurture it, it will expand, and it will nurture you in return. I have also learned that it is a kind of salvation. Sometimes it's more than enough and sometimes it's not enough—by that I mean one's own creativity. If you can truly tap in to the creative process, you know it's there all the time, and then you probably don't need saving.

KIM ADDONIZIO

Stop When You Are Going Good

The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never get stuck.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Screenplays Are Structure

Screenplays are structure, and that’s all they are. The quality of writing—which is crucial in almost every other form of literature—is not what makes a screenplay work. Structure isn’t anything else but telling the story, starting as late as possible, starting each scene as late as possible. You don’t want to begin with “Once upon a time,” because the audience gets antsy.

WILLIAM GOLDMAN

The Effort Is Real

If you are going to be a writer, there is nothing I can say to stop you; if you’re not going to be a writer nothing I can say will help you. What you really need at the beginning is somebody to let you know that the effort is real.

JAMES BALDWIN

Semicolons Don't Belong in a Story

I like commas. I detest semicolons. I don't think they belong in a story. I gave up quotation marks long ago. I found I didn't need them, they were fly-specks on the page. If you're doing it right, the reader will know who's talking.

E.L. DOCTOROW

Prefer the Short Word to the Long

Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched. Prefer the concrete word to the abstract. Prefer the single word to the circumlocution. Prefer the short word to the long. Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance.

HENRY WATSON FOWLER