Advice to Aspiring Poets

Advice to aspiring poets: Poetry is not letter-writing cut up into lines. Become familiar with the poets that are the infrastructure of literature; read, read, read.

CYNTHIA OZICK

The Delete Key Is a Boon

The delete key is a boon to any writer who hates a cluttered page, although it makes the word processor the least eternal of all writing instruments. Cross-outs are usually consigned to oblivion. (I prefer to move the rejected phrases to the bottom of the screen, where they are continuously pushed ahead of the text-in-progress like an ever-burgeoning mound of snow before a plow.)

ANNE FADIMAN

Certain Subjects Just Need Time

I don’t think that writer’s block exists really. I think that when you’re trying to do something prematurely, it just won’t come. Certain subjects just need time. . . . You’ve got to wait before you write about them.

JOYCE CAROL OATES

The Declarative is at the Bottom of Most Good Writing

A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing.

GARRISON KEILLOR

You Begin With a Subject

You begin with a subject, gather material, and work your way to structure from there. You pile up volumes of notes and then figure out what you are going to do with them, not the other way around.

JOHN McPHEE

Becoming a Writer is Not a “Career Decision”

Becoming a writer is not a “career decision” like becoming a doctor or a policeman. You don't choose it so much as get chosen, and once you accept the fact that you're not fit for anything else, you have to be prepared to walk a long, hard road for the rest of your days.

PAUL AUSTER

Art Is the Big Yes

Much of our lives involves the word “no.” In school we are mostly told, “Don't do it this way. Do it that way.” But art is the big yes. In art, you get a chance to make something where there was nothing.

MARVIN BELL

Respect Your Reader

Respect your reader. The niftiest turn of phrase, the most elegant flight of rhetorical fancy, isn’t worth beans next to a clear thought clearly expressed.

JEFF GREENFIELD

Don't Quit

Don’t quit. It’s very easy to quit during the first 10 years. Nobody cares whether you write or not, and it’s very hard to write when nobody cares one way or the other. You can’t get fired if you don’t write, and most of the time you don’t get rewarded if you do. But don’t quit.

ANDRE DUBUS

Push It

Push it. Examine all things intensely and relentlessly. Probe and search each object in a piece of art; do not leave it, do not course over it, as if it were understood, but instead follow it down until you see it in the mystery of its own specificity and strength.

ANNIE DILLARD