Be Ruthless About Protecting Writing Days

Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have "essential" and "long overdue" meetings on those days. The funny thing is that, although writing has been my actual job for several years now, I still seem to have to fight for time in which to do it. Some people do not seem to grasp that I still have to sit down in peace and write the books, apparently believing that they pop up like mushrooms without my connivance. I must therefore guard the time allotted to writing as a Hungarian Horntail guards its firstborn egg.

J.K. ROWLING

Make Trouble for Your Character

When in doubt, make trouble for your character. Don’t let her stand on the edge of the pool, dipping her toe. Come up behind her and give her a good hard shove. That’s my advice to you now. Make trouble for your character. In life we try to avoid trouble. We chew on our choices endlessly. We go to shrinks, we talk to our friends. In fiction, this is deadly. Protagonists need to screw up, act impulsively, have enemies, get into TROUBLE.

JANET FITCH

Writers Take Words Seriously

Writers take words seriously—perhaps the last professional class that does—and they struggle to steer their own through the crosswinds of meddling editors and careless typesetters and obtuse and malevolent reviewers into the lap of the ideal reader.

JOHN UPDIKE

With Maturity the Writer Becomes More Secure

At the beginning of their careers many writers have a need to overwrite. They choose carefully turned-out phrases; they want to impress their readers with their large vocabularies. By the excesses of their language, these young men and women try to hide their sense of inexperience. With maturity the writer becomes more secure in his ideas. He finds his real tone and develops a simple and effective style.

JORGE LUIS BORGES

Silence, Exile, and Cunning

Whatever its psychic origins, tenacity, not to say obstinance—the cluster of qualities that James Joyce called “silence, exile and cunning”—is a valuable asset if you want to write, because it’s not easy to find your way to publication.

RICHARD RHODES

Novels Are Never About What They Are About

Novels are never about what they are about; that is, there is always deeper, or more general, significance. The author may not be aware of this till she is pretty far along with it. A novel’s whole pattern is rarely apparent at the outset of writing, or even at the end; that is when the writer finds out what a novel is about, and the job becomes one of understanding and deepening or sharpening what is already written. That is finding the theme.

DIANE JOHNSON

The Most Important Thing is Insight

At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, training himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try until it comes right. He must train himself in ruthless intolerance—that is to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph. The most important thing is insight, that is to be—curious—to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is —that man does what he does, and if you have that, then I don’t think the talent makes much difference, whether you’ve got it or not.

WILLIAM FAULKNER

Don't Be Pretentious

“Don't be pretentious” is my first advice to young writers. This is the big problem — just because you're getting an MFA doesn't mean you have to write for the Academy. Be true to your personality. Don't temper your personality down with words. Don't build defensive fortresses around yourself with words — words are your friends.

GARY SHTEYNGART

Write In the Gush

The secret of it all, is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment – to put things down without deliberation – without worrying about their style – without waiting for a fit time or place. I always worked that way. I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote – wrote, wrote…By writing at the instant the very heartbeat of life is caught.

WALT WHITMAN

Five Common Traits of Good Writers

Five common traits of good writers:

(1) They have something to say.

(2) They read widely and have done so since childhood.

(3) They possess what Isaac Asimov calls a “capacity for clear thought,” able to go from point to point in an orderly sequence, an A to Z approach.

(4) They’re geniuses at putting their emotions into words.

(5) They possess an insatiable curiosity, constantly asking Why and How.

JAMES J. KILPATRICK