Close the Door

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.

BARBARA KINGSOLVER

If Stories Come to You, Care for Them

If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.

BARRY LOPEZ

There Is No Royal Path to Good Writing

There is no royal path to good writing; and such paths as do exist do not lead through neat critical gardens, but through the jungles of self, the world, and of craft.

JESSAMYN WEST

A Real Writer is Always Shifting and Changing

Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always be seen as untimely. This is because a real writer is always shifting and changing and searching. The world has many labels for him, of which the most treacherous is the label of Success.

JAMES BALDWIN

Read Like Mad

Read like mad. But try to do it analytically – which can be hard, because the better and more compelling a novel is, the less conscious you will be of its devices. It's worth trying to figure those devices out, however: they might come in useful in your own work.

SARAH WATERS

Writing is About Hypnotizing Yourself

Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then un-hypnotizing yourself and going over the material coldly.

ANNE LAMOTT

This Is Sacred Work

Figuring out what the public wants, or even what the public is: that's the job of pollsters and publicists and advertisers. All those people study the marketplace. But the creative artist can change the world. A true writer opens people's ears and eyes, not merely playing to the public, but changing minds and lives. This is sacred work.

ALLEGRA GOODMAN

Writing is a Kind of Double Living

Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind.

CATHERINE DRINKER BOWEN

We Believe In Immaculate Syntax

Amid chaos of images, we value coherence. We believe in the printed word. And we believe in clarity. And we believe in immaculate syntax. And in the beauty of the English language.

WILLIAM SHAWN

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