Writing Is Like Sausage Making

Writing is like sausage making in my view; you’ll all be happier in the end if you just eat the final product without knowing what’s gone into it.

GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Your Mother Will Not Make You A Writer

Notice how many of the Olympic athletes effusively thanked their mothers for their success? “She drove me to my practice at four in the morning,” etc. Writing is not figure skating or skiing. Your mother will not make you a writer. My advice to any young person who wants to write is: leave home.

PAUL THEROUX

The Writer Must Be A Psychologist

The writer must be a psychologist, but a secret one; he must sense and know the roots of phenomena, but offer only the phenomena themselves as they blossom or wither.

IVAN TURGENEV

Start Telling the Stories That Only You Can Tell

Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that, but you are the only you.

NEIL GAIMAN

Be Yourself When You Write

You have to follow your own voice. You have to be yourself when you write. In effect, you have to announce, “This is me, this is what I stand for, this is what you get when you read me. I’m doing the best I can—buy me or not—but this is who I am as a writer.”

DAVID MORRELL

Keep Looking for the Right Address

This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don't consider it rejected. Consider that you've addressed it “to the editor who can appreciate my work” and it has simply come back stamped “Not at this address.” Just keep looking for the right address.

BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Imagine That You Are Dying

Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die.

ANNE ENRIGHT

To Gain Your Own Voice, Forget About Having It Heard

To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard. Renounce that and you get your own voice automatically. Try to become a saint of your own province and your own consciousness, and you won’t worry about being heard in The New York Times.

ALLEN GINSBERG

Composition is a Discipline

Composition is a discipline; it forces us to think. If you want to “get in touch with your feelings,” fine—talk to yourself; we all do. But, if you want to communicate with another thinking human being, get in touch with your thoughts. Put them in order; give them a purpose; use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce. The secret way to do this is to write it down and then cut out the confusing parts.

WILLIAM SAFIRE

You Must Get to the Mystery of Human Personality

You must get beyond divertissement, sketch, anecdote, the interesting moment. You must get to the mystery of human personality. What is the line of the story that leads us to a point where we see or intuit something we haven't before?

JOHN L'HEUREUX