Any Life Will Provide Material for Writing

If you have to urge a writing student to “gain experience with life,” he is probably never going to be a writer. Any life will provide the material for writing, if it is attended to.

WALLACE STEGNER

Writing A Novel Is A Terrible Experience

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.

FLANNERY O’CONNOR

Writers Don't Write From Experience

Writers don’t write from experience, though many are resistant to admit that they don’t. I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you’d get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.

NIKKI GIOVANNI

Children Like to Read About Success

Children like to read about success, whether it’s winning the hand of the best princess or prince, saving a life, helping people who need it, beating the other team in the game of the year, or discovering another universe.

JANET and ISAAC ASIMOV

You Can't Change Something from Nothing

Write from your heart and don't be afraid to write shitty pages. You can't change something from nothing. Get it down on paper first, no matter what it looks like.

SYD FIELD

Know Where You’re Going and Then Put the Water On

I realized I was going to have to get up at five in the morning if I wanted to write fiction. It took a while, the alarm would go off and I’d roll over. Finally I started to get up and go into the living room and sit at the coffee table with a yellow pad and try to write two pages. I made a rule that I had to get something down on paper before I could put the water on for coffee. Know where you’re going and then put the water on. That seemed to work because I did it for most of the fifties.

ELMORE LEONARD

Bring It Back to What You Really Feel

Almost the whole problem of writing poetry is to bring it back to what you really feel, and that takes an awful lot of maneuvering. You may feel the doorknob more strongly than some big personal event, and the doorknob will open into something you can use as your own.

ROBERT LOWELL

Story Was Crucial to Our Evolution

Story, as it turns out, was crucial to our evolution—more so than opposable thumbs. Opposable thumbs let us hang on; story told us what to hang on to.

LISA CRON

You Don't Try

You don't try. That's very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks, you make a pet out of it.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI

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