Spend Some Time Living Before You Start Writing

Spend some time living before you start writing. What I find to be very bad advice is the snappy little sentence, “Write what you know.” It is the most tiresome and stupid advice that could possibly be given. If we write simply about what we know we never grow. We don't develop any facility for languages, or an interest in others, or a desire to travel and explore and face experience head-on. We just coil tighter and tighter into our boring little selves. What one should write about is what interests one.

ANNIE PROULX

Art Doesn't Happen Magically

It is really arduous to make art. It is work. It doesn’t magically happen. Those writers who say, oh you know I wait and inspiration strikes, and magically a perfect sonnet will come. I’m like, you’re lying. That’s not how Wordsworth wrote, that’s not how Keats wrote, that’s not how anyone worked.

JOHN LOGAN

Write for Yourself

Advice to beginners: Write for yourself and yourself alone. Don’t try to please anyone else, and don’t be afraid of anyone.

SALLIE TISDALE

The Best Literature Is Always A Take

The best literature is always a take [in the musical sense]; there is an implicit risk in its execution, a margin of danger that is the pleasure of the flight, of the love, carrying with it a tangible loss but also a total engagement that, on another level, lends the theater its unparalleled imperfection faced with the perfection of film. I don’t want to write anything but takes.

JULIO CORTÁZAR

You Write By Sitting Down and Writing

You write by sitting down and writing. There’s no particular time or place—you suit yourself, your nature. How one works, assuming he’s disciplined, doesn’t matter.

BERNARD MALAMUD

A Writer Should Get As Much Education As Possible

A writer should get as much education as possible, but just going to school is not enough; if it were, all owners of doctorates would be inspired writers.

GWENDOLYN BROOKS

The Joy of Poetry

The joy of poetry is that it will wait for you. Novels don't wait for you. Characters change. But poetry will wait. I think it's the greatest art.

SONIA SANCHEZ

It Takes Time to Find Your True Voice

I think a writer’s voice is really his or her authentic, natural voice—the way she actually expresses herself and sees the world. But it takes time to get to that. I think the first many years of writing you tend to write the way you think you’re supposed to sound, and gradually (if you’re lucky) you begin dropping that affect and getting to what is your true voice. In time, you come to know that voice well enough that you know how to emphasize it, enrich it.

SUSAN ORLEAN

Read Becoming a Writer, by Dorothea Brande

Read Becoming a Writer, by Dorothea Brande. Then do what it says, including the tasks you think are impossible. You will particularly hate the advice to write first thing in the morning, but if you can manage it, it might well be the best thing you ever do for yourself. This book is about becoming a writer from the inside out. Many later advice manuals derive from it. You don't ­really need any others, though if you want to boost your confidence, "how to" books seldom do any harm. You can kick-start a whole book with some little writing exercise.

HILARY MANTEL

Don't Try to Guess What Editors Want

Don’t try to guess what sort of thing editors want to publish or what you think the country is in a mood to read. Editors and readers don’t know what they want to read until they read it. Besides, they’re always looking for something new.

WILLIAM ZINSSER