The Characters Want to Get Out

Writers write because they cannot allow the characters that inhabit them to suffocate them. These characters want to get out, to breathe fresh air and partake of the wine of friendship; were they to remain locked in, they would forcibly break down the walls. It is they who force the writer to tell their stories.

ELIE WIESEL

Writing Is A Process of Inner Expansion and Reduction

The process of writing is a process of inner expansion and reduction. It’s like an accordion: You open it and then you bring it back, hoping that additional sound—a new clarity—may come out. It’s all for clarity.

JERZY KOSINSKI

Craft Is A Dangerous Thing

I saw a trailer for a movie, I don’t want to say what the movie is, but it’s coming out soon. And it was gorgeous, it was…gorgeous. And it made me really depressed, and I was trying to figure out why. I think there was an amazing amount of craft and skill on the part of the filmmakers in this movie. And yet it was the same shit. I know that this movie is going to do really well, and I know that the people who made it are going to get rewarded for it, and so the cycle continues. So I think the danger of craft is that it needs to be in second position to what it is that you’re doing. It’s seductive to put it in first position, often because what you’re doing is meaningless or worthless, or just more of the same. So you can distinguish yourself by being very, very good at it. I think you need to be willing to be naked when you do anything creatively in film or any other form, that’s really what you have to do because otherwise it’s very hard to separate it from marketing. I think that it just sort of becomes what it’s about.

CHARLIE KAUFMAN

The Koan of Writing

The significant story possesses more awareness than the writer writing it. The significant story is always greater than the writer writing it. This is the absurdity, the disorienting truth, the question that is not even a question, this is the koan of writing.

JOY WILLIAMS

The Work of Any Great Artist Is Directed At the Heart

The work of any great artist is directed at the heart, the spirit and the soul, not the brain. Critics feel with their brains, they probably fuck with their brains too. But the worst part is they fill their brainy shit into you and then we’re all made to feel we have to analyze literary works based on all this brainy shittage. No, if you feel Beckett, you see something else: that his writing evokes a sort of sacred chaos, a blissful holiday for the brain and a profoundly pleasurable call to the spirit.

AMITA MUKERJEE

Frustration Is Part of the Process

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that frustration is a part of the process. I’ve rarely written anything good that did not come out of moments of extreme frustration. It’s the frustration that propels you forward. If it doesn’t — if you back away from it — the work will be less than it could have been. When I teach writing, I find that students are relieved to hear this... that frustration is an indication of a literary problem to be solved, not a sign that they aren’t good enough writers.

DIANNE WARREN

Read Yourself Dizzy

Read yourself dizzy. Know how we got from there to here. Know how to recognize clear language, powerful language, evasive or pretentious language. Know stuff about a lot of different things.

JEFF GREENFIELD

Build Pockets of Stillness Into Your Life

Build pockets of stillness into your life. Meditate. Go for walks. Ride your bike going nowhere in particular. There is a creative purpose to daydreaming, even to boredom. The best ideas come to us when we stop actively trying to coax the muse into manifesting and let the fragments of experience float around our unconscious mind in order to click into new combinations. Without this essential stage of unconscious processing, the entire flow of the creative process is broken.

MARIA POPOVA

Writing's A Lot Like Cooking

Writing's a lot like cooking. Sometimes the cake won't rise, no matter what you do, and every now and again the cake tastes better than you ever could have dreamed it would.

NEIL GAIMAN

Writers Read

Just as composers go to concerts and artists visit galleries, writers read. You will learn, in the most enjoyable way, more about style and language from reading good literature than you will ever acquire from workshops and how-to books.

JUDITH BARRINGTON