Abandon Yourself to Mystery

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I want my students to tack up a Samuel Beckett quotation on their office doors: “No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” The ability to fail is what distinguishes the ordinary writer from the great one. The one who actually wants to push herself or himself so far that they know they’re going to crash and burn. You must risk yourself in order to find out what it is you truly know. That usually means just abandoning yourself to mystery. Over time, the mystery itself will join these things together. Eventually, after weeks, or months, or years of not knowing, there will come a moment when you think, “Aw, yeah! That’s it! That’s it! That’s what I’ve been looking for!” The solution appears, so simple and so elegant that it almost seems mathematical. You think, “That's been staring at me for the past two years, three years. How come I couldn’t see it?” Well, the fact of the matter is you couldn’t see it because you can’t see the beautiful simplicity at first. You have to do a lot of messy work to get there.

COLUM McCANN

It's Never Too Late

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Writing is not like dancing or modeling; it's not something where—if you missed it by age 19—you're finished. It's never too late. Your writing will only get better as you get older and wiser. If you write something beautiful and important, and the right person somehow discovers it, they will clear room for you on the bookshelves of the world—at any age. At least try.

ELIZABETH GILBERT

Don't Think Critically When You're Trying to Write

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It’s not good to think very critically when you’re trying to write. Any sentence could be stifled by the critic in one if you allow him to get the upper hand. But, by and large, keeping in mind that I am a little wary of the critic in me, I think once you start trying to put images and words of dialogue together, in some way the imaginary world takes over and somehow shuts out all the harassing critical thoughts that you might otherwise entertain.

JOHN UPDIKE

The Most Important Thing Is Habit

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The most important thing is habit, not will. If you feel you need will to get to the keyboard, you are in the wrong business. All that energy will leave nothing to work with. You have to make it like brushing your teeth, mundane, regular, boring even. It’s not a thing of effort, of want, of steely, heroic determination. (I wonder who pushed the meme that writing is heroic; it must have been a writer, trying to get laid.) You have to do it numbly, as you brush your teeth. No theater, no drama, no sacrifice, no “It is a far far better thing I do” crap. You do it because it’s time. If you are ordering yourself, burning ergs, issuing sweat, breathing raggedly through nasal channels that feel like Navajo pottery, you’re doing something wrong. Ever consider law? We definitely need more lawyers.

STEPHEN HUNTER

You Have Time to Have a Life

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You have time to have a life, to see change, to understand a bit how people work, how the world works, how society works, how things shift around, how slippery things can be, everything from politics to personal relationships. It’s a great advantage to have that stuff under your belt when you start to write.

ANNIE PROULX