Leave the Doubts to Others

The world will provide you with every imaginable obstacle, but the one most difficult to overcome will be the lack of faith in yourself. Leave it to others to have doubts about you.

CALLIE KHOURI

Forget Every Rule

Forget every rule Syd Field, Robert McKee or any other screenwriting guru ever taught you. Except one: Never be boring.

DAVID MAMET

Write a Good Sentence

Write a good sentence, then a good paragraph, and don’t be dreaming about writing the great American novel or what you’ll wear at the awards ceremony because that’s not what writing’s about or how you get there from here. The road is made entirely out of words.

REBECCA SOLNIT

Publishers Want Controversial Books

Publishers want to take chances on books that will draw a clamor and some legitimate publicity. They want to publish controversial books. That their reasons are mercenary and yours may be lofty should not deter you.

HARLAN ELLISON

Anyone Can Have A Prose Style

Anyone who puts pen to paper can have a prose style. In almost every case, that style will be quiet, sometimes so quiet as to be detectable only by you, the writer. In the quiet, you can listen to your sound in various manifestations; then you can start to shape it and develop it. That project can last as long as you keep writing, and it never gets old.

BEN YAGODA

The Writer Is the Most Vocal and Inventive Griper on Earth

Next to the defeated politician, the writer is the most vocal and inventive griper on earth. He sees hardship and unfairness wherever he looks. His agent doesn’t love him (enough). The blank sheet of paper is an enemy. The publisher is a cheapskate. The critic is a philistine. The public doesn’t understand him. His wife doesn’t understand him. The bartender doesn’t understand him.

PETER MAYLE

Work Every Day

Work every day. Obviously I don’t mean every day. Hyperbole, it’s what we do for a living. So let me clarify and tell you what I really mean: Work every day.

STEPHEN HUNTER

If You’re Having Fun, It’s Probably Not Working

One of the things I’ve never experienced when writing is flow, that experience of being totally immersed in the process. The gradient changes, but it is always an uphill struggle: awkward first drafts; repeated editing; the depressingly regular deletion of entire stories. The view at the top is sometimes glorious, but the climb is always a long one. As I often say to students, “If you’re having fun, it’s probably not working.”

MARK HADDON

John Grisham’s Do’s and Don’ts for Popular Fiction

1. DO — WRITE A PAGE EVERY DAY

That’s about 200 words, or 1,000 words a week. Do that for two years and you’ll have a novel that’s long enough.

Nothing will happen until you are producing at least one page per day.

2. DON’T — WRITE THE FIRST SCENE UNTIL YOU KNOW THE LAST

This necessitates the use of a dreaded device commonly called an outline. Virtually all writers hate that word. I have yet to meet one
 who admits to using an outline.

Plotting takes careful planning. Writers waste years pursuing stories that eventually don’t work.

3. DO — WRITE YOUR ONE PAGE EACH DAY AT THE SAME PLACE AND TIME

Early morning, lunch break, on the train, late at night — it doesn’t matter. Find the extra hour, go to the same place, shut the door.

No exceptions, no excuses.

4. DON’T — WRITE A PROLOGUE

Prologues are usually gimmicks to hook the reader. Avoid them. Plan your story (see No. 2) and start with Chapter 1.

5. DO — USE QUOTATION MARKS WITH DIALOGUE

Please do this. It’s rather basic.

6. DON’T — KEEP A THESAURUS WITHIN REACHING DISTANCE

I know, I know, there’s one at your fingertips.

There are three types of words: (1) words we know; (2) words we should know; (3) words nobody knows. Forget those in the third category
and use restraint with those in the second.

A common mistake by fledgling authors is using jaw-breaking vocabulary. It’s frustrating and phony.

7. DO — READ EACH SENTENCE AT LEAST THREE TIMES IN SEARCH OF WORDS TO CUT

Most writers use too many words, and why not? We have unlimited space and few constraints.

8. DON’T — INTRODUCE 20 CHARACTERS IN THE FIRST CHAPTER

Another rookie mistake. Your readers are eager to get started. Don’t bombard them with a barrage of names from four generations of the same family. Five names are enough to get started. 

Arrive at an Appropriate Form

I hardly do any preplanning, just fretting and wheel spinning. On quite a few occasions I’ve thought. I’ve got to sort this out before I begin writing, but the only way to arrive at the right way to do it is to crack on and see what works. The process of book writing for me is entirely one of trial and error. Likewise questions of structure. I get the idea for the structure of a book at some point, but rarely at the beginning. I accumulate a quantity of material, and at a certain point some idea of a structure will emerge that’s both the product of and appropriate to the subject. I’ve written books about loads of different subjects, but that wouldn’t count for shit if I just gave each subject the same treatment. In each book I’ve had to arrive at a form that was appropriate to that subject.

GEOFF DYER