If you only write what you’re expecting to write, you’ll be bored. Take a risk. Work against the grain. Don’t be afraid to make a deathbed scene comic, or to show a murderer being kind to animals. Truth is surprising, and surprise is the key – surprising the reader but also, in the first place, surprising yourself.
BLAKE MORRISON
Revise, revise, revise. I cannot stress this enough. Revision is when you do what you should have done the first time, but didn’t. It’s like washing the dishes two days later instead of right after you finish eating. Get that draft counter going. Remove a comma and then print out another copy — that’s another draft right there. Do this enough times and you can really get those numbers up, which will come in handy if someone challenges you to a draft-off. When the ref blows the whistle and your opponent goes, “26 drafts!,” you’ll bust out with “216!” and send ’em to the mat.
COLSON WHITEHEAD
Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.
JOHN STEINBECK
All good writing comes out of aloneness. You have to do it on an open highway. You wouldn’t want to do it in New York City. But on Highway 40 West or some of those big open highways, you can hold the wheel with one hand and write with the other. It’s a good discipline, because sometimes you can only write two or three words at a time before you have to look back at the road, so those three words have to count. The problem is whether you can read the damn thing by the time you reach your destination
SAM SHEPARD
A writer has the duty to be good, not lousy; true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error. He should tend to lift people up, not lower them down.
E.B. WHITE
It’s such a tricky thing, being a screenwriter, a strange combination of talents. You have to have the instincts to want to express yourself like any writer, but at the same time you have to have a very powerful collaborative instinct.
BO GOLDMAN
There is such thing as too much revision—I’ve seen things that were amazing in the 17th version get flattened out in the 23rd—but nothing is born perfect. Well, some things almost are, but they’re freaks.
REBECCA SOLNIT
I tell my students that when you write, you should pretend you’re writing the best letter you ever wrote to the smartest friend you have. That way, you’ll never dumb things down. You won’t have to explain things that don’t need explaining. You’ll assume an intimacy and a natural shorthand, which is good because readers are smart and don’t wish to be condescended to.
JEFFREY EUGENIDES
Don't look back until you've written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceding day. This prevents those cringing feelings, and means that you have a substantial body of work before you get down to the real work which is all in...the edit.
WILL SELF
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
Writerly wisdom of the ages collected by the author of Advice To Writers, The Big Book of Irony, and The Portable Curmudgeon.
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