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
Don’t tell anybody what your book is about and don’t show it until it’s finished. It’s not that anybody will steal your idea but that all the energy that goes into the writing of your story will be dissipated.
DAVID WALLECHINSKY
Never compromise excellence. To write for someone else is the biggest mistake that any writer makes. You should be your biggest competitor, your biggest critic, your biggest fan, because you don’t know what anybody else thinks. How arrogant it is to assume that you know the market, that you know what’s popular today.... Write what you want to see. Because if you don’t, you’re not going to have any true passion in it, and it’s not going to be done with any true artistry.
JOHN MILIUS
Who’s your ideal reader? Don’t imagine someone who loves your work and gets what you’re trying to do. Imagine the most impatient person you know, the one whose attention is hard to hold onto, the one who says spit it out or get to the point when you’re trying to tell an anecdote. That’s your ideal reader. If you can successfully engage someone like that, you’re probably not cutting yourself any slack in the clarity department, and you’re definitely not cutting yourself any slack in the economy department.
PATRICK RYAN
Character is the very life of fiction. Setting exists so that the character has someplace to stand. Plot exists so the character can discover what he is really like, forcing the character to choice and action. And theme exists only to make the character stand up and be somebody.
JOHN GARDNER
A man or woman wants something and goes after it. In the process, they win, lose, or draw. John Gardner famously said that there are really only two stories in the world—a man or woman goes on a journey, or a stranger rides into town. And sometimes the best stories are an amalgamation of the two.
RICK BASS
In some ways, writing a memoir is knocking yourself out with your own fist, if it’s done right. Sure, there’s the pleasure of doing work guaranteed to engage you emotionally—who’s indifferent to their own history? The form always has profound psychological consequence on its author. It can’t not. What project can match it for that? Plus you get to hang out with folks no longer on this side of the grass. Places and times you may have for decades ached after wind up erecting themselves around you as you work.
MARY KARR
One of the most difficult things is the first paragraph. I have spent many months on a first paragraph and once I get it, the rest just comes out very easily. In the first paragraph you solve most of the problems with your book. The theme is defined, the style, the tone. At least in my case, the first paragraph is a kind of sample of what the rest of the book is going to be.
GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
Cruising the Internet doesn't count as writing. Neither does answering e-mail. Before you check Twitter & FB and do other similar tasks that get in the way of writing, write first. (I really need to take my own advice here!)
TERRY McMILLAN
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
Writerly wisdom of the ages collected by the author of Advice To Writers, The Big Book of Irony, and The Portable Curmudgeon.
Copyright © Jon Winokur 2019-2025. All rights reserved. Website by Wei-Haas Creative.
The trademark AdviceToWriters® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.