A good stylist should have narcissistic enjoyment as he works. He must be able to objectivize his work to such an extent that he catches himself feeling envious and has to jog his memory to find that he is himself the creator. In short, he must display that highest degree of objectivity which the world calls vanity.
KARL KRAUS
I’m interested in the way a character imagines his or her own reality, navigates it, gets it wrong, has a new idea, and rebuilds. I find that to be a pretty important experience as a human being. My life has a plot, certainly, but I live an internal life inside my head, and I think that’s probably true for most people, except for shut-down morons hypnotized by TV or sex or whatever. A lot of life doesn’t go anywhere, and what’s interesting is what happens on the inside in that time.
OTTESSA MOSHFEGH
We’re not only allowed to think about audience, we’d better. What we’re doing in writing is not all that different from what we’ve been doing all our lives, i.e., using our personalities as a way of coping with life. Writing is about charm, about finding and accessing and honing ones’ particular charms. To say that “a light goes on” is not quite right—it’s more like: a fixture gets installed.
GEORGE SAUNDERS
My block was due to two overlapping factors: laziness and lack of discipline. If you really want to write, then shut yourself in a room, close the door, and WRITE. If you don't want to write, do something else. It's as simple as that.
MARY GARDEN
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
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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