Imagine It, Create It

When I taught creative writing at Princeton, [my students] had been told all of their lives to write what they knew. I always began the course by saying, “Don’t pay any attention to that.” First, because you don’t know anything and second, because I don’t want to hear about your true love and your mama and your papa and your friends. Think of somebody you don’t know. What about a Mexican waitress in the Rio Grande who can barely speak English? Or what about a Grande Madame in Paris? Things way outside their camp. Imagine it, create it. Don’t record and editorialize on some event that you’ve already lived through. I was always amazed at how effective that was. They were always out of the box when they were given license to imagine something wholly outside their existence. I thought it was a good training for them. Even if they ended up just writing an autobiography, at least they could relate to themselves as strangers.

TONI MORRISON

Title Anxiety

Several times I’ve wanted to title something one thing, but have realized or been persuaded it isn’t a good idea. I’ve known for a long time that there isn’t a copyright on titles, but still . . . do I want to get into the confusion that causes? (Also, I’m rarely good at it. For years, Roger Angell, my editor at The New Yorker, titled most of my stories.) I mention this because while I don’t begin a story with a title in mind 95% of the time, I have anxiety about coming up with one, and when I do, it will often have been taken. So there it is: inherent title anxiety. It floats like a dark cloud over the story that does not yet exist.

ANN BEATTIE

It's Wiser to Assume Too Little Than Too Much

It’s true that every writer must calibrate the degree of specialization in her language against her best guess of the audience’s familiarity with the topic. But in general it’s wiser to assume too little than too much. Every audience is spread out along a bell curve of sophistication, and inevitably we’ll bore a few at the top while baffling a few at the bottom; the only question is how many there will be of each. The curse of knowledge means that we’re more likely to overestimate the average reader’s familiarity with our little world than to underestimate it. And in any case one should not confuse clarity with condescension.

STEVEN PINKER

Reading Is Hard Enough

Reading is hard enough. I realize I’m asking you to come along for a lengthy journey; you’re wasting a good chunk of your week with me, so let’s make this interesting and not too painful. But this is the paradox of the writer, because you must be aware of your reader, but only subconsciously, for if you think too hard about what they want, you will sink your ship before it even sets sail…. You are not only writing for yourself, of course, but you better be prepared to be, because often our works never see the light of day. And this seems fine. We think the world needs our stories but it doesn’t, really. It needs maths and sciences teachers.

REIF LARSEN

Write Towards a Reader Who Respects You

I do sometimes try to tone-correct by imagining that my smartest and funniest friend is reading a piece. You want to write towards a reader who respects you, even though that’s not always what’s going to happen—you might as well act as if that’s the case, you know? You can always tell when a writer doesn’t respect his or her readers, feels superior to them. I also try to keep an argument tight by asking myself at the end of a draft if somebody who completely disagrees with my politics could still read it and understand that I’m writing honestly. Writing about women’s issues is good for working out that test.

JIA TOLENTINO

Write Down to the Clear Water

I think of acting and writing as pretty much the same thing. It's all about getting inside the skin of your characters, and seeing where they are, and knowing how they've grown up. You have to know all this, like, in your bones, what they've come up against, who they are. And then you just start talking as them. And you write until the rust comes out of the faucet and it's clear water. And you write down the clear water.

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA

The Radar Is on Whether You Know It or Not

The radar is on whether you know it or not. You cannot switch it off. You hear this piece of conversation from across the room, “I just can't stand you anymore...” That's a song. It just flows in. And also the other thing about being a songwriter, when you realize you are one, is that to provide ammo, you start to become an observer, you start to distance yourself. You're constantly on the alert. That faculty gets trained in you over the years, observing people, how they react to one another. Which, in a way, makes you weirdly distant. You shouldn't really be doing it. It's a little of Peeping Tom to be a songwriter. You start looking round, and everything's a subject for a song. The banal phrase, which is the one that makes it. And you say, I can't believe nobody hooked up on that one before! Luckily there are more phrases than songwriters, just about.

KEITH RICHARDS

Good Fiction Comes from the Same Place as Our Dreams

We’re all born with an imagination. Everybody gets one. And I really believe—this is just from years of daily writing—that good fiction comes from the same place as our dreams. I think the desire to step into someone else’s dream world is a universal impulse that’s shared by us all. That’s what fiction is. As a writing teacher, if I say nothing else to my students, it’s this.

ANDRE DUBUS III

Procrastination Is Part of the Process

Procrastination, in its weird way, is part of the process. While I’m procrastinating, I’m never really free of the task; I’m turning the creative problem over and over in my mind, consciously and unconsciously, reformulating the terms. At some level I am saying no to the easy, knock-it-out solution, the tired-and-true, the familiar.

DAWN RAFFEL

You Have to Work with What You've Got

I don't write like my mother, but for many years I spoke like her, and her particular, timorous relationship with language has shaped my own. There are people who move confidently within their own horizons of speech; whether it is cockney, estuary, RP or valley girl, they stride with the unselfconscious ease of a landowner on his own turf. My mother, Rose, was never like that. She never owned the language she spoke. Her displacement within the intricacies of English class, and the uncertainty that went with it, taught her to regard language as something that might go off in her face, like a letter bomb. A word bomb. I've inherited her wariness, or more accurately, I learnt it as a child. I used to think I would have to spend a lifetime shaking it off. Now I know that's impossible, and unnecessary, and that you have to work with what you've got.

IAN McEWAN