Literary writing is an art, an aspect of an art form. It may be self-effacing or it may be grand, but if it is literature it has an artful intention, the language is being used in a characteristically elaborate manner in relation to the “work,” long or short, of which it forms a part. So there is not one literary style or ideal literary style, though of course there is good and bad writing.
IRIS MURDOCH
Here are the two ways to arrange the poems in a manuscript: a) when you submit a ms, front-load it. Put all your best poems right up front. (If you can’t tell which ones are your best, it’s too early for you to be thinking about publication.) Editors are among the few people who read mss from front to back; if you catch their interest early, they might just keep reading. b) after your ms has been accepted, tell the editor you’d like to change the order of the poems. An editor doesn’t want to get in the way of that, leaving you free to fiddle the poems into some kind of “creative” order. Remember that what editors are looking for above all else in a manuscript is a reason to stop reading it.
BILLY COLLINS
When I start writing a new imaginary future, I have no idea what it is. The characters arrive first. They help me figure out where they are living and I get to fill in the gaps with that and where we are. So when I get to the end of the process of composition, if I feel that I have really done my job, I have no idea what I've got — and I then spend essentially the rest of my life figuring out what it might mean.
WILLIAM GIBSON
I tell my students one of the most important things they need to know is when they are their best, creatively. They need to ask themselves, What does the ideal room look like? Is there music? Is there silence? Is there chaos outside or is there serenity outside? What do I need in order to release my imagination?
TONI MORRISON
The prevailing wisdom is that writers ought to write a quick and sloppy first draft and then go back and spin it into gold. This has never worked for me. If I produce a mess, I never want to see it again. I like an empty desk. I like to work on one thing at once. I think the concept of the draft is an anachronism from the time before laptops and word processing software. Or maybe it’s a useful object or valuable totem for less uptight writers.
SARAH MANGUSO
My dialogue is precise. And it’s true. I think out the truth of what the people are saying and why they’re saying it. Dialogue comes because I know what I want my characters to say. I envision the scene; I can imagine them up there on the screen; I try to imagine what they would be saying and how they would be saying it. And I keep it in character. And the dialogue comes out of that.
PADDY CHAYEFSKY
There are so many different kinds of writing and so many ways to work that the only rule is this: do what works. Almost everything has been tried and found to succeed for somebody. The methods, even the idea of successful writers contradict each other in a most heartening way, and the only element I find common to all successful writers is persistence — an overwhelming determination to succeed.
SOPHY BURNHAM
I spend a good deal of time just in solitude. I’ve always favored studies with a window that looks out into a back lawn, or into some trees, or a garden…. For an enchanted time, I had a window on the 24th floor of an apartment building near NYU, and this was a truly magical interlude, enshrined in the concluding chapters of my next novel, A Book of American Martyrs. A good deal of my imagining time is spent on my feet, however, since I like to walk quickly, and I like to run, whenever possible. Writing isn’t really meant to be a sedentary art, I think. Being in motion is stimulating to the soul.
JOYCE CAROL OATES
Someone asked me the other day about writer’s block. Writer’s block basically doesn’t exist. It’s a way of saying the writing you are trying to do came out so badly you’re not willing to go through with it. So it’s not about being blocked, it’s about being unwilling to persevere with really bad-quality writing. My feeling is you should always go through that, because it’s part and parcel to writing. If you’re digging for gold, you sift a lot of crap.
JOE DUNTHORNE
There is no such thing as somebody sitting down and saying, “Now, all right, I’m going to make a new picture.” Not at all. You have ideas stashed away, dozens of them — good, bad, or indifferent. Then you pull them out of your memory, out of your drawer, you combine them…. People think when it comes to a screenplay you start with absolutely nothing. But the trouble is that you have a million ideas and you have to condense them into a thousand ideas, and you have to condense those into three hundred ideas to get it under one hat, as it were. In other words, you start with too much, not with nothing, and it can go in every kind of direction. Every possible avenue is open. They you have to dramatize it — it is as simple as that — by omitting, by simplifying, by finding a clean theme that leads someplace.
BILLY WILDER
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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