The Best Thing About Writing Fiction

The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it’s about and why you’re doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising…and it’s magic and wonderful and strange.

NEIL GAIMAN

Writers Are Particular About Their Writing Materials

Writers are very particular about their writing materials. Even if they work on a computer, they edit with a particular pen (in my case, a pen imprinted “Bob Adelman”); they have legal pads about which they are very particular—size, color—and other things on their desk that they almost never need: scissors; Scotch tape. Few cut up their manuscripts and crawl around the floor anymore, refitting the paragraphs or rearranging chapters, because they can “cut” and “paste” on the computer. As a rule, writers keep either a very clean desktop or a messy one. To some extent, this has to do with whether they’re sentimental.

ANN BEATTIE

Write Whatever You Want to Write

I don’t think writers should be worried about treading any lines between autobiography and fiction. You should write whatever you want to write. Once you label it fiction, it’s fiction, even if you give the protagonist a feeling you’ve felt, or your same hometown. All fiction is born out of some alchemy of observation, imagination, and personal experience.

RACHEL KHONG

Be Wary of Becoming a Poet

Be wary of becoming a poet. Be wary of becoming anything. I mean: you want to become a surgeon. Or, I should say, you want your surgeon to have become a surgeon! But don’t become a poet. You’ll never get there. Just get started. Each morning, make a little progress. Send out a little prayer. Take note of something. Try to be facing in the direction of the surprise.

CARRIE FOUNTAIN

Look Back Upstream

Look back upstream. If you have come to your planned ending and it doesn’t seem to be working, run your eye up the page and the page before that. You may see that your best ending is somewhere in there, that you were finished before you thought you were.

JOHN McPHEE

Write Like You Talk

I owe a vast debt to Simon Hoggart of The Guardian (son of the author of The Uses of Literacy), who about 35 years ago informed me that an article of mine was well argued but dull, and advised me briskly to write “more like the way that you talk.” At the time, I was near speechless at the charge of being boring and never thanked him properly, but in time I appreciated that my fear of self-indulgence and the personal pronoun was its own form of indulgence.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Read Writers’ Letters and Journals

When people feel depressed or anxious, what often troubles them is time. If you cannot see tomorrow, a minute goes so slowly, the clock doesn’t move, and that’s how I feel when I’m not doing well. So, I read writers’ letters and journals — you’re looking at a lifetime in 600 pages. For instance, Katherine Mansfield died young but in her journal it was a lifetime. She had to live every day. Every day was still pain and struggle and poverty. Days are repetitive. Reading other people’s letters and journals makes me a little more patient with life.

YIYUN LI

Novels Have Deep Roots in Storytelling

We often forget that novels have deep roots in storytelling, because books are objects, things you hold and read alone in your underwear. But I always try to connect the novel back to its roots: We’re sitting around a campfire, and now it’s someone’s turn to tell a story. I try to think of myself as a storyteller, rather than a “writer.”

REIF LARSEN

Read, Read, Read

There was a wonderful, wonderful English teacher at Quincy [Illinois] High School, named Marjorie Bolt, who had tremendous influence on me. I guess maybe everyone has had this experience—one high school teacher that just made the world come to life. She could do that. I just loved her English classes. She always said, “Read, read, read.” She was constantly shoving books into our hands, and she was so enthusiastic about it. I still remember that very vividly.

JAMES B. STEWART

Writing Is for Compulsive Storytellers

Examine your motives. Are you drawn to fiction writing because it can be performed cheaply at home? Are you an alcoholic looking for an excuse to sleep late? Writing is for compulsive storytellers. So are a lot of things—police work, diplomacy, counseling the needy, etc. Before you commit to writing as a career, make sure you’re not simply agoraphobic or depressed.

NELL ZINK