Don't Think!

I never went to college — I don’t believe in college for writers. The thing is very dangerous. I believe too many professors are too opinionated and too snobbish and too intellectual, and the intellect is a great danger to creativity … because you begin to rationalize and make up reasons for things, instead of staying with your own basic truth — who you are, what you are, what you want to be. I’ve had a sign over my typewriter for over 25 years now, which reads “Don’t think!” You must never think at the typewriter — you must feel. Your intellect is always buried in that feeling anyway.

RAY BRADBURY

Read Something of Thrilling Quality

One of the best ways to get started writing is to read something of thrilling quality. I never read poetry or fiction, and anything that smacks of usefulness—science or biography—is off-limits. Essentially, I read literary essays. I like super-arrogant, high-level, brainy essays about aesthetics. I had a Nabokov jag for a couple of years: his Lectures on Literature. Kundera has two beautiful books of essays. There’s also Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium. Herbert has that wonderful book Still Life with Bridal. Brodsky is another one. And Benjamin. Hannah Arendt’s introduction to Benjamin. I love introductions. It’s a category in itself. All of my writers read Kafka, but I don’t read Kafka. I only have an interest in reading people who write about reading him.

KAY RYAN

It's Baseball, Not Football

It’s baseball, not football—a long season, slumps, errors, humiliations, bad feelings, bad weather, jet lag, all that stuff, and you just grind it out. You believe that in the end, the numbers (whatever they would be in our business) will show that except for that O-for-31 in May, you had a pretty good season.

STEPHEN HUNTER

It's a Bit Like Doing a Crossword Puzzle

I just sit down. I put down notes after notes, about 400 pages of them, practically all of them utterly valueless, and then eventually once scene would clip onto another scene. It’s a bit like doing a crossword puzzle, you get the clue down and then you have to get the one across and unless the two fit you can’t get any further.

P.G. WODEHOUSE

Time Alone Is the Font of Creativity

Time alone is the gift of self-entertainment—and that is the font of creativity. Because there is nothing better to spur creativity than a blank page or an empty bedroom. I have fond memories of pretending ninjas were going to come into every room of the house and thinking to myself, What is the best move to defend myself? How will I “Home Alone” these ninjas? I was learning to create incredible flights of fancy.

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA

The Work Likes to Be Fluid

The work likes to be fluid. Fluidity is joyful — if you are having fun you throw things at the page willy-nilly. Having said that, I generally write something, reread it, read it again, reread, read it out loud, read, reread, congratulate myself, castigate myself. Back and forth x 1,000. Phew. The first paragraph.

NICOLA BARKER

Writing Habits

I'm a full-time believer in writing habits, pedestrian as it all may sound. You may be able to do without them if you have genius but most of us only have talent and this is simply something that has to be assisted all the time by physical and mental habits or it dries up and blows away. I see it happen all the time. Of course you have to make your habits in this conform to what you can do. I write only about two hours every day because that's all the energy I have, but I don't let anything interfere with those two hours, at the same time and the same place. This doesn't mean I produce much out of the two hours. Sometimes I work for months and have to throw everything away, but I don't think any of that was time wasted. Something goes on that makes it easier when it does come well. And the fact is if you don't sit there every day, the day it would come well, you won't be sitting there.

FLANNERY O’CONNOR

You Have to Be a Born Collaborator

Mr. Diamond and I meet at, say, nine thirty in the morning and open shop, like bank tellers, and we sit there in one room. We read Hollywood Reporter and Variety, exchange them, and then just stare at each other. Sometimes nothing happens. Sometimes it goes on until twelve thirty, and then I’ll ask him, “How about a drink?” He nods, and then we have a drink and go to lunch. Or sometimes we come full of ideas. This is not the muse coming through the windows and kissing our brows. We just sit together and discuss, having more or less settled on the them of what we’re trying to do and having discussed the three acts in which we divide our pictures. We start to do the dialogue, talking to each other, and we fight it out while we’re doing it. If the two of us agree it’s no good, we throw it away and try a third version. In other words, it is not one of those things where you kind of get nervous and angry and walk around and say, “That was the best line ever and you rejected it.” No, let’s find one that we both agree on. So you have to be a born collaborator.

BILLY WILDER

You Have to Keep the Hours of a Kwik-E-Mart

Being a writer, work is pretty much never-ending. You have to keep the hours of a Kwik-E-Mart. You always have to be available to your own work. Ideas don’t arrive with a 9-to-5 regularity, and I sometimes let them collect and on a weekend will answer them. I don’t like the idea of an enforced day of rest — I’ve never been big on that. I sometimes work in the afternoons on Sundays in the New York Society Library — it’s the most beautiful mansion on East 79th Street. It’s a great lending library, and it has a great writing room where a lot of writers you know work.

MEG WOLITZER

Creating Is More Monotony Than Adventure

Creation is not a moment of inspiration but a lifetime of endurance. The drawers of the world are full of things begun. Unfinished sketches, pieces of invention, incomplete product ideas, notebooks with half-formulated hypotheses, abandoned patents, partial manuscripts. Creating is more monotony than adventure. It is early mornings and late nights: long hours doing work that will likely fail or be deleted or erased—a process without progress that must be repeated daily for years. Beginning is hard, but continuing is harder. Those who seek a glamorous life should not pursue art, science, innovation, invention, or anything else that needs new. Creation is a long journey where most turns are wrong and most ends are dead. The most important thing creators do is work. The most important thing they don’t do is quit. 

KEVIN ASHTON