Resist the Impulse to Sound Cool

I think one of the reasons I like writing first thing, early in the morning, is because that’s when I’m a bit sleepy, a bit off-guard, and I just put the words down on the page without thinking too much about them. When you’re wide awake, you’re thinking about how you sound to others. There’s the impulse to please or to sound cool. We all have that. So I like to put a block of words down while I’m half-asleep. I’ll use the word blah a lot—“He walked with the blah across the blah and blahed his blah until”—and keep moving, not worrying about the sentences or even making sense. Then I’ll chip away at the block of words later, when I’m awake and critical.

KEVIN BARRY

Our First Obligation Is to Create Interesting Characters

I have nothing against lovable characters; there are a great many wonderful ones out there, and no one ought to go out of his or her way to deny a character's best qualities for the sake of being called “uncompromising, hard-edged.” But our first obligation is to create interesting, suggestive, realistic, possibly even challenging situations, set our characters down in them and see where they go. Which may not be the way you wish they could; rather it is the way, given who they are, they must go.

ROSELLEN BROWN

Just Let It Happen

The more I write, the more it seems to me that an idea becomes more powerful almost to the extent that I don’t understand it. When I start writing a book, it’s because I feel forced into a corner. I’m haunted by certain images or ideas or a kind of story, and I have to do it. When I was younger I would analyze my motives much more carefully. As I get older I don’t do that anymore. I just let it happen.

PAUL AUSTER

Writing Should Be Pleasurable

Writing should be pleasurable, it should be fun, it should be exploratory. You should be writing about things that surprise you. That is the instinct for all kinds of art. All you need to do, really, is to take that instinct and transform it into craft.

JOYCE CAROL OATES

Know the Story

Know the story—as much of the story as you can possibly know, if not the whole story—before you commit yourself to the first paragraph…. If you don’t know the story before you begin the story, what kind of a storyteller are you?

JOHN IRVING

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

All of Us Need an Editor

Editing is mostly a process of taking stuff that’s pretty good—or maybe terrific or potentially terrific—and working with the author over problems that come up: problems of tone, problems of clarity, problems of length, problems of one part fitting with another. Why has it suddenly gotten so much bigger here? What this person is saying doesn’t seem to match what she said when we first met her. Something’s happened, there’s a sag here, the energy’s gone out of the story—whatever, there are thousands of things. And young writers were terrified of this—they thought you were ruining their lives. But all writers come to absolutely depend on it. All of us, everywhere, need an editor—every single writer in the world needs an editor, or more than one.

ROGER ANGELL

Count Your Chairs

If you’re thinking of writing a short story with three scenes, it’s not the worst idea to scratch out a sketch of the town the story happens in, the living room where people sit and talk, the view from the windows, the traffic outside. All that is part of the story, and the more deeply you take charge of it, the more easily you keep the reader enchanted. Really bad writers don’t care about this stuff. They’re always having daring adventurers trying to get into “impregnable castles,” but then they figure the hell with it and cut to the next scene, where the hero is inside the castle. We, as “serious” artists, shouldn’t do that. If we’re going to have a dinner party for ten people, we’d better provide a dining room with ten chairs. If there are only eight chairs, there had better be two people who don’t have a place to sit down, or who don’t get invited.

CAROLYN SEE

Go Within

There is only one way: Go within. Search for the cause, find the impetus that bids you write. Put it to this test: Does it stretch out its roots in the deepest place of your heart? Can you avow that you would die if you were forbidden to write? Above all, in the most silent hour of your night, ask yourself this: Must I write? Dig deep into yourself for a true answer. And if it should ring its assent, if you can confidently meet this serious question with a simple, “I must,” then build your life upon it. It has become your necessity. Your life, in even the most mundane and least significant hour, must become a sign, a testimony to this urge.

RAINER MARIA RILKE

History Has a Plot

There’s a strong belief—I think it’s utterly true—that [Edward] Gibbon, in writing The Decline and Fall [of the Roman Empire] was strongly influenced by [Henry] Fielding’s Tom Jones. There’s also a belief that Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War is strongly influenced by his reading of Aeschylus and Sophocles. I believe that the artists are out front and have a great deal to teach historians about good writing and dramatic composition, which I consider the best history to be. Aristotle said, in criticizing great drama, that first you learn how to write well—a good sophomore in high school can do a surprisingly good description of a sunset—then you learn how to draw characters that can stand up and cast a shadow, and the last thing you learn to do is plot. That’s the skill that comes last, if it comes at all. That is where historians neglect a huge advantage. I think history has a plot. You don’t make it up; you discover it.

SHELBY FOOTE