The Real Fun of Writing

But the real fun of writing, for me at least, is the experience of making a set of givens yield. There’s an incredibly inflexible set of instruments—our vocabulary, our grammar, the abstract symbols on paper, the limitations of your own powers of expression. You write something down and it’s awkward, trivial, artificial, approximate. But with effort you can get it to become a little flexible, a little transparent. You can get it to open up, and expose something lurking there beyond the clumsy thing you first put down. When you add a comma or add or subtract a word, and the thing reacts and changes, it’s so exciting that you forget how absolutely terrible writing feels a lot of the time.

DEBORAH EISENBERG

The Block Has Always Been There

I think no more than a week after I started writing I ran into the first block. It's hard to describe it in a way that will be understandable to anyone who is not a neurotic. I will try. All my life I have been haunted by the obsession that to desire a thing or to love a thing intensely is to place yourself in a vulnerable position, to be a possible, if not a probable, loser of what you most want. Let's leave it like that. That block has always been there and always will be, and my chance of getting, or achieving, anything that I long for will always be gravely reduced by the interminable existence of that block.

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

Tell a Story

A writer’s greatest fear now is not that he’s going to be no good when he sits down to write. A writer’s greatest fear is that he’s going to be brilliant and that no one will read it, that no one can read it, that no one knows the difference because they read these stupid “How to write a screenplay” books. It’s made people into idiots. In the old days the writer’s greatest fear was always, this time out, it just isn’t going to happen. I just won’t have the stuff. Now the fear is that I’ll have it, but those little jerks from Harvard Business School won’t be able to understand it. Because these MBAs can follow instructions, they read these books and say your script has to have these characters and those turning points. They ask questions like, “Who are you rooting for at the end of the first act?” I was never conscious of my screenplays having any acts. I didn’t know what a character arc was. It’s all bullshit. Tell a story.

JOHN MILIUS

How to Use a Library

I use a library the same way I’ve been describing the creative process as a writer — I don’t go in with lists of things to read, I go in blindly and reach up on shelves and take down books and open them and fall in love immediately. And if I don’t fall in love that quickly, shut the book, back on the shelf, find another book, and fall in love with it. You can only go with loves in this life.

RAY BRADBURY

It's a Fantastic Language

Unless I have a thorough soaking in all writers who have written in English then I cannot call myself an English writer. It’s a fantastic language, and to be ignorant of it as a writer is a sin that must exact the ultimate penalty, I think. If hell exists, that’s why one would go there, for calling oneself a writer and not knowing anything about English literature.

JEANETTE WINTERSON

It's Never Too Late

Writing is not like dancing or modeling; it's not something where—if you missed it by age 19—you're finished. It's never too late. Your writing will only get better as you get older and wiser. If you write something beautiful and important, and the right person somehow discovers it, they will clear room for you on the bookshelves of the world—at any age. At least try.

ELIZABETH GILBERT

Don't Number Scenes

Don’t number scenes. Scene numbers are only for shooting scripts. They are for breaking down scripts for location and budget purposes and to schedule the shoot. It’s wonderful if you’ve bought fancy software, but shut off the scene-numbering software.

TONY BILL

Always Tell Us Where We Are

Always tell us where we are. And don’t just tell us where something is, make it pay off. Use description of landscape to help you establish the emotional tone of the scene. Keep notes of how other authors establish mood and foreshadow events by describing the world around the character. Look at the openings of Fitzgerald stories, and Graham Greene, they’re great at this.

JANET FITCH

Keep Your Eye On the Ball

When I’m working, when I’m writing, when I’m in the midst of it, or beginning it or ending it, the only reader that counts is myself. You know what they say in baseball, keep your eye on the ball? That’s the ball. I have to keep my eye on that, and never anything else. When I know I’m on the final draft—or think I am—I get to the end and then I prepare four or five copies and I mail them or get them to friends whose critical acumen I trust. I go and sit in her house and we talk about the book and I’ll tape record what they’re saying so I don’t have to take notes and not be involved in the conversation with them. And then I get them home and I transcribe them. And so I begin to make changes. Or if I think one person’s got it all wrong I ignore them. So the book is being described back to me in language which opens my thinking up. So even if they’re wrong, they’re right. There’s something to be gained, even if I think they’re wrong. So that’s what I do. It’s been a wonderful help.

PHILIP ROTH

Stories Are Compasses and Architecture

Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice. To love someone is to put yourself in their story, or figure out how to tell yourself their story. 

REBECCA SOLNIT