A Novel Takes Over a Writer's Life

I just write what I want to write. Quiet is very beautiful to me, the medium of everything that matters. I'm grateful for the patience of my readers, certainly. But the fact is that a novel takes over a writer's life for literal years. What I write, day by day and word by word, is much of my felt life. It would be a terrible capitulation to give up my explorations of quiet because of anxiety about the receptiveness of readers. I have found that readers are very much to be trusted.

MARILYNNE ROBINSON

The Structure Comes Out of the Writing

Sometimes one can overanalyze, and I try not to do that. To a great degree, much of the structure has got to come naturally out of the writing. I think if you try to preordain, you’re going to stifle yourself. You’ve got a general idea, but the rest has to come naturally out of the writing, the narrative, the character and the situation.

ROBERT LUDLUM

Writing Is Physical

Writing is physical. Thoreau said that over time an old poet learns to guard his or her moods as carefully as a cat watches a mouse. Hemingway advised writers to quit work each day with a bit of juice in the tank, knowing what would be coming the next day—a line of dialogue, a scene—so the writer could then slip more easily back into the dream of the story and not have to expend extra mental and physical energy—the sparks of friction—diving back down into the dream. He didn’t use those words—he compared the process instead to turning down the flame in a pilot lamp to the cool blue glow of just-waiting—but I like to think of it as a diving-down, a submersion, a re-immersion, into the subconscious: the wellspring of discovery, at which the traditional lens-shaped structure of the short story—six to eighteen pages—excels at delivering. 

RICK BASS

Leave It Alone

Another way to see your work freshly is to leave it alone and come back to it after time has passed. I will quite often begin a piece of writing, even hastily, getting a few lines or sentences down, with a title, and then leave it and work on other things, and sometimes I leave it for so long—weeks or months—that when I see the title again I wonder what it is, and even when I read it I don’t recognize it, having completely forgotten it existed.

LYDIA DAVIS

Tony Bill's Advice to Aspiring Screenwriters

1. Move to Los Angeles. That’s where you need to live to get your work read and known. No one is looking for you. You need to introduce yourself and your work in person somehow. It will undoubtedly happen by accident. Los Angeles is where the accidents happen.

2. People are not looking for a writer to “bring their ideas to fruition.” It’s your ideas that they will be interested in, combined with your unusually talented screenwriting ability (if that’s what it is). "Good" will not be good enough.

3. By definition, “freelance” means that you are on your own, without a steady salary or ongoing employment. If you can’t survive financially in that manner, it’s unlikely that you should pursue screenwriting. It’s the most difficult and competitive form of writing there is. That’s why really excellent screenwriters are in demand and handsomely paid in the movie business…and the rest are not.

4. You better start thinking less about movie screenplays and more about writing for television. The cost of making films, and the diminishing audience for them, has almost outlawed the original screenplay. Series TV — weekly or limited — is the place to be if you’re looking for employment. That’s also where the original, fresh, iconoclastic action is.

5. Just remember: Ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s all about execution. West Wing without Aaron Sorkin is a political show. Deadwood without David Milch is a Western. Homicide without David Simon is a cop show. Gray’s Anatomy without Shonda Rhimes is a hospital show. And none of them would ever have seen the light of day without the genius of those writers. And, by the way…you have to be able to put it out there 26 times a year for at least 5 years, or it might not be worth doing in the first place.

6. Whatever you do…don’t read any “How-to-write-a-screenplay” books. Just read a bunch of great scripts and let it go at that. (And if you have to ask what a great one is, you’re in trouble already.)

A Short Story Needs a Beginning, a Middle and an End

Whereas most readers will give a novel ten or twenty pages to get going, a short story needs to grab their attention from the very first sentence. It also needs a beginning, a middle and an end – basic, I know, but it's amazing how many supposed short stories come across as simple exercises in mood writing, with no real plot at all. 

JOANNE HARRIS

You Continue to Chip Away

The terror of the white page never goes away, no matter how much you publish. Do you know how terrified I was this morning, as I woke up and walked into my latest novel? And it doesn’t get any better. Every time I finish a piece of work, I am completely terrified that I’m going to be found out, that I’m a charlatan, that I have nothing left anymore. That I can’t do it anymore. It’s no good; I’ve lost touch. Through all of that, you find another block of stone. You just continue to carve and chip away.

COLUM McCANN

Every Word In a Script Must Count

The one thing that I would recommend to anybody, even though it’s quite a specific recommendation, is the screenplay for Michael Clayton, which to me is one of the greatest screenplays of this new century. The writer, Tony Gilroy, is great about how every word that you put in the script must count in a very different way than in a novel. You’re directing the reading experience in a much more specific way. You need to find a way to do the things you can do in a novel.

MEGAN ABBOTT

Give Elbow Room to the Reader

The creative writer leaves white space between chapters or segments of chapters. The creative reader silently articulates the unwritten thought that is present in the white space. Let the reader have the experience. Leave judgment in the eye of the beholder. When you are deciding what to leave out, begin with the author. If you see yourself prancing around between subject and reader, get lost. Give elbow room to the creative reader. In other words, to the extent that this is all about you, leave that out.

JOHN McPHEE

The Beginning Is the Most Important Part

The beginning of anything you write is the most important part. If you can’t catch someone’s attention at the start, you won’t have a chance to hold it later. Whether you’re writing a novel or an email, you should spend a disproportionate amount of time working on the first few sentences, paragraphs or pages. A lot of problems that can be glossed over in the middle are your undoing at the start.

HARRY GUINNESS