Limitations Mean Freedom

The way to get over creative block is to simply place some constraints on yourself. It seems contradictory, but when it comes to creative work, limitations mean freedom. Write a song on your lunch break. Paint a painting with only one color. Start a business without any start-up capital. Shoot a movie with your iPhone and a few of your friends. Build a machine out of spare parts. Don't make excuses for not working -- make things with the time, space, and materials you have, right now.

AUSTIN KLEON

There Are No Rules

There are no rules. It’s amazing how willing people are to tell you that you aren’t a real writer unless you conform to their clichés and their rules. My advice? Reject rules and critics out of hand. Define yourself. Do it your way. Make yourself the writer of your dreams.

ANNE RICE

The Golden Hours

I get my admin done by noon if I can, and push it out of my mind so I can do some real work. I feel shy of saying this, because to non-writers it sounds so lazy—but if, seven days a week, you can cut out two hours for yourself, when you are undistracted and on-song, you will soon have a book. Unoriginally, I call these “the golden hours.” It doesn’t much matter where I find them, as long as I do. I usually work many hours more. But sometimes I wonder why.

HILARY MANTEL

Writing Is Selection

Writing is selection. Just to start a piece of writing you have to choose one word and only one from more than a million in the language. Now keep going. What is your next word? Your next sentence, paragraph, section, chapter? Your next ball of fact. You select what goes in and you decide what stays out. At base you have only one criterion: If something interests you, it goes in—if not, it stays out. That’s a crude way to assess things, but it’s all you’ve got.

JOHN McPHEE

It's Like Being in Love

You inhabit another realm when you are writing a novel. It’s like being in love—being “in novel.” At times, the need is unbearable. During those periods, I don’t want to write short stories. On the other hand, I might get a spark or an idea for a story; then I need a certain willpower to start pulling the thread, with the exact tension and patience so as to discover what lies behind the glimpse. Cortázar said that when the moment came he had to go to the typewriter and pull the story out of himself as if he were pulling out some kind of creepy creature, una alimaña. It sometimes feels like that.

LUISA VALENZUELA

The Sentences Need to Refract Light

I knew I could write sentences, but getting the world in my head, and the things I was feeling, onto the page—that’s been an entirely different story. It took me what seems like forever to understand how to put the Indian Country I know on the page. The big problem, which is the problem every Native writer deals with, is how to talk about something the reader likely knows nothing about. How do you write into a cultural space where people have nothing but tropes to fall back on in order to understand you? And then—how do you push back against those simplistic ideas without turning into an explanation machine? Fiction has to be about more than explaining something to the uninitiated, and it has to be about more than your personal politics, lest the work become mere propaganda. It also has to hit the deep, human things that are common to all people. Everyone knows love; everyone comes to know loss. And it has to be beautiful in some way. The sentences have to be more than a method for conveying information; they also have to be objects unto themselves. They need to refract light.

STERLING HOLYWHITEMOUNTAIN

A Story Is a Story Is a Story

As a storyteller, I get very confused by the notion of genre. Even now, if you put a gun to my head I would be hard-pressed to tell you what it is. If there is a talking robot is it science fiction? If there is a dwarf with an axe and a cappuccino is it fantasy? I mean what even is YA anymore? Smaller words? Less complex emotional situations? No sodomy? Mostly genre is a shortcut for publishers and readers looking to categorize stories. Good writers rarely take shortcuts so genre doesn’t seem to be a very helpful discourse for us. A story is a story is a story.

REIF LARSEN

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

Some of the Key Responsibilities of the Writer, According to Philip Pullman

1. Make money

If we find we can make money writing books, by telling stories, we have the responsibility…of doing it as well and as profitably as we can.

2. Protect language

If human beings can protect the climate, we can certainly affect the language, and those of us who use it professionally are responsible for looking after it. 

3. Have tact

We who tell stories should be modest about the job, and not assume that because the reader is interested in the story, they’re interested in who’s telling it. A storyteller should be invisible, as far as I’m concerned.

4. Service the story

As the servant, I have to do what a good servant should. I have to be ready to attend to my work at regular hours…. I have to keep myself sober during working hours; I have to stay in good health.

Give Them What They're Not Expecting

The advice wasn’t to me personally, but I recall hearing Jay-Z say something along the lines of, don’t give people what they want, give them what they’re not expecting. It’s what I’ve always believed and it’s powerful to have your philosophy endorsed. I never want to deliver a novel that I think people are expecting, I love the challenge of creating something unique and surprising. It’s so important to write with freedom.

CECELIA AHERN