Forgive Yourself

Every time I have set out to translate the book (or story, or hopelessly long essay) that exists in such brilliant detail on the big screen of my limbic system onto a piece of paper (which, let’s face it, was once a towering tree crowned with leaves and a home to birds), I grieve for my own lack of talent and intelligence. Every. Single. Time. Were I smarter, more gifted, I could pin down a closer facsimile of the wonders I see. I believe that, more than anything else, this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers. Forgiveness, therefore, is key. I can’t write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself.

ANN PATCHETT

Your Art Is a Place to Work Stuff Out

I think there’s a real myth that you have to—I don’t know—live a fucked-up life to write fucked-up music. I’ve had enough artists as mentors who write the craziest shit you’ll ever hear in your life, but then go home to their families. They leave it in the work, and then go home and spend time with their family and make that a priority. You can go there in your work. I play Hamilton every night: I have an affair; I lose a son; I get into duels—I get to work out all that shit on stage, and then I go home, and I’ve got the early shift in the morning with baby boy. And that’s really nice. Your art is a place to work stuff out so that you can prioritize your family.

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA

You Don't Know Nothing

I tell my students; I tell everybody this. When I begin a creative writing class I say, “I know you've heard all your life, ‘Write what you know.’ Well I am here to tell you, You don't know nothing. So do not write what you know. Think up something else. Write about a young Mexican woman working in a restaurant and can't speak English. Or write about a famous mistress in Paris who's down on her luck.”

TONI MORRISON

A Writer Is an Explorer

A writer is an explorer. She knows she wants to get somewhere, but she doesn’t know if the somewhere even exists yet. It is still to be created. Don’t sit around looking inward. That’s boring. In the end your navel contains only lint. You have to propel yourself outward, young writer.

COLUM McCANN

The Ending Is the Money Note of the Short Story

If you think about the experience of reading a short story, you can feel, even in the case of stories by “literary” writers like Chekhov or Hemingway, that the ending is the money note of the form, the high C of the composition. And the pleasure it gives us is, in some way, sensory. It produces a brief thrill, a frisson—sometimes (as with many Kipling stories) a sense of mystery (“What really happened?”), sometimes (as with ghost stories) a little shiver of horror, sometimes (as with detective stories) a satisfying “Aha!”

LOUIS MENAND

Minor Characters

Minor characters are the subtext, illustrations of whatever it is you’re trying to convey. I was always struck by the minor characters in Dostoyevsky and Dickens. The minor characters have a certain freedom which the major ones don’t. They can make comments, they can move, yet they haven’t got the same weight, or intensity.

JAMES BALDWIN

Writing Is a Process

One of the most important things that I teach them early on is that writing requires revision and that writing is a process. I teach undergrads and I think often undergrads don’t realize that. They think when you’re a writer, especially a creative writer, that you write something and it’s perfect and you hit send and it goes out to the world. They really don’t understand what a process it is and how there’s an entire group of people working together to revise your work, to refine your work, before it ever reaches an audience.

JESMYN WARD

It's Your Job to Get Better

You should assume that you're worse than your professors, or the writers you admire, and that you have something to learn from them. But then, more importantly, assume that it's your job to get better than them. That's the basis of all student-teacher relationships, regardless of whether this person is actually your teacher or if they’re just someone you want to emulate. You're supposed to get better than them. So go do that. Otherwise what are you doing?

ANTHONY VEASNA SO

The First Draft

I always think it’s better to put too much into the first and second drafts and then you can cut it back. But your first draft is partly you talking to yourself about a subject. And maybe you can’t get through that first draft without talking to yourself about that subject. You can always go back in the second draft and cut out the blibber-blabber and make it just the narrator talking about the story. One of the signals for me that I’m just talking to myself is when I use the word just. I don’t know why that is, but it’s a tic. And so, if I go into my file and I search for the word just, most every case will take me to a place where I’m sort of blithering on.

JANE SMILEY

Note Where the Energy Drops

I try to base my revision on a re-reading of what I’ve done so far, imitating, so far as it’s possible, a first-time reader. That is, I try not to bring too many ideas about what the story is doing etc., etc. Just SEE what it’s doing. In other words, read along with a red pen, reacting in real-time as I go along, deleting, adding, etc. When the energy drops, then I know that’s where I have to really start digging in, i.e., turn away from the hardcopy and go to the computer. Repeat as necessary?

GEORGE SAUNDERS