Working Writer

For me, writing a novel is very much tied to the idea of being a working writer. It's its own job. You have to be your own operations manager, your own managing director, your own HR person, your own accountant, all wrapped up in one. It involves having to be super organized and accountable, and to keep track of what you're doing at the most minute level — really boring stuff. Like, how many times have I used this word, is it too many? You have to have brainstorming sessions that you schedule for yourself, as if you were at a job. Stories, on the other hand, feel looser, more ephemeral, more intuitive. There’s also a lower sort of burden in terms of answering basic questions, which is nice. 

ANTHONY VEASNA SO

Computers Are God's Gift to Writers

To the extent that I begin with notes, I still begin everything by hand (the notes are short, but the hand is long). I move fairly quickly to the computer now and store notes there. As for typewriters, I haven’t used one in years, although I wrote my first three books that way. Very time-consuming. I used to believe that everything should be written out first before being subjected to a keyboard of any sort. One needed to feel the words coming down out of your arm, out your fingers and onto the paper. Then I felt one should do it all again percussively to the clackety-clack sound of a typewriter. But as for revising, well, computers really are God’s gift to writers. It took me a long time to accept even the possibility of that.

LORRIE MOORE

Revision

My former writing teacher, the essayist and cartoonist Timothy Kreider, explained revision to me: One of my favorite phrases is l’esprit d’escalier, “the spirit of the staircase” — meaning that experience of realizing, too late, what the perfect thing to have said at the party, in a conversation or argument or flirtation would have been. Writing offers us one of the rare chances in life at a do-over: to get it right and say what we meant this time. To the extent writers are able to appear any smarter or wittier than readers, it’s only because they’ve cheated by taking so much time to think up what they meant to say and refining it over days or weeks or, yes, even years, until they’ve said it as clearly and elegantly as they can.

HARRY GUINNESS

Sentences Are the Bricks as Well as the Mortar

Constructing a sentence is the equivalent of taking a Polaroid snapshot: pressing the button, and watching something emerge. To write one is to document and to develop at the same time. Not all sentences end up in novels or stories. But novels and stories consist of nothing but. Sentences are the bricks as well as the mortar, the motor as well as the fuel. They are the cells, the individual stitches. Their nature is at once solitary and social. Sentences establish tone, and set the pace. One in front of the other marks the way.

JHUMPA LAHIRI

A Movie Is Not a Book

This is the immutable law of the business: The only screenplays that aren’t tampered with are the ones that aren’t made. A movie is not a book. If the source material is a book, you cannot be too respectful of the book. All you owe to the book is the spirit. Everything else — just tear that motherfucker apart.

RICHARD PRICE

Abuse Your Library Privileges

Cram your head with characters and stories. Abuse your library privileges. Never stop looking at the world, and never stop reading to find out what sense other people have made of it. If people give you a hard time and tell you to get your nose out of a book, tell them you're working. Tell them it's research. Tell them to pipe down and leave you alone.

JENNIFER WEINER

You Must Be Aware of Your Reader, but Only Subconsciously

Reading is hard enough. I realize I’m asking you to come along for a lengthy journey; you’re wasting a good chunk of your week with me, so let’s make this interesting and not too painful. But this is the paradox of the writer, because you must be aware of your reader, but only subconsciously, for if you think too hard about what they want, you will sink your ship before it even sets sail…. You are not only writing for yourself, of course, but you better be prepared to be, because often our works never see the light of day. And this seems fine. We think the world needs our stories but it doesn’t, really. It needs maths and sciences teachers.

REIF LARSEN

Seeds and Pebbles

You cannot be judging yourself as you write the first draft—you want to harness that unexpected energy, and you don’t want to limit the possibilities of exploration. You don’t know what you’re writing until it’s done. So if a draft is 500 pages long, you have to suspend judgment for months. It takes effort to be good at suspending judgment, to give the images and story priority over your ideas. But you keep going, casting about for the next sentence. I think there are two kinds of sentences in a rough draft: seeds and pebbles. If it’s a pebble, it’s just the next sentence and it sits there. But if it’s a seed it grows into something that becomes an important part of the life of the novel. The problem is, you can’t know ahead of time whether a sentence will be a seed or a pebble, or how important a seed it’s going to be.

JANE SMILEY

Stop Aspiring and Start Writing

Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don’t. Who knows, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to.

ALAN WATTS

Write the Tale That Scares You

Write the tale that scares you, that makes you feel uncertain, that is uncomfortable. I dare you. In a world that entices us to browse through the lives of others to help us better determine how we feel about ourselves, and to, in turn, feel the need to be constantly visible, for visibility these days seems to somehow equate to success. Do not be afraid to disappear, from it, from us, for a while, and see what comes to you in the silence.

MICHAELA COEL