Procrastination and Self-Doubt

I can’t help my procrastination. And for me, at least, it is intimately connected to self-doubt. The novel I’m envisioning at any moment and the novel I’m actually writing are never the same. One is perfect; the other is imperfect. One is intricate and surprising and beautiful; the other is straightforward and conventional and ugly. So ugly that I can’t bear to look at it just yet. When I try to put the fictional world into real words, the result is often frustrating. Before I’ve even started writing the story in my head, I know it will disappoint me on the page.

LAILA LALAMI

Habits Like Iron

Compel yourself to write several hours every day no matter how bad you feel. Eat well three times a day. Ceremoniously. Candles at dinner time. Habits like iron. They will serve as a reward for writing several hours every day no matter how awful you feel. Read the newspaper. It will make you properly angry about everything. Regularly.

WILLIAM H. GASS

Novels Are for Readers

Writing fiction is not "self-expression" or "therapy." Novels are for readers, and writing them means the crafty, patient, selfless construction of effects. I think of my novels as being something like fairground rides: my job is to strap the reader into their car at the start of chapter one, then trundle and whizz them through scenes and surprises, on a carefully planned route, and at a finely engineered pace.

SARAH WATERS

Write as if You Were a Movie Camera

Nothing is sillier than the creative writing teacher’s dictum “Write about what you know.” But whether you’re writing about people or dragons, your personal observation of how things happen in the world—how character reveals itself—can turn a dead scene into a vital one. Preliminary good advice might be: Write as if you were a movie camera. Get exactly what is there. All human beings see with astonishing accuracy, not that they can necessarily write it down.

JOHN GARDNER

You Want the Language to Mean What It Says

As a writer, you want the language to be genuinely significant and mean exactly what it says. That’s why the language of politicians, which is empty of everything but rather brutal signals, is something a writer has to get as far away from as possible. If you believe that words are acts, as I do, then one must hold writers responsible for what their words do.

TONI MORRISON

Books Are Made Like Pyramids

Books aren’t made in the way that babies are: they are made like pyramids, There’s some long-pondered plan, and then great blocks of stone are placed one on top of the other, and it’s back-breaking, sweaty, time consuming work. And all to no purpose! It just stands like that in the desert! But it towers over it prodigiously. Jackals piss at the base of it, and bourgeois clamber to the top of it, etc. Continue this comparison.

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 

You're Doing This Work for Yourself

I don’t think there is any way to convince all the people in your life to buy your book, let alone care about it half as much as you do. Though their validation feels great, it’s important to remember that it’s also not the point. As a writer, you need to approach every project with the understanding that you’re doing this work for yourself, and everything that happens once it’s in the world is out of your control. Whatever project you’re working on now doesn’t derive value from your friends’ approval, but rather from the love and energy you pour into it. You can do the work, and you can keep showing up, and that’s all you’ve got. Most of the time, it’s all you need.

TOM McALLISTER

Memoirists Must Show and Tell

Memoir is the intersection of narration and reflection, of storytelling and essay writing. It can present its story and consider the meaning of the story. The first commandment of fiction—Show, Don’t Tell—is not part of the memoirist’s faith. Memoirists must show and tell.

JUDITH BARRINGTON

Work, You Big Baby!

Every artist and writer I know claims to work in their sleep. I do all the time. Jasper Johns famously said, “One night I dreamed that I painted a large American flag, and the next morning I got up and I went out and bought the materials to begin it.” Just think: You might have been given a whole career in your dreams and not heeded it! It doesn’t matter how scared you are; everyone is scared. Work, you big baby! Work is the only thing that banishes the curse of fear.

JERRY SALTZ

First Readers

I think writers need tolerant people around them. They’re prickly and strange and needy, yet they demand to be left alone. First readers need to be aware of what they’re being asked; it’s mostly for moral support, but any evidence of close reading and real appreciation is welcome to the wretch who feels she’s walking in the dark—it’s as if someone has switched on a light and said, “This way.”

HILARY MANTEL