Read Writers' Letters and Journals

When people feel depressed or anxious, what often troubles them is time. If you cannot see tomorrow, a minute goes so slowly, the clock doesn’t move, and that’s how I feel when I’m not doing well. So, I read writers’ letters and journals — you’re looking at a lifetime in 600 pages. For instance, Katherine Mansfield died young but in her journal it was a lifetime. She had to live every day. Every day was still pain and struggle and poverty. Days are repetitive. Reading other people’s letters and journals makes me a little more patient with life.

YIYUN LI

Massaged by Fictions

We are a people who are massaged by fictions; we grow up in a sea of narratives and myths, the perpetual invention of stories.… Your mother would tell you stories to illustrate a hundred different points, lessons, morals she wanted to get across to you. Or you’d tell stories to one another as a way of making the moonlight more intoxicating, more beautiful.

BEN OKRI

Walk Away

Do you know the writer Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi? He’s a Hungarian psychologist who writes about the state of flow. If you’re in a creative state, then essentially things sort of coagulate and you enter a state of hyper­consciousness—you can write for an hour or so, but it only seems like a few minutes because you’re so concentrated on it. I’ve experienced that a lot, which doesn’t mean there’s no frustration, but I don’t really remember the frustration very well. I remember more when the writing comes together. And I’m willing to seek out that coming together. If I get frustrated, I’ll go eat something, I’ll go open another Diet Coke, I’ll go to the barn, I’ll distract myself, and then the parts in my brain that were working click and I get an idea. I read an article about how to learn to play a musical instrument. You practice, practice, practice on Friday, then you walk away. And then when you sit down on Saturday, you’re better. Not only because of all the practice, but also because of the walking away. I’m a firm believer in walking away. 

JANE SMILEY

So Much of It Is Luck

So much of it is luck. Dumb fucking luck. There is so much talent out there—in every area—and it can't get a set of eyes [to see it] or ears to hear it because it hasn't gotten into a magical circle yet. The magical circle of the right plays with the right directors with the right agents with the right reviews. No one escapes this; no one ever did. What I would like to do—and what we should all do, including you with your writing and recounting—is to persuade those with dreams and talent to keep at it, despite the odds and despite the fact that the luck hasn't noticed them yet. You have to believe that it will, and what you and I have to do is make some noise and wave some flags so that luck looks over and finally notices the mendicant that has kept up the work.

ARTHUR PENN

Every Writer Approaches Writing in a Different Way

Every writer approaches writing in a different way, and while some of those ways may be more straightforward than others, very few can be dismissed as categorically wrong. There are people who write in order to find out where the story goes. They never talk about what they’re working on. They say that if they knew the ending of the book, there would be no point in writing it, that the story would then be dead to them. And they’re right. There are also people, and I am one of them, who map out everything in advance. (John Irving, for example, can’t start writing his books until he thinks up the last sentence.) And we are also right. There are a couple of habits I have acquired through years of trial and error that I would recommend emulating, but either you will or you won’t.

ANN PATCHETT

The Courage to Write

Finding the courage to write does not involve erasing or “conquering” one’s fears. Working writers aren’t those who have eliminated their anxiety. They are the ones who keep scribbling while their heart races and their stomach churns, and who mail manuscripts with trembling fingers. The key difference between writers who are paralyzed by fear and those who are merely terrified is that—like E. B. White—the latter come to terms with their anxieties. They learn how to keep writing even as fear tries to yank their hand from the page. They find the courage to write.

RALPH KEYES

It Never Gets Easier

It never gets easier to write. The fantasy exists that once certain hurdles have been gotten through, this art turns much simpler, that inspiration never falters, and public opinion is always affirmative, and there’s no struggle, there’s no torment, there’s no sense that the thing you’ve embarked on is a catastrophe.

LOUISE GLÜCK

Mortality

I’ve never written a book, except my first, without at some point considering that I might die before it was completed. This is all part of the superstition, the folklore, the mania of the business, the fetishistic fuss. The right pencils, felt-tips, biros, notebooks, paper, typewriter: necessities which are also objective correlatives for the proper state of mind. This is created by putting aside all that might harmfully impinge, narrowing the focus until only what’s important remains: me, you, the world, and the book—and how to make it as good as it can possibly be. Reminding myself of mortality (or, more truthfully, mortality reminding me of itself) is a useful and necessary prod.

JULIAN BARNES

Believe in Wonders

I must be a very ingenuous reader, because I’ve never thought that novelists mean to say more than what they say. When Franz Kafka says that Gregory Samsa woke up one morning transformed into a gigantic insect, it doesn’t strike me as a symbol of anything, and the only thing that has always intrigued me is what kind of creature he might have been. I believe that in reality there was a time when carpets flew and genies were imprisoned in bottles…. Even more: I believe other similar wonders are still happening, and if we don’t see them it is in large measure because we are impeded by the obscurantist rationalism inculcated in us by bad literature teachers.

GABRIEL GARCÍA MARQUÉZ

Examine Your Motives

Examine your motives. Are you drawn to fiction writing because it can be performed cheaply at home? Are you an alcoholic looking for an excuse to sleep late? Writing is for compulsive storytellers. So are a lot of things—police work, diplomacy, counseling the needy, etc. Before you commit to writing as a career, make sure you’re not simply agoraphobic or depressed.

NELL ZINK