Clean the Kindling Away

Most short stories are too long. When I wrote the novel Something Wicked This Way Comes, the first draft was a hundred and fifty thousand words. So I went through and cut out fifty thousand. It’s important to get out of your own way. Clean the kindling away, the rubbish. Make it clear.

RAY BRADBURY

The Important Thing Is to Write

You mustn’t assume that aesthetic expression is the prime motive for writing; it is really only a means to the more profound end. So don’t worry about it if you write out of sadness or hate or love—fear—or fascination, the important thing, if you wish to do it, is to write.

RALPH ELLISON

What's Hard About Art

It’s fashionable now to object on principle to the idea that writing is hard. Writing isn’t hard, this camp says; working in coal mines is hard. Having a baby is hard. But this is a category error. Writing isn’t hard the way physical labor, or recovery from surgery, is hard; it’s hard the way math or physics is hard, the way chess is hard. What’s hard about art is getting any good—and then getting better. What’s hard is solving problems with infinite solutions and your finite brain.

ELISA GABBERT

Join a Writing Group

You have to decide how important this is to you. If it’s important enough, you won’t have any excuses. You’ll sit in the chair as long as it takes, you’ll write as many drafts as you need to, you’ll open yourself up to critique, you’ll work to improve your craft, you’ll persevere in the face of rejection. The best thing I did when I became serious about writing was to join a writing group. It’s important to find one where the members are dedicated to helping each other improve, rather than tearing each other down. I would advise any aspiring writer to join a supportive writing group, either online or in their community—and if you can’t find one, start one.

LAURA McHUGH

The Bullshit Never Ends

Starting with a small press was the best thing that happened to me, and I do not doubt I will publish with similar places at different points in the future. Being at a place like FSG, or publishing in The Paris Review, is also wonderful. These are relatively new developments. I spent a good deal of time being rejected by everybody everywhere. Still do. The bullshit never ends. That’s the main thing to remember. It never ends. The assholes are stronger in most ways. So you have to ignore them and just write and let that be the meaning of it all. If you publish at a small place or a large one, great. If you make some dough at, without messing with your work in ways that make you uneasy, great. But the meaning of it all is whatever happened when you were writing, and then the power of what you made. Those are the things that matter.

SAM LIPSYTE

The World Needs You

The world needs you. There is large work to be done, good work, and you can make a difference. Whatever your life work, take it seriously and enjoy it. Let’s never be the kind of people who do things lukewarmly. If you’re going to ring the bell, give the rope one hell of a pull. I wish you the fullest lives possible—full of love and bells ringing.

DAVID McCULLOUGH

Great Fiction Shows Us How to Feel

Great fiction shows us not how to conduct our behavior but how to feel. Eventually, it may show us how to face our feelings and face our actions and to have new inklings about what they mean. A good novel of any year can initiate us into our own new experience.

EUDORA WELTY

The Air We Breathe

Of course, as a novelist, I never want to write about “issues” like “the Indian family.” What I want to write about is the air we breathe. These days, I feel that novels, I don’t know for what reason—maybe because of the speed and the way that books have to be sold—these days, novels are becoming kind of domesticated, you know? They have a title, and a team, and they are branded just like NGOs: you writing on gender, you writing on caste, you writing on whatever. But for me, the fact is that these are not “issues”—this is the air we breathe.

ARUNDHATI ROY

A Thousand Ways to Practice

When people talk listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe. You should be able to go into a room and when you come out know everything that you saw there and not only that. If that room gave you any feeling you should know exactly what it was that gave you that feeling. Try that for practice. When you’re in town stand outside the theatre and see how the people differ in the way they get out of taxis or motor cars. There are a thousand ways to practice. And always think of other people.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Sometimes the First Draft Is Best

I hate to say this, but...sometimes the first draft is best. I don’t mean the first draft of a whole thing, but sometimes the first version of a moment or a scene, or even a line of dialogue, is the best one. And sometimes the twentieth or fiftieth is the best one. It’s really weird and hard to account for.

COURTNEY BALESTIER