Clarity First

Thou shalt aim always at clarity of exposition, to which all other literary aims shall be subordinated, remembering the words of the prophet commandant Black, "clarté prime, longueur secondaire." To this end thou shalt strive that no sentence be syntactically capable of any unintended meaning, and that no reader be obliged to read any sentence twice to be sure of its true meaning. To this end also thou shalt not fear to repeat thyself, if clarity require it, nor to state facts which thou thinkest as well known to others as to thyself; for it is better to remind the learned than to leave the unlearned in perplexity.

HUGH TREVOR-ROPER

If It Ain't Broke...

Any small room with no natural light will do. As for when, I have no particular schedules... afternoons are best, but I’m too lethargic for any real regime. When I’m in the flow of something I can do a regular 9 to 5; when I don’t know where I’m going with an idea, I’m lucky if I do two hours of productive work. There is nothing more off-putting to a would-be novelist to hear about how so-and-so wakes up at four in the a.m, walks the dog, drinks three liters of black coffee and then writes 3,000 words a day, or that some other asshole only works half an hour every two weeks, does fifty press-ups and stands on his head before and after the "creative moment." I remember reading that kind of stuff in profiles…and becoming convinced everything I was doing was wrong. What’s the American phrase? If it ain’t broke....

ZADIE SMITH

Trusted Collaborators

I really like having a community of trusted collaborators who can help me figure out very early whether material is alive and whether I’m making any egregious mistakes. There is tremendous solitude around writing, and I like that. Most people who write seriously tend to be pretty solitary people. But that does not mean that I can work in isolation and know if what I’m doing is good. I need a community to help me understand what’s working and what isn’t, and I really encourage people to try to find that.

JENNIFER EGAN

Be Concise

Be concise; try expressing your thoughts with the least possible number of words, avoiding long sentences—or sentences interrupted by incidental phrases that always confuse the casual reader—in order to avoid contributing to the general pollution of information, which is surely (particularly when it is uselessly ripe with unnecessary explanations, or at least non indispensable specifications) one of the tragedies of our media-dominated time.

UMBERTO ECO

There Should Always Be a Window

Writing is facing your deepest fears and all your failures, including how hard it is to write a lot of the time and how much you loathe what you’ve just written and that you’re the person who just committed those flawed sentences (many a writer, and God, I know I’m one, has worried about dying before the really crappy version is revised so that posterity will never know how awful it was). When it totally sucks, pause, look out the window (there should always be a window) and say, I’m doing exactly what I want to be doing.

REBECCA SOLNIT

If in Doubt, Cut It

The rule for most writers is, “If in doubt, cut it.” The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer John McPhee has called the process “writing by omission.” William Faulkner exhorted, “In writing you must kill all your darlings.” This is true at every level: If a word isn’t necessary in a sentence, cut it; if a sentence isn’t necessary in a paragraph, cut it; and if a paragraph isn’t necessary, cut it, too.

HARRY GUINNESS

Go Within

There is only one way: Go within. Search for the cause, find the impetus that bids you write. Put it to this test: Does it stretch out its roots in the deepest place of your heart? Can you avow that you would die if you were forbidden to write? Above all, in the most silent hour of your night, ask yourself this: Must I write? Dig deep into yourself for a true answer. And if it should ring its assent, if you can confidently meet this serious question with a simple, “I must,” then build your life upon it. It has become your necessity. Your life, in even the most mundane and least significant hour, must become a sign, a testimony to this urge.

RAINER MARIA RILKE

Just Write as Well as You Can

The best advice came from my agent, when I was a year or so into my career. I was dithering about a future project, saying that there was a way to do it that would be accessible and commercial, and a way to do it that would be smart but unpopular. He said, “Just write as well as you can.” That advice has saved me years. I never again asked the question, of myself or anyone else. It’s the only way to work—don’t write to what you perceive as a market. Don’t write out of anyone’s need except your own. Don’t try to cater to an audience you think may not be keeping up with you—find the audience who will. I have amplified the advice in my mind: just serve your subject. Each book makes different and fierce demands. Each one uses up all you can do. Later you may be able to do more.

HILARY MANTEL

The Oppositional Imagination

For more than fifty years I have been writing, tearing up, revising poems, studying poets from every culture and century available to me. I have been a poet of the oppositional imagination, meaning that I don’t think my only argument is with myself. My work is for people who want to imagine and claim wider horizons and carry on about them into the night, rather than rehearse the landlocked details of personal quandaries or the price for which the house next door just sold.

ADRIENNE RICH

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