Trust Your Own Interest

Always work (note, write) from your own interest, never from what you think you should be noting, or writing. Trust your own interest. I have a strong interest, at the moment, in Roman building techniques, thus my notation above, taken down in the Cluny Museum in Paris. My interest may pass. But for the moment I follow it and enjoy it, not knowing where it will go. Let your interest, and particularly what you want to write about, be tested by time, not by other people—either real other people or imagined other people. This is why writing workshops can be a little dangerous, it should be said; even the teachers or leaders of such workshops can be a little dangerous; this is why most of your learning should be on your own. Other people are often very sure that their opinions and their judgments are correct.

LYDIA DAVIS

Doubt

I think doubt, questioning and uncertainty are very dynamic—in life and in fiction. Certainty is static. Doubt propels. My characters are dealing with these dilemmas and revelations—as we all do. I don’t embody the characters, but I create them and also I create the realities in which they move, so we are bonded in some slightly unnerving way.

JOANNA KAVENNA

The Wisdom of the Novel

When Tolstoy sketched the first draft of Anna Karenina, Anna was a most unsympathetic woman, and her tragic end was entirely deserved and justified. The final version of the novel is very different, but I do not believe that Tolstoy had revised his moral ideas in the meantime; I would say, rather, that in the course of writing, he was listening to another voice than that of his personal moral conviction. He was listening to what I would like to call the wisdom of the novel. Every true novelist listens for that supra-personal wisdom, which explains why great novels are always a little more intelligent than their authors. Novelists who are more intelligent than their books should go into another line of work.

MILAN KUNDERA

Don't Fight It

I tell my students, your brain is probably telling you something important. It’s saying you’re not ready. Take that image with you. Go on a walk and live your life and maybe something about your life. You pay attention to it, can show you how to write that thing. Don’t fight it. So much of our culture is bent on fighting David and Goliath, wrestling the muse. We look at creation as a battleground. And I think it’s one of the greatest detriments to creativity is to see ourselves as participants in a war when it should be participants in creation.

OCEAN VUONG

Don't Be Afraid to Write Garbage

I feel like it’s all about don’t be afraid to write lots of garbage (but also don’t throw any of it away). Have a very large storage system for all that garbage, because it’s only garbage in context. It may turn out to be a treasure in some other context you haven’t discovered yet.

COURTNEY BALESTIER

It's Like Wrestling

It is like wrestling; you are wrestling with ideas and with the story. There is a lot of energy required. At the same time, it is exciting. So it is both difficult and easy. What you must accept is that your life is not going to be the same while you are writing. I have said in the kind of exaggerated manner of writers and prophets that writing, for me, is like receiving a term of imprisonment — you know that’s what you’re in for, for whatever time it takes.

CHINUA ACHEBE

Keep Reading

It’s really important to feel passionate and driven about what it is you are working on. I never really understood people who say they have writer’s block. It seems to me that the natural remedy to that would be to keep reading. There just isn’t an idea there, but no need to be stressed about that. There’s this seasonal nature to inspiration that we have to harvest. There’s the winter and then the spring, and then wait for the summer for it all to ripen. I’m quite happy in my creative winter.

ELEANOR CATTON

A Character's Motivation

A character can be sharp-witted, twisted, arrogant, contradictory, vain, narcissistic, boorish, even morally repugnant (think Tony Soprano)—as long as the reader understands the character’s motivations. When readers don’t respond, the problem isn’t the character’s misery or self-absorption or churlishness. (Here I’m thinking of Emma Bovary.) The problem is that the reader can’t see far enough beneath the character’s surface actions to understand the deeper feelings underneath.

CHRISTINA BAKER KLINE

A Novel Is Like Falling in Love

It’s very bad to write a novel by act of will. I can do a book of nonfiction work that way—just sign the contract and do the book because, provided the topic has some meaning for me, I know I can do it. But a novel is different. A novel is more like falling in love. You don’t say, “I’m going to fall in love next Tuesday, I’m going to begin my novel.” The novel has to come to you. It has to feel just like love.

NORMAN MAILER

Be Disciplined

Treat writing as a job. Be disciplined. Lots of writers get a bit OCD-ish about this. Graham Greene famously wrote 500 words a day. Jean Plaidy managed 5,000 before lunch, then spent the afternoon answering fan mail. My minimum is 1,000 words a day – which is sometimes easy to achieve, and is sometimes, frankly, like shitting a brick, but I will make myself stay at my desk until I've got there, because I know that by doing that I am inching the book forward. Those 1,000 words might well be rubbish–they often are. But then, it is always easier to return to rubbish words at a later date and make them better.

SARAH WATERS