Expressing the Silence

I don’t know if writing would have become a vocation were it not for my father’s dying when I was twelve, which was like having the scenery collapse on set. I remember getting back on the school bus and picking up conversations as if nothing had happened because I wanted to reassure friends that I was okay. Writing was the opposite of conversation in this sense. It could acknowledge the rift. I didn’t write because I had something to say. I wrote because I thought I had nothing to say and writing gave me words, even to express silence.

SUSAN BARBA

Signs of Growth

Every book I've written…I look at the pages, and I think, Oh, I could have done that better. I could have tightened that sentence. That comma should have been delayed. This chapter should have…had a different speed to it. And that's a sign of growth. I tell my students this. I say, if you look at what you've written months ago or years ago and you're not happy with it, then congrats. You've grown. You shouldn't be sad. You should be happy.

OCEAN VUONG

Writers vs. Critics

I’m sure I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again—there’s a kind of problem between critics and writers. A writer falls in love with an idea and gets carried away. A critic looks at the finished product and ignores the rush of a river that went into the writing, which has nothing to do with the kind of temperate thoughts you have about it. If you can imagine the sheer bloody pleasure of having an idea and taking it! It’s one of the great pleasures in my life. My god, an idea!

DORIS LESSING

Inspiration

I have to trick myself into getting inspired, since actively trying to think of what to write about tends to make my brain short-circuit, open up a Netflix window, and stream old episodes of ’90s sitcoms until the thinking subsides. Just taking a walk and running some errands usually helps, the more boring the better. The only downside to this practice is that I tend to like to talk out loud to myself when I’m generating ideas, so I look insane. About half the time I realize, much too late, that I can use my cell phone as a cover.

UNA LAMARCHE

Good Writing Is All Handmade

Good writing is all handmade. It’s made of words. Looking up words as you write is a vital step in research. A word choice isn’t apt merely because a word’s formal definition seems to fit. Words are layered with meaning, and the layers need to fit as well. If you write “the final solution to our problem” unaware that “final solution” translates the Nazi euphemism for the Holocaust, die Endlösung; if you write “a supercilious handshake” unaware that “supercilious” derives from Latin words meaning “above the eyelid” (i.e., with a lifted eyebrow), you communicate more and less to your reader than you intend. Sloppy word choice isn’t only a literary sin; it’s confusing. If you choose words with their multileveled meanings in mind, your reader will have a better chance of understanding what you mean—and so will you.

RICHARD RHODES

Make It Alive

I’m trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across—not to just depict life—or criticize it—but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful. Because if it is all beautiful you can’t believe in it. Things aren’t that way.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Novels Are Slow

Fiction is an inefficient and insincere vehicle for moralizing. If an author’s motive is to impart a lesson, he would be better off writing a manifesto or publishing a pamphlet and distributing it free on the subway. Novels are, by their very nature, slow. It takes a long time to read a book — longer than looking at a painting or listening to a song. And of course writing one takes even longer. If you are a person whose aim in life is to spread the gospel of good, writing about the inner lives of people who do not exist is a bad use of time.

ALICE GREGORY

Tell the Story You Want to Tell

Tell the story that’s been growing in your heart, the characters you can’t keep out of your head, the tale that speaks to you, that pops into your head during your daily commute, that wakes you up in the morning. Don’t write something just because you think it will sell, or fit into the pigeonhole du jour. Tell the story you want to tell, and worry about how to sell it later.

JENNIFER WEINER

Art Is a Narcotic

Art is not just our expression of life and of ourselves. It is not just our internal cry: Art is the lie we need about the world and ourselves. When we write or paint or act or compose, we are imposing an order, yes, but we are also crafting a world we can control, and usually it is one we can admire--or at the very least recognize. Art is not elite; art is not on a high shelf for a chosen few. Art is, like religion, a primary narcotic.

MARLON BRANDO

Action is Pathos

One of my favorite pieces of writing advice [is] from Aristotle’s Poetics: “Action is not plot,” wrote Aristotle, “but merely the result of pathos.” This is not just advice about writing, but about life itself, the whole megillah, the human catastrophe. If you have people, you will have pathos. We are incited by our feelings — by the love, rage, envy, sorrow, joy, longing, fear, passion — that lead us to action. Plot is really just a fancy word for whatever happens, and structure is a fancy word for how it happens. Plot can be as intricate as a whodunit, or as simple as a character experiencing a small but significant shift in perspective. But invariably it comes from the people we create on the page.

DANI SHAPIRO