Everybody Wants Something

Here’s the thing: everybody wants something. Inside the narrative and out. We want to be loved, we want to be seen, we want to be happy, fed, healthy, housed, needed. Did I say loved? Can I say loved enough? And if we’re being true to ourselves and the characters we’re creating, they want what we want. Hence, the question to ask as a writer is What do our characters want and how are they going to get it? Always. Why? Because it’s the question we’ve been asking ourselves our whole lives.

JACQUELINE WOODSON

Writing Is an Act of Nonviolence

Writing is an act of nonviolence, but it’s very active, very aggressive, but you’re not setting off bombs or guns. Just using the pen. It’s like shouting and getting your voice heard and the range is worldwide. You might not be able to stop a war right now, but the words can go out and influence the atmosphere and the world, way into the future.

MAXINE HONG KINGSTON

Five Common Traits of Good Writers

1) They have something to say.

(2) They read widely and have done so since childhood.

(3) They possess what Isaac Asimov calls a “capacity for clear thought,” able to go from point to point in an orderly sequence, an A to Z approach.

(4) They’re geniuses at putting their emotions into words.

(5) They possess an insatiable curiosity, constantly asking Why and How.

JAMES J. KILPATRICK

It Gets Worse with Age

Maybe writers disimprove as they age, because they live with the permanent fear that the gift has gone. It gets worse with age. What happens in youth and then in mid-life…the spasms of…you know,  the famous cliché, “the blank page” happens, but then one morning the writer gets up and thinks, “Ah, one line, just one line, and off you are.” It doesn’t happen as much in old age. It does not. Only by sheer perseverance.

EDNA O’BRIEN

Artistic Suicide

You will recall the young age, when you realized that you wanted to act or write or paint or dance. You're very young, and everything is a dream waiting to be fulfilled, and everyone who has created something that moved or amused or changed you is a hero, an idol, someone to emulate. Some people never get past this phase, and they will never believe that anyone--no matter how great--is ever as talented or worthy as those childhood idols. This is one form of artistic suicide, and I see it often. You cannot allow your standards to calcify at that tender and impressionable age, set by what you loved in your bedroom when you knew nothing and furiously felt everything. Those loves and influences will be your foundation, the scaffolding upon which you add everything else, but it cannot be the end of your development.

ELIA KAZAN

First Readers

I think writers need tolerant people around them. They’re prickly and strange and needy, yet they demand to be left alone. First readers need to be aware of what they’re being asked; it’s mostly for moral support, but any evidence of close reading and real appreciation is welcome to the wretch who feels she’s walking in the dark—it’s as if someone has switched on a light and said, “This way.”

HILARY MANTEL

The Circle and the Spiral

There’s a difference between the circle and the spiral. We say the Earth has a circular orbit around the sun, but of course it doesn’t. You never come back to the same place, you just come back to the same point on the spiral. That image is very deep in my thinking.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

The Dangerous Thing About a Day Job

The dangerous thing about a day job is that you can very quickly become suspicious that you are not a writer. Because you are a letter carrier. Or a waiter, which I also was for fifteen years. For the longest time, I was a working-class person who thought of herself, privately, as a writer. When I was around my working class colleagues I was ashamed to say I wanted to be a writer, and when I was around writers or artists I was ashamed to say I was a waiter. Now I am a writer who’s ashamed to not know how to make money as a writer.

MERRITT TIERCE

If You're Going to Write, Nothing Will Stop You

I have no patience; I don’t hold with the mute inglorious Miltons. I think if he’s demon-driven with something to be said, then he’s going to write it. He can blame the fact that he’s not turning out work on lots of things. I’ve heard people say, “Well, if I were not married and had children, I would be a writer.” I’ve heard people say, “If I could just stop doing this, I would be a writer.” I don’t believe that. I think if you’re going to write you’re going to write, and nothing will stop you.

WILLIAM FAULKNER

The Serial Comma

If I worked for a publication that did not use the serial comma, I would adjust – convert from orthodox to reform – but for now I remain loyal to the serial comma, because it actually does sometimes prevent ambiguity and because I’ve gotten used to the way it looks. It gives starch to the prose, and can be very effective. If a sentence were a picket fence, the serial commas would be posts at regular intervals.

MARY NORRIS