Let Your Subject Find You

Don’t go searching for a subject, let your subject find you. You can’t rush inspiration. How do you think Capote came to “In Cold Blood”? It was just an ordinary day when he picked up the paper to read his horoscope, and there it was — fate. Whether it’s a harrowing account of a multiple homicide, a botched Everest expedition or a colorful family of singers trying to escape from Austria when the Nazis invade, you can’t force it. Once your subject finds you, it’s like falling in love. It will be your constant companion. Shadowing you, peeping in your windows, calling you at all hours to leave messages like, “Only you understand me.” Your ideal subject should be like a stalker with limitless resources, living off the inheritance he received after the suspiciously sudden death of his father. He’s in your apartment pawing your stuff when you’re not around, using your toothbrush and cutting out all the really good synonyms from the thesaurus. Don’t be afraid: you have a best seller on your hands.

COLSON WHITEHEAD

Close the Door

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.

BARBARA KINGSOLVER

You Go Through Phases

Anytime you write something, you go through so many phases. You go through the “I'm a Fraud' phase.” You go through the “I'll Never Finish” phase. And every once in a while you think, “What if I actually have created what I set out to create, and it's received as such?”

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA

Characters Are Selfish

Characters don’t stand nose to nose and take turns speaking. People are selfish. So too are characters. Characters want to talk. They want to be heard. They don’t wait their turn like polite automatons. They can interrupt each other. Finish one another’s sentences. Derail conversations. Pursue agendas. Dialogue is a little bit jazz, a little bit hand-to-hand combat. It’s a battle of energy, wits, and dominance.

CHUCK WENDIG

Just Write

If you start to edit as you write, you are climbing into your “editor” self, the self that reads. You’ve done plenty of reading, you don’t need practice right now. Just write.

SANDRA JENSEN

All of Us Need an Editor

Editing is mostly a process of taking stuff that’s pretty good—or maybe terrific or potentially terrific—and working with the author over problems that come up: problems of tone, problems of clarity, problems of length, problems of one part fitting with another. Why has it suddenly gotten so much bigger here? What this person is saying doesn’t seem to match what she said when we first met her. Something’s happened, there’s a sag here, the energy’s gone out of the story—whatever, there are thousands of things. And young writers were terrified of this—they thought you were ruining their lives. But all writers come to absolutely depend on it. All of us, everywhere, need an editor—every single writer in the world needs an editor, or more than one.

ROGER ANGELL

Works in Progress

There is neither a proportional relationship, nor an inverse one, between a writer’s estimation of a work in progress and its actual quality. The feeling that the work is magnificent, and the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged.

ANNIE DILLARD

Great Writers Are Great Readers

It’s no secret that great writers are great readers, and that if you can’t read, your writing will often suffer. Similarly, if you can read but have to move your lips to get through the longer words, you’ll still be a pretty bad writer. Also, if you pronounce “espresso” like “expresso.”

COLIN NISSAN

Streamline Your Message

Nobody—not even your dog or your mother—has the slightest interest in your commercial for Rice Krispies or Delco batteries or Preparation H. Nor does anybody care about your one-act play, your Facebook page or your new sesame chicken joint at Canal and Tchoupitoulas. It isn’t that people are mean or cruel. They’re just busy. Nobody wants to read your shit. What’s the answer? 1) Streamline your message. Focus it and pare it down to its simplest, clearest, easiest-to-understand form. 2) Make its expression fun. Or sexy or interesting or scary or informative. Make it so compelling that a person would have to be crazy NOT to read it. 3) Apply that to all forms of writing or art or commerce.

STEVEN PRESSFIELD

The World Is Funny

I feel that when you look out into the world, the world is funny. And people are funny. And that people always try to make each other laugh. I’ve never been to a dinner party where nobody said anything funny. If you’re going to ignore that [writing fiction], what are you doing?

LORRIE MOORE