Good Writing

I’ve tried to figure out what good writing is. I know it when I read it in other people’s work or my own. The closest I’ve come is that there’s a rhythm to the writing, in the sentence and the paragraph. When the rhythm’s off, it’s hard to read the thing. It’s a lot like music in that sense; there’s an internal rhythm that does the work of reading for you. It almost reads itself. That’s one of the things that’s hard to teach to people. If you don’t hear music, you’re never going to hear it. That internal rhythm in a sentence or a paragraph, that’s the DNA of writing. That’s what good writing is.

SEBASTIAN JUNGER

Let Your Reader Breathe

It can be daunting, visually, from the very beginning, for a reader to realize he or she must focus and engage non-stop on a paragraph that goes on nearly the length of the page. It’s what’s in the paragraph that matters, of course, but still, remember to let your reader breathe. Be interesting, and take care of your reader.

RICK BASS

Just Do It, Badly

Stop NOT writing. Just do it, badly. Just write the thing you need or want to write, that you are avoiding. That avoidance is costing you greatly, isometrically, and in general well-being. So can you find one measly hour, to write, badly?

ANNE LAMOTT

It's No Fun If You Have a Plan

If you have a plan—if you know the end when you start—it’s no fun to write that novel. You know, a painter may draw sketches before he starts painting, but I don’t. There is a white canvas, I have this paintbrush, and I just paint the picture.

HARUKI MURAKAMI

Give Them What They're Not Expecting

The advice wasn’t to me personally, but I recall hearing Jay-Z say something along the lines of, don’t give people what they want, give them what they’re not expecting. It’s what I’ve always believed and it’s powerful to have your philosophy endorsed. I never want to deliver a novel that I think people are expecting, I love the challenge of creating something unique and surprising. It’s so important to write with freedom.

CECELIA AHERN

Editors Are Fatal

If you look at any list of great modern writers such as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, you’ll notice two things about them: 1. They all had editors. 2. They are all dead. Thus we can draw the scientific conclusion that editors are fatal.

DAVE BARRY

It Can Take Years

It can take years. With the first draft, I just write everything. With the second draft, it becomes so depressing for me, because I realize that I was fooled into thinking I’d written the story. I hadn’t—I had just typed for a long time. So then I have to carve out a story from the 25 or so pages. It’s in there somewhere—but I have to find it. I’ll then write a third, fourth, and fifth draft, and so on.

DAVID SEDARIS

Unconscious Processing

Build pockets of stillness into your life. Meditate. Go for walks. Ride your bike going nowhere in particular. There is a creative purpose to daydreaming, even to boredom. The best ideas come to us when we stop actively trying to coax the muse into manifesting and let the fragments of experience float around our unconscious mind in order to click into new combinations. Without this essential stage of unconscious processing, the entire flow of the creative process is broken.

MARIA POPOVA

Take Words Seriously

Words are to be taken seriously. I try to take seriously acts of language. Words set things in motion. I’ve seen them doing it. Words set up atmospheres, electrical fields, charges. I’ve felt them doing it. Words conjure. I try not to be careless about what I utter, write, sing. I’m careful about what I give voice to.

TONI CADE BAMBARA

Fiction Writing Cannot Be Taught

I never wanted to teach “creative writing” or be a writer-in-residence, burdened with students’ writing and required to go to staff meetings. My belief that fiction writing cannot be taught would make me unwelcome in most English departments. But encouragement is necessary to anyone in the arts—to any youthful ambition—so perhaps the value of a writing program is just that, encouragement.

PAUL THEROUX