Too Much Revision

There is such thing as too much revision—I’ve seen things that were amazing in the 17th version get flattened out in the 23rd—but nothing is born perfect. Well, some things almost are, but they’re freaks.

REBECCA SOLNIT

Poetic Memory

My oldest childhood memories have the flavor of the earth. The meadows, the fields, have done wonders for me. The wild animals…the livestock, the people living on the land, all these are suggestive in a way that very few people understand.… Shepherds, fields, sky, solitude.… This is poetic memory, and I trust it implicitly.

FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA

Do Good Work

What matters is that you do good work. What matters is that you produce things that are true and will stand. What matters is that the Flaming Lips’s new album is ravishing and I’ve listened to it a thousand times already, sometimes for days on end, and it enriches me and makes me want to save people. What matters is that it will stand forever, long after any narrow-hearted curmudgeons have forgotten their appearance on goddamn 90210. What matters is not the perception, nor the fashion, nor who’s up and who’s down, but what someone has done and if they meant it. What matters is that you want to see and make and do, on as grand a scale as you want, regardless of what the tiny voices of tiny people say.

DAVE EGGERS

The Creative Artist Can Change the World

Figuring out what the public wants, or even what the public is: that’s the job of pollsters and publicists and advertisers. All those people study the marketplace. But the creative artist can change the world. A true writer opens people’s ears and eyes, not merely playing to the public, but changing minds and lives. This is sacred work.

ALLEGRA GOODMAN

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