MY WRITERS SITE: On writing

It’s a feeling of happiness that knocks me clean out of adjectives. I think sometimes that the best reason for writing novels is to experience those four and a half hours after you write the final word.” Zadie Smith: The Psychology of the Two Types of Writers

“By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself.” George Orwell: Writing, How to Counter the Mindless Momentum of Language, and the Four Questions a Great Writer Must Ask Herself

“Success consists in felicity of verbal expression, which every so often may result from a quick flash of inspiration but as a rule involves a patient search… for the sentence in which every word is unalterable.” Italo Calvino: The Art of Quickness, Digression as a Hedge Against Death, and the Key to Great Writing

“If you’re going to be a writer you have to be one of the great ones… After all, there are better ways to starve to death.” Gabriel García Márquez on His Unlikely Beginnings as a Writer

“I doubt I would have written a line … unless some minor tragedy had sort of twisted my mind out of the normal rut.” Roald Dahl: How Illness Emboldens Creativity: A Moving Letter to His Bedridden Mentor

“When you have made a thorough and reasonably long effort, to understand a thing, and still feel puzzled by it, stop, you will only hurt yourself by going on.” Lewis Carroll: How to Work Through Difficulty and His Three Tips for Overcoming Creative Block

“Just set one day’s work in front of the last day’s work. That’s the way it comes out. And that’s the only way it does.” John Steinbeck: The Diary as a Tool of Discipline, a Hedge Against Self-Doubt, and a Pacemaker for the Heartbeat of Creative Work

“Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down.” E.B. White: How to Write for Children and the Writer’s Responsibility to All Audiences

“If we think that our reader is an idiot, we should not use rhetorical figures, but if we use them and feel the need to explain them, we are essentially calling the reader an idiot. In turn, he will… Umberto Eco’s Advice to Writers

“All creative art is magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar and surprising, for the edification of mankind.” Joseph Conrad on Art and What Makes a Great Writer, in a Beautiful Tribute to Henry James

“In any art you’re allowed to steal anything if you can make it better.” Hemingway’s Advice on Writing, Ambition, the Art of Revision, and His Reading List of Essential Books for Aspiring Writers

“Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.” James Baldwin’s Advice on Writing

“It’s by writing… by stepping back a bit from the real thing to look at it, that we are most present.” Alison Bechdel on Writing, Therapy, Self-Doubt, and How the Messiness of Life Feeds the Creative Conscience

“My belief of book writing is much the same as my belief as to shoemaking. The man who will work the hardest at it, and will work with the most honest purpose, will work the best.” Anthony Trollope: Witty and Wise Advice on How to Be a Successful Writer

“My belief of book writing is much the same as my belief as to shoemaking. The man who will work the hardest at it, and will work with the most honest purpose, will work the best.” William Styron: Why Formal Education Is a Waste of Time for Writers

“The writer cannot make the seas of distraction stand still, but he [or she] can at times come between the madly distracted and the distractions.” Saul Bellow: How Writers and Artists Save Us from the “Moronic Inferno” of Our Time

“There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored.” Flannery O’Connor: Why the Grotesque Appeals to Us, Plus a Rare Recording of Her Reading

“Writers serve as the memory of a people. They chew over our public past.”Annie Dillard: The Art of the Essay and Narrative Nonfiction vs. Poetry and Short Stories

“Style ought to prove that one believes in an idea; not only that one thinks it but also feels it.” Nietzsche: 10 Rules for Writers

“If it sounds like writing … rewrite it.” Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing

“When you’re trying to create a career as a writer, a little delusional thinking goes a long way.” Michael Lewis: Writing, Money, and the Necessary Self-Delusion of Creativity

“At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it. You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then — and only then — it is handed to you.” Annie Dillard on Writing

“There is a great deal that either has to be given up or be taken away from you if you are going to succeed in writing a body of work.” Susan Sontag on Writing

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life.” Anne Lamott: Writing and Why Perfectionism Kills Creativity

“To write well about the elegant world you have to know it and experience it to the depths of your being… what matters is not whether you love it or hate it, but only to be quite clear about your position regarding it.” Italo Calvino on Writing: Insights from 40+ Years of His Letters

“All bad writers are in love with the epic.” Ernest Hemingway : Writing, Knowledge, and the Danger of Ego

“Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too.” Isabel Allende: Writing Brings Order to the Chaos of Life

“Work on one thing at a time until finished.” Henry Miller’s 11 Commandments of Writing

“Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.” Kurt Vonnegut: 8 Rules for a Great Story

“You have to simply love writing, and you have to remind yourself often that you love it.” Susan Orlean on Writing

“Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand — but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.” Zadie Smith: 10 Rules of Writing

“Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish.” John Steinbeck: 6 Tips on Writing, and a Disclaimer

“Nothing any good isn’t hard.” F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Secret of Great Writing (1938)

“unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don’t do it.” Charles Bukowski Debunks the “Tortured Genius” Myth of Creativity

“Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story there is a shimmering go-between. That go-between, that prism, is the art of literature.” Vladimir Nabokov: Writing, Reading, and the Three Qualities a Great Storyteller Must Have

“Short stories demand a certain awareness of one’s own intentions, a certain narrowing of the focus.” Joan Didion: Telling Stories, the Economy of Words, Starting Out as a Writer, and Facing Rejection

“A book in a man’s brain is better off than a book bound in calf — at any rate it is safer from criticism.” Herman Melville’s Daily Routine and Thoughts on the Writing Life

“The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is … to help man endure by lifting his heart.” William Faulkner’s Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech: The Writer as a Booster of the Human Heart

“In a country this large and a language even larger … there ought to be a living for somebody who cares and wants to entertain and instruct a reader.” John Updike: Making Money, How to Have a Productive Daily Routine, and the Most Important Things for Aspiring Writers to Know

“To make your life being a writer, it’s an auto-slavery … you are both the slave and the task-master.” Susan Sontag : Writing, Routines, Education, and Elitism in a 1992 Recording from the 92Y Archives

“The difference between blind optimism and the urge to improve the world’s imperfection.” Chinua Achebe: The Meaning of Life and the Writer’s Responsibility in Society

“Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays” E. B. White: Egoism and the Art of the Essay

“Writing is not an exercise in excision, it’s a journey into sound.” E. B. White: Why Brevity Is Not the Gold Standard for Style

“The blizzard doesn’t last forever; it just seems so.” Ray Bradbury: Creative Purpose in the Face of Rejection

“The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not.” Kurt Vonnegut: How to Write With Style and the 8 Keys to the Power of the Written Word (1985)

“However thoroughly we lose ourselves in the vortex of our invention, we inhabit a corporeal world.” Mary Gordon: The Joy of Notebooks and Writing by Hand as a Creative Catalyst

“A writer loves the dark, loves it, but is always fumbling around in the light.” Joy Williams: Why Writers Write

“Sheer egoism… Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust of humanity.” George Orwell: The Four Motives for Writing (1946)

“A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk.” Helen Dunmore: 9 Rules of Writing

“Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life.” E. B. White: The Role and Responsibility of the Writer (1969)

“The test of a writer is whether you want to read him again years after he should by the rules be dated.” Raymond Chandler on Writing

“Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.” Neil Gaiman: 8 Rules of Writing

“Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.” Anaïs Nin: Why Emotional Excess is Essential to Writing and Creativity

“A page of Addison or of Irving will teach more of style than a whole manual of rules, whilst a story of Poe’s will impress upon the mind a more vivid notion of powerful and correct description and narration than will ten dry chapters of a bulky textbook.” H. P. Lovecraft: Advice to Aspiring Writers (1920)

“Writing is like going to bed with a beautiful woman and afterwards she gets up, goes to her purse and gives me a handful of money.” Charles Bukowski on Writing and His Insane Daily Routine

“In the marginalia … we talk only to ourselves; we therefore talk freshly — boldly — originally — with abandonment — without conceit.” Edgar Allan Poe: The Joy of Marginalia and What Handwriting Reveals about Character

“As a writer you should not judge. You should understand.” How to Be a Writer: Ernest Hemingway’s Advice to Aspiring Authors

“Talented writing makes things happen in the reader’s mind — vividly, forcefully — that good writing, which stops with clarity and logic, doesn’t.” Samuel Delany: Good Writing vs. Talented Writing

“To make your life being a writer, it’s an auto-slavery … you are both the slave and the task-master.” Susan Sontag : Writing, Routines, Education, and Elitism in a 1992 Recording from the 92Y Archives

“The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines.” Leonard Cohen: Creativity, Hard Work, and Why You Should Never Quit Before You Know What It Is You’re Quitting

“For a person whose sole burning ambition is to write — like myself — college is useless beyond the Sophomore year.” William Styron: Why Formal Education Is a Waste of Time for Writers

“There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored.” Flannery O’Connor: Why the Grotesque Appeals to Us, Plus a Rare Recording of Her Reading

“Style ought to prove that one believes in an idea; not only that one thinks it but also feels it.” Nietzsche: 10 Rules for Writers

“It’s a feeling of happiness that knocks me clean out of adjectives. I think sometimes that the best reason for writing novels is to experience those four and a half hours after you write the final word.” Zadie Smith: The Psychology of the Two Types of Writers

“If you’re going to be a writer you have to be one of the great ones… After all, there are better ways to starve to death.” Gabriel García Márquez on His Unlikely Beginnings as a Writer

“Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.” James Baldwin’s Advice on Writing