15 years before the recent Wikipedia literary sexism controversy, Margaret Atwood addresses literature’s women problem.
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What a treat: On the New Yorker Fiction Podcast, Margaret Atwood reads from Mavis Gallant’s short story collection Varieties of Exile.
Writing is alone, yes, but I don’t think it’s lonely…ask any writer if they feel lonely when they’re writing their book, and I think they’ll say no…
(Susan Sontag famously observed, “One can never be alone enough to write.”)
Complement with Atwood’s 10 rules of writing.
Happy birthday, Margaret Atwood! Hand-lettered wisdom from her second novel, Surfacing, by the inimitable Lisa Congdon.
Happy birthday, Margaret Atwood! Celebrate with her 10 timeless rules of writing.
Every budding dictatorship begins by muzzling the artists, because they’re a mouthy lot and they don’t line up and salute very easily.
Margaret Atwood in defense of the arts. Also see Atwood’s 10 rules of writing.
1. Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can’t sharpen it on the plane, because you can’t take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils.
10 rules of writing from Margaret Atwood
1. Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can’t sharpen it on the plane, because you can’t take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils.
2. If both pencils break, you can do a rough sharpening job with a nail file of the metal or glass type.
3. Take something to write on. Paper is good. In a pinch, pieces of wood or your arm will do.
4. If you’re using a computer, always safeguard new text with a memory stick.
5. Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.
6. Hold the reader’s attention. (This is likely to work better if you can hold your own.) But you don’t know who the reader is, so it’s like shooting fish with a slingshot in the dark. What fascinates A will bore the pants off B.
7. You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there’s no free lunch. Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but – essentially you’re on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.
8. You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You’ve been backstage. You’ve seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.
9. Don’t sit down in the middle of the woods. If you’re lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.
10. Prayer might work. Or reading something else. Or a constant visualization of the holy grail that is the finished, published version of your resplendent book.
Margaret Atwood’s 10 rules for writing fiction, a fine addition to our ongoing archive of sage writing advice.
Bradbury sinks a taproot right down into the deep, dark, Gothic core of America.
Margaret Atwood on Ray Bradbury.
Also see this rare audio interview with Bradbury from 2003.
