Don’t let fear of writing something imperfect or wrong keep you from doing it. It’s key to publish, get feedback, and keep going.
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And if you want to write criticism or commentary, don’t be afraid to ask questions, or evolve publicly. Vulnerability is a vaccine.
Alyssa Rosenberg, echoing David Foster Wallace’s admonition against perfectionism, offers some advice for aspiring writers – some good, like the above, and some questionable, like:
If you’re trying to break in, read everything and everyone on your subject. If you’re a day late on an old idea, you’re not of any use.
The best ideas have no expiration date and what makes them compelling is the particular point of view. Conflating good writing with newsiness is one of the most unfortunate byproducts of writing for a chronology-biased medium like the web.
Complement with the collected wisdom on writing from some of history’s greatest authors.
Novelist Tessa Hadley adds to our ongoing archive of advice on writing.
Complement with this reading list of great writers’ collected wisdom on the craft.
Novelist Tessa Hadley reflects on gender and writing.
1. Don’t go out to lunch.
2. Don’t go online until lunch.
3. Don’t start writing your novel until you know your characters very, very well. What they’d do if they saw somebody shoplifting. What they were like at school. What shoes they wear. Spend days – weeks, months – being them until they thicken up and start to breathe. VS Pritchett said, “There’s no such thing as plot, only characters.” Once you know them well they’ll lead you into their stories. If you start too soon you won’t have a clue what they’re going to do and all is chaos.
4. However hopeless and inadequate you feel, leave that self behind. Psych yourself up until you’re confident that the world will be interested in what happens to your characters. Confidence is key.
5. Don’t “write”. “Writing” is about showing off, or imitating other writers. “Writing” mistakes solemnity for seriousness. Just write. Have courage, be truthful, be true to your characters.
6. Don’t be daunted. Writing a novel is a huge adventure; when it’s going well it’s more fun than fun. When it stutters to a halt put it aside. Go for a swim, go for a walk, take a week off. Don’t panic or be afraid; you and your characters are in it together. Trust them to come to your rescue. Of course it’s a long haul, but you always knew that, didn’t you?7. If a character stubbornly refuses to come alive, switch to the first person. Suddenly they’ll be speaking to you. Later you can change it back again if you need to.
8. I have to know the ending before I can begin. Map out as much as you need but don’t over-plot or you can constrict your characters. Let them change it as they go along.
9. You don’t have to know the ending.
10. In other words, you don’t have to listen to anyone’s advice. There are no rules to break. That’s the pleasure of it. Read The Paris Review interviews with writers – everyone has their own methods and if a novel is truly alive it will break all their rules too.
11. Discover the times when you’re most creative – mornings, nights, afternoons – and clear the time to work then. Many writers find the mornings are best, and the afternoons are only good for editorial corrections, or getting the washing done. Others can only work through the night, drunk.
12. Sort out your priorities. Don’t clean your home, other than as a displacement activity. There won’t be time. You’ll probably neglect your friends too, and even your personal hygiene. If you have children, however, try to keep them fed.
Ernest Hemingway’s reading list for a young writer, including:
Complement with Hemingway on writing and wisdom from his 1954 Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
Also see Carl Sagan’s reading list and David Foster Wallace’s syllabus.
Amanda Palmer on the terrifying joy of sharing your art online – fantastic talk from the Grub Muse literary conference.
Follow your own curiosity and say the most interesting stuff first. There is this weird idea of a “general reader,” who reads the New York Times and is equally interested in about 200 things (politics, peace in the middle east, pie, &c). I don’t think such people exist. And if they do, they are too busy reading the New York Times to read whatever you’re writing.
So forget that hypothetical reader and write about the things that are most interesting to you. Then, make it your mission to explain to readers why they should care about this thing you find interesting.
At the base of it, I guess I don’t believe in other people’s hierarchies about what’s important in the world. … And — this is one reason I love the web — all the analytics I’ve ever seen on my stories indicate that my own interest level and effort dictate what does well, *not* the subject matter.
“Forget your generalized audience,” John Steinbeck advised in his six timeless tips on writing, and The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal echoes him with even more depth and dimension in his own advice on writing.
To be a great writer: know everything about adjectives and punctuation (rhythm)
have moral intelligence — which creates true authority in a writer.
Mapping the world’s writing systems. Also see this visual history of how sounds became shapes and this short animation on who invented writing.
When was super depressed, I wasn’t working—I was always too depressed. Hemingway did his best work when he didn’t drink, then he drank himself to death and blew his head off with a shotgun. Someone asked John Cheever, “What’d you learn from Hemingway?” and he said “I learned not to blow my head off with a shotgun.” I remember going to the Michigan poetry festival, meeting Etheridge Knight there and Robert Creeley. Creeley was so drunk—he was reading and he only had one eye, of course, and had to hold his book like two inches from his face using his one good eye. But you look at somebody like George Saunders—I think he’s the best short story writer in English alive—that’s somebody who tries very hard to live a sane, alert life.
You’re present when you’re not drinking a fifth of Jack Daniel’s every day. It’s probably better for your writing career, you know? I think being tortured as a virtue is a kind of antiquated sense of what it is to be an artist.
In an interview with The Fix, Mary Karr debunks the toxic mythology that it is necessary to be damaged in order to be creative. My own vehement defiance to that mythology is what led me to choose Ray Bradbury – the ultimate epitome of creating from joy rather than suffering – as the subject of my contribution to The New York Times’ The Lives They Lived.
Pair with Karr on why writers write.
