PW’s 5 Writing Tips
Our ongoing series, 5 Writing Tips, now has 13 iterations from the most respected and talented practitioners of the craft. Here are all the posts we’ve done (so far). Click the author’s name to see the full article.
Jane Smiley: “My favorite thing to remember about novel-writing is an observation I saw taped to a friend’s wall in her office in graduate school: “Nobody asked you to write that novel”. Therefore novel-writing is a choice–you can always stop, always keep going.“
William H. Gass: “Try to remember that artists in these catastrophic times, along with the serious scientists, are the only salvation for us, if there is to be any. Be happy because no one is seeing what you do, no one is listening to you, no one really cares what may be achieved, but sometimes accidents happen and beauty is born.”
Dinaw Mengestu: "Be generous to your characters: kill them, save them, break their hearts and then heal them. Stuff them with life, emotions, histories, objects and people they love, and once you’ve done that, once they are bursting at the seams, strip them bare.”
Paul Harding: “Don’t write your books for people who won’t like them. Give yourself wholly to the kind of book you want to write and don’t try to please readers who like something different.”
Tana French: “Kill the dream sequence.”
Ann Packer: “Allow yourself to not work.”
Donald Ray Pollock: “Type out other people’s stuff.”
Lydia Millet: “Bore not thyself.”
Max Brooks: “Drafts. Nothing is more intimidating than a blank page. Writing in drafts helps to diffuse some of that pressure. My rough draft has one goal; to write “The End.” I have the next 200-300 drafts to make it good.”
Laini Taylor: “Be an unstoppable force. Write with an imaginary machete strapped to your thigh. This is not wishy-washy, polite, drinking-tea-with-your-pinkie-sticking-out stuff. It’s who you want to be, your most powerful self.”
Blake Bailey: “Be funny.”
Chelsea Cain: “Write the stuff that makes you feel nervous.”
Mary Sharratt: “Research remains ongoing, in parallel with my writing until I reach the final page proofs—just in case I’ve missed any tiny detail.”
