Writing tips from Donna Tartt
Donβt expect perfection on your first draft.
βYou donβt know what youβre doing for a long time. It seems like a huge mess because it is a huge mess. If you looked at the notes from early on in the writing of this book, youβd think, βThis person is crazy. This could never be a novel.β Thatβs how all my books have felt when I started writing them. Trying to explain them to people was like trying to explain a dream.βΒ
Read - a lot.
βI read a lot while Iβm writing. If Iβm feeling dull or uninspired, Iβll often reach for a book of poetry: Β often an anthology of British and American poets of the 20th century that Iβve had since high school and am superstitious about. At night, I like to read something completely different from what Iβm working on, to get my mind off my workβIvy Compton-Burnet is always bracing and fresh, and so is P.G. Wodehouse.βΒ
Refine your technique.
βTo be good at anything, whether dance or painting or Olympic diving, you have to be really, really attentive to detail. And you also have to be able to forget about technique in the heat of the moment β you have to know your technique so well that itβs second nature. But you never stop trying to refine it.β
Stick to the routine that works for you - even if it makes you antisocial.
βI try to avoid social engagements. Itβs hard for me to socialize or see people while Iβm working. I sleep irregular hours and eat irregular hours and donβt like to be interrupted to go have dinner with someone if my writing is going well. Sometimes even knowing that I have a dinner engagement in the evening will keep me from working well during the day. I DO have a number of exuberant email correspondents thoughβwriting letters to people at the end of the day is often my way of winding down from a day of work.βΒ
βThereβs an expectation these days that novelsβlike any other consumer productβshould be made on a production line, with one dropping from the conveyor belt every couple of years. But itβs for every writer to decide his own pace, and the pace varies with the writer and the work.β
Use your writing to escape from the real world.
βStaying with the same characters for so long is fun, itβs fun seeing how they evolve over time, being in the same world for a long time. Once Iβm there I like to stay there. Itβs an alternate life, itβs wonderful. Of course itβs escapist.β
Drink.
βI like a glass of whiskey in the winter, I like a gin and tonic in the summer, I like a glass of champagne anytime.β
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