advice/writing
Patricia Highsmith,
Ursula K. Le Guin,
Mary Karr,
Anne Lamott,
David Foster Wallace,
Vijay Prashad,
George Saunders,
Alexander Chee,
Robert Hass
tips
11/24/44
Perils of a first novel: Every character is one’s self, resulting in an oversoft or overhard treatment, neither of which results in the objective, which is essentially what has made good so much of the writing one has done before.
7/1/45
For future reference: In case of doldrums of mind or body or both, sterility, depression, inertia, frustration, or the overwhelming sense of time passing and time past, read true detective stories, take suburban train rides, stand a while in Grand Central—do anything that may give a sweeping view of individuals’ lives, the ceaseless activity, the daedal ramifications, the incredible knots of circumstance, the twists and turns in all their lives, which no writer is gifted enough to conceive, sitting in the closeness of his quiet room.
1/31/47
A writer should not think himself a different kind of person from any other, since this is the way to the promontory. He has developed a certain part of himself which is contained in every man: the seeing, the setting down. Only in the realization of this humble and heroic fact can he become what he must be, a medium, a pane of glass between God on the one side and man on the other.
9/3/47
Advice to a young writer: approach the typewriter with respect and formality. (Is my hair combed? My lipstick on straight? Above all are my cuffs clean and properly shot?) The typewriter is quick to detect any nuance of irreverence and can retaliate in kind, in double measure, and effortlessly. The typewriter is above all alert, sensitive as you are, far more efficient in its tasks. After all, it slept better than you did last night, and just a little longer.
5/7/50
It is freedom, which muddles a man up. I am not advocating totalitarianism. But a writer must learn how to impose his own totalitarianisms upon himself, himself being sole governor, knowing that he is free to change discipline and routine after due process of altering within himself his legislation.
9/29/57
On concentrating. (For The Writer possibly). A small matter, concentrating. But how many young writers can do it? It is not a new typewriter, a cushion in the chair, even necessarily stimulating or tranquilizing music playing. For most people, it is a guarantee of privacy. One cannot tell someone how to write a novel, the ingredients. One can only tell if they are not there. Privacy. An expensive thing in the modern world. How many young writers give themselves a chance? It is considered eccentric to like to be alone. Yet for such a short time, either a stay at a country cottage, or absolute quiet for six hours a day produce far more than the trouble costs. Take yourself seriously. Set a routine. Once you are alone, relax and behave as you will. Stand still for a moment and relish the novel sensation of knowing that you are utterly alone and will not be disturbed by a ringing telephone, a baby’s cry, an order from a boss, a groan or a whine from a spouse. Privacy is expensive. Perhaps it costs somebody else something. Relish it. But don’t feel guilty about having it. Take it as your due. Indulge yourself in everything that can possibly contribute to your writing. For instance, in the height of composition, which may last a week, a month, three months, you may not feel like writing personal letters. Don’t write them. Personal letters take something out of you, something of creative energy. It may be also that you cannot read other people’s fiction, however inspiring, or however much you may admire the author and wish to emulate him or her. To read a novel over a period of days means that you carry around in your head an emotionally charged atmosphere, a whole stage full of characters. While you are writing a book, you must carry around your own stage full of characters with their emotional charges. You have no room for another stage.
11/7/60
Lots of writers, especially young writers, think they will put down “everything” in one book. They mean human consciousness (that mystery!), emotions, atmosphere, the whole gamut of existence. When they begin writing their book, they realize how much must be left out, how painfully specialized a work of art has to be to be any good at all. They’ll tell only a fraction of what they want to in each book.
12/18/60
The muse doesn’t come when you beckon. She comes when you’ve tried all day to get something right, and you’re tired and about to go to bed—and then you stay up. She comes when you’ve lost your love. She touches you, she touches your shoulder, and then you know you’re not alone after all.
Why I adopted such a strategy of transfer is no longer clear to me. Displacing my personal experience off into other environments went back at least as far as "The Small Rain." Part of this was an unkind impatience with fiction I felt then to be "too autobiographical." Somewhere I had come up with the notion that one's personal life had nothing to do with fiction, when the truth, as everyone knows, is nearly the direct opposite. Moreover, contrary evidence was all around me, though I chose to ignore it, for in fact the fiction both published and unpublished that moved and pleased me then as now was precisely that which had been made luminous, undeniably authentic by having been found and taken up, always at a cost, from deeper, more shared levels of the life we all really live. I hate to think that I didn't, however defectively, understand this. Maybe the rent was just too high. In any case, stupid kid, I preferred fancy footwork instead.
Wherever he goes, he should try to think, as much as possible, about things that have absolutely nothing to do with the film. It is difficult, but it is necessary to create a barrier, a cellular wall between shooting and editing. Fred Zinnemann would go climbing in the Alps after the end of shooting, just to put himself in a potentially life-threatening situation where he had to be there, not day-dreaming about the film’s problems.
Then, after a few weeks, he would come down from the Alps, back to earth; he would sit down in a dark room, alone, the arc light would ignite, and he would watch his film. He would still be, inherently, brimming with those images from beyond the edge of the frame (a director will never be fully able to forget them), but if he had gone straight from shooting to editing, the confusion would be worse and he would have gotten the two different thought processes of shooting and editing irrevocably mixed up.
Do everything you can to help the director erect this barrier for himself so that when he first sees the film, he can say, “All right, I’m going to pretend that I had nothing to do with this film. It needs some work. What needs to be done?”
useful advice for writing too