21 Harsh But Eye-Opening Writing Tips From Great Authors
Even
the great writers of our time have tried and failed and failed some
more. Vladimir Nabokov received a harsh rejection letter from Knopf upon
submitting Lolita, which would later go on to sell fifty million copies. Sylvia Plath’s first rejection letter for The Bell Jar
read, “There certainly isn’t enough genuine talent for us to take
notice.” Gertrude Stein received a cruel rejection letter that mocked
her style. Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way earned him a sprawling
rejection letter regarding the reasons he should simply give up writing
all together. Tim Burton’s first illustrated book, The Giant Zlig, got the thumbs down from Walt Disney Productions, and even Jack Kerouac’s perennial On the Road received a particularly blunt rejection letter that simply read, “I don’t dig this one at all.”
So even if you’re an utterly fantastic
writer who will be remembered for decades forthcoming, you’ll still most
likely receive a large dollop of criticism, rejection, and perhaps even
mockery before you get there. Having been through it all these great
writers offer some writing tips without pulling punches. After all, if a
publishing house is going to tear into your manuscript you might as
well be prepared.
1. The first draft of everything is shit. -Ernest Hemingway
2. Never use jargon words
like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They
are hallmarks of a pretentious ass. -David Ogilvy
3. If you have any young friends who aspire
to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to
present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy. – Dorothy Parker
4. Notice how many of the Olympic athletes
effusively thanked their mothers for their success? “She drove me to my
practice at four in the morning,” etc. Writing is not figure skating or
skiing. Your mother will not make you a writer. My advice to any young
person who wants to write is: leave home. -Paul Theroux
5. I would advise anyone who aspires to a
writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to
develop a thick hide. — Harper Lee
6. You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. ― Jack London
7. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting
struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never
undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one
can neither resist nor understand. — George Orwell
8. There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. ― W. Somerset Maugham
9. If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time — or the tools — to write. Simple as that. – Stephen King
10. Remember: when people tell you
something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always
right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to
fix it, they are almost always wrong. – Neil Gaiman
11. Imagine that you are dying. If you had a
terminal disease would you finish this book? Why not? The thing that
annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the
book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy.
And no one had to die. – Anne Enright
12. If writing seems hard, it’s because it is hard. It’s one of the hardest things people do. – William Zinsser
13. Here is a lesson in creative writing.
First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites
representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to
college. – Kurt Vonnegut
14. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration. – Ernest Hemingway
15. Write drunk, edit sober. – Ernest Hemingway
16. Get through a draft as quickly as
possible. Hard to know the shape of the thing until you have a draft.
Literally, when I wrote the last page of my first draft of Lincoln’s
Melancholy I thought, Oh, shit, now I get the shape of this. But I had
wasted years, literally years, writing and re-writing the first third to
first half. The old writer’s rule applies: Have the courage to write
badly. – Joshua Wolf Shenk
17. Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re
inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing
will be just as it should be. – Mark Twain
18. Start telling the stories that only you
can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and
there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people
who are much better at doing this or doing that — but you are the only
you. ― Neil Gaiman
19. Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. – Oscar Wilde
20. You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. ― Ray Bradbury
21. Don’t take anyone’s writing advice too seriously. – Lev Grossman
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