Tips for writers.

Hilary Mantel


1 Are you serious about this? Then get an accountant.

2 Read Becoming a Writer, by Dorothea Brande. Then do what it says, including the tasks you think are impossible. You will particularly hate the advice to write first thing in the morning, but if you can manage it, it might well be the best thing you ever do for yourself. This book is about becoming a writer from the inside out. Many later advice manuals derive from it. You don't ­really need any others, though if you want to boost your confidence, "how to" books seldom do any harm. You can kick-start a whole book with some little writing exercise.

3 Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.


4 If you have a good story idea, don't assume it must form a prose narrative. It may work better as a play, a screenplay or a poem. Be flexible.


5 Be aware that anything that appears before "Chapter One" may be skipped. Don't put your vital clue there.


6 First paragraphs can often be struck out. Are you performing a haka, or just shuffling your feet?


7 Concentrate your narrative energy on the point of change. This is especially important for historical fiction. When your character is new to a place, or things alter around them, that's the point to step back and fill in the details of their world. People don't notice their everyday surroundings and daily routine, so when writers describe them it can sound as if they're trying too hard to instruct the reader.


8 Description must work for its place. It can't be simply ornamental. It ­usually works best if it has a human element; it is more effective if it comes from an implied viewpoint, rather than from the eye of God. If description is coloured by the viewpoint of the character who is doing the noticing, it becomes, in effect, part of character definition and part of the action.


9 If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to ­music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don't just stick there scowling at the problem. But don't make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people's words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient.



10 Be ready for anything. Each new story has different demands and may throw up reasons to break these and all other rules. Except number one: you can't give your soul to literature if you're thinking about income tax.



Michael Moorcock


1 My first rule was given to me by TH White, author of The Sword in the Stone and other Arthurian fantasies and was: Read. Read everything you can lay hands on. I always advise people who want to write a fantasy or science fiction or romance to stop reading everything in those genres and start reading everything else from Bunyan to Byatt.



2 Find an author you admire (mine was Conrad) and copy their plots and characters in order to tell your own story, just as people learn to draw and paint by copying the masters.



3 Introduce your main characters and themes in the first third of your novel.



4 If you are writing a plot-driven genre novel make sure all your major themes/plot elements are introduced in the first third, which you can call the introduction.



5 Develop your themes and characters in your second third, the development.



6 Resolve your themes, mysteries and so on in the final third, the resolution.



7 For a good melodrama study the famous "Lester Dent master plot formula" which you can find online. It was written to show how to write a short story for the pulps, but can be adapted successfully for most stories of any length or genre.



8 If possible have something going on while you have your characters delivering exposition or philosophizing. This helps retain dramatic tension.



9 Carrot and stick – have protagonists pursued (by an obsession or a villain) and pursuing (idea, object, person, mystery).



10 Ignore all proffered rules and create your own, suitable for what you want to say.



Michael Morpurgo



1 The prerequisite for me is to keep my well of ideas full. This means living as full and varied a life as possible, to have my antennae out all the time.



2 Ted Hughes gave me this advice and it works wonders: record moments, fleeting impressions, overheard dialogue, your own sadness’s and bewilderments and joys.



3 A notion for a story is for me a confluence of real events, historical perhaps, or from my own memory to create an exciting fusion.



4 It is the gestation time which counts.



5 Once the skeleton of the story is ready I begin talking about it, mostly to Clare, my wife, sounding her out.



6 By the time I sit down and face the blank page I am raring to go. I tell it as if I'm talking to my best friend or one of my grandchildren.



7 Once a chapter is scribbled down rough – I write very small so I don't have to turn the page and face the next empty one – Clare puts it on the word processor, prints it out, sometimes with her own comments added.



8 When I'm deep inside a story, ­living it as I write, I honestly don't know what will happen. I try not to dictate it, not to play God.



9 Once the book is finished in its first draft, I read it out loud to myself. How it sounds is hugely important.



10 With all editing, no matter how sensitive – and I've been very lucky here – I react sulkily at first, but then I settle down and get on with it, and a year later I have my book in my hand.



Andrew Motion



1 Decide when in the day (or night) it best suits you to write, and organize your life accordingly.



2 Think with your senses as well as your brain.



3 Honour the miraculousness of the ordinary.



4 Lock different characters/elements in a room and tell them to get on.



5 Remember there is no such thing as nonsense.



6 Bear in mind Wilde's dictum that "only mediocrities develop" – and ­challenge it.



7 Let your work stand before deciding whether or not to serve.



8 Think big and stay particular.



9 Write for tomorrow, not for today.



10 Work hard.



Joyce Carol Oates



1 Don't try to anticipate an "ideal reader" – there may be one, but he/she is reading someone else.



2 Don't try to anticipate an "ideal reader" – except for yourself perhaps, sometime in the future.



3 Be your own editor/critic. Sympathetic but merciless!



4 Unless you are writing something very avant-garde – all gnarled, snarled and "obscure" – be alert for possibilities of paragraphing.



5 Unless you are writing something very post-modernist – self-conscious, self-reflexive and "provocative" – be alert for possibilities of using plain familiar words in place of polysyllabic "big" words.



6 Keep in mind Oscar Wilde: "A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal."



7 Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.



Annie Proulx



1 Proceed slowly and take care.



2 To ensure that you proceed slowly, write by hand.



3 Write slowly and by hand only about subjects that interest you.



4 Develop craftsmanship through years of wide reading.



5 Rewrite and edit until you achieve the most felicitous phrase/sentence/paragraph/page/story/chapter.



Philip Pullman



My main rule is to say no to things like this, which tempt me away from my proper work.



Ian Rankin



1 Read lots.



2 Write lots.



3 Learn to be self-critical.



4 Learn what criticism to accept.



5 Be persistent.



6 Have a story worth telling.



7 Don't give up.



8 Know the market.



9 Get lucky.



10 Stay lucky.



Will Self



1 Don't look back until you've written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceding day. This prevents those cringing feelings, and means that you have a substantial body of work before you get down to the real work which is all in . . .



2 The edit.



3 Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever.



4 Stop reading fiction – it's all lies anyway, and it doesn't have anything to tell you that you don't know already (assuming, that is, you've read a great deal of fiction in the past; if you haven't you have no business whatsoever being a writer of fiction).



5 You know that sickening feeling of inadequacy and over-exposure you feel when you look upon your own empurpled prose? Relax into the awareness that this ghastly sensation will never, ever leave you, no matter how successful and publicly lauded you become. It is intrinsic to the real business of writing and should be cherished.



6 Live life and write about life. Of the making of many books there is ­indeed no end, but there are more than enough books about books.



7 By the same token remember how much time people spend watching TV. If you're writing a novel with a contemporary setting there need to be long passages where nothing happens save for TV watching: "Later, George watched Grand Designs while eating HobNobs. Later still he watched the shopping channel for a while . . ."



8 The writing life is essentially one of solitary confinement – if you can't deal with this you needn't apply.



9 Oh, and not forgetting the occasional beating administered by the sadistic guards of the imagination.



10 Regard yourself as a small corporation of one. Take yourself off on team-building exercises (long walks). Hold a Christmas party every year at which you stand in the corner of your writing room, shouting very loudly to yourself while drinking a bottle of white wine. Then masturbate under the desk. The following day you will feel a deep and cohering sense of embarrassment.



Helen Simpson



The nearest I have to a rule is a Post-it on the wall in front of my desk saying "Faire et se taire" (Flaubert), which I translate for myself as "Shut up and get on with it."



Zadie Smith



1 When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.



2 When an adult, try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.



3 Don't romanticize your "vocation". You can either write good sentences or you can't. There is no "writer's lifestyle". All that matters is what you leave on the page.



4 Avoid your weaknesses. But do this without telling yourself that the things you can't do aren't worth doing. Don't mask self-doubt with contempt.



5 Leave a decent space of time between writing something and editing it.



6 Avoid cliques, gangs, groups. The presence of a crowd won't make your writing any better than it is.



7 Work on a computer that is disconnected from the ­internet.



8 Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.



9 Don't confuse honours with achievement.



10 Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand – but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never ­being satisfied.



Colm Tóibín



1 Finish everything you start.



2 Get on with it.



3 Stay in your mental pajamas all day.



4 Stop feeling sorry for yourself.



5 No alcohol, sex or drugs while you are working.



6 Work in the morning, a short break for lunch, work in the afternoon and then watch the six o'clock news and then go back to work until bed-time. Before bed, listen to Schubert, preferably some songs.



7 If you have to read, to cheer yourself up read biographies of writers who went insane.



8 On Saturdays, you can watch an old Bergman film, preferably Persona or Autumn Sonata.



9 No going to London.



10 No going anywhere else either.



Rose Tremain



1 Forget the boring old dictum "write about what you know". Instead, seek out an unknown yet knowable area of experience that's going to enhance your understanding of the world and write about that.



2 Nevertheless, remember that in the particularity of your own life lies the seed corn that will feed your imaginative work. So don't throw it all away on autobiography. (There are quite enough writers' memoirs out there already.)



3 Never be satisfied with a first draft. In fact, never be satisfied with your own stuff at all, until you're certain it's as good as your finite powers can ­enable it to be.



4 Listen to the criticisms and preferences of your trusted "first readers".



5 When an idea comes, spend silent time with it. Remember Keats's idea of Negative Capability and Kipling's advice to "drift, wait and obey". Along with your gathering of hard data, allow yourself also to dream your idea into being.



6 In the planning stage of a book, don't plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it.



7 Respect the way characters may change once they've got 50 pages of life in them. Revisit your plan at this stage and see whether certain things have to be altered to take account of these changes.



8 If you're writing historical fiction, don't have well-known real characters as your main protagonists. This will only create biographical unease in the readers and send them back to the history books. If you must write about real people, then do something post-modern and playful with them.



9 Learn from cinema. Be economic with descriptions. Sort out the telling detail from the lifeless one. Write dialogue that people would actually speak.



10 Never begin the book when you feel you want to begin it, but hold off a while longer.



Sarah Waters



1 Read like mad. But try to do it analytically – which can be hard, because the better and more compelling a novel is, the less conscious you will be of its devices. It's worth trying to figure those devices out, however: they might come in useful in your own work. I find watching films also instructive. Nearly every modern Hollywood blockbuster is hopelessly long and baggy. Trying to visualize the much better films they would have been with a few radical cuts is a great exercise in the art of story-telling. Which leads me on to . . .



2 Cut like crazy. Less is more. I've ­often read manuscripts – including my own – where I've got to the beginning of, say, chapter two and have thought: "This is where the novel should actually start." A huge amount of information about character and backstory can be conveyed through small detail. The emotional attachment you feel to a scene or a chapter will fade as you move on to other stories. Be business-like about it. In fact . . .



3 Treat writing as a job. Be disciplined. Lots of writers get a bit OCD-ish about this. Graham Greene famously wrote 500 words a day. Jean Plaidy managed 5,000 before lunch, then spent the afternoon answering fan mail. My minimum is 1,000 words a day – which is sometimes easy to achieve, and is sometimes, frankly, like shitting a brick, but I will make myself stay at my desk until I've got there, because I know that by doing that I am inching the book forward. Those 1,000 words might well be rubbish – they often are. But then, it is always easier to return to rubbish words at a later date and make them better.



4 Writing fiction is not "self-­expression" or "therapy". Novels are for readers, and writing them means the crafty, patient, selfless construction of effects. I think of my novels as being something like fairground rides: my job is to strap the reader into their car at the start of chapter one, then trundle and whizz them through scenes and surprises, on a carefully planned route, and at a finely engineered pace.



5 Respect your characters, even the ­minor ones. In art, as in life, everyone is the hero of their own particular story; it is worth thinking about what your minor characters' stories are, even though they may intersect only slightly with your protagonist's. At the same time . . .



6 Don't overcrowd the narrative. Characters should be individualized, but functional – like figures in a painting. Think of Hieronymus Bosch's Christ Mocked, in which a patiently suffering Jesus is closely surrounded by four threatening men. Each of the characters is unique, and yet each represents a type; and collectively they form a narrative that is all the more powerful for being so tightly and so economically constructed. On a similar theme . . .



7 Don't overwrite. Avoid the redundant phrases, the distracting adjectives, the unnecessary adverbs. Beginners, especially, seem to think that writing fiction needs a special kind of flowery prose, completely unlike any sort of language one might encounter in day-to-day life. This is a misapprehension about how the effects of fiction are produced, and can be dispelled by obeying Rule 1. To read some of the work of Colm Tóibín or Cormac McCarthy, for example, is to discover how a deliberately limited vocabulary can produce an astonishing emotional punch.



8 Pace is crucial. Fine writing isn't enough. Writing students can be great at producing a single page of well-crafted prose; what they sometimes lack is the ability to take the reader on a journey, with all the changes of terrain, speed and mood that a long journey involves. Again, I find that looking at films can help. Most novels will want to move close, linger, move back, move on, in pretty cinematic ways.



9 Don't panic. Midway through writing a novel, I have regularly experienced moments of bowel-curdling terror, as I contemplate the drivel on the screen before me and see beyond it, in quick succession, the derisive reviews, the friends' embarrassment, the failing career, the dwindling income, the repossessed house, the divorce . . . Working doggedly on through crises like these, however, has always got me there in the end. Leaving the desk for a while can help. Talking the problem through can help me recall what I was trying to achieve before I got stuck. Going for a long walk almost always gets me thinking about my manuscript in a slightly new way. And if all else fails, there's prayer. St Francis de Sales, the patron saint of writers, has often helped me out in a crisis. If you want to spread your net more widely, you could try appealing to Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, too.



10 Talent trumps all. If you're a ­really great writer, none of these rules need apply. If James Baldwin had felt the need to whip up the pace a bit, he could never have achieved the extended lyrical intensity of Giovanni's Room. Without "overwritten" prose, we would have none of the linguistic exuberance of a Dickens or an Angela Carter. If everyone was economical with their characters, there would be no Wolf Hall . . . For the rest of us, however, rules remain important. And, ­crucially, only by understanding what they're for and how they work can you begin to experiment with breaking them.



Jeanette Winterson



1 Turn up for work. Discipline allows creative freedom. No discipline equals no freedom.



2 Never stop when you are stuck. You may not be able to solve the problem, but turn aside and write something else. Do not stop altogether.



3 Love what you do.



4 Be honest with yourself. If you are no good, accept it. If the work you are ­doing is no good, accept it.



5 Don't hold on to poor work. If it was bad when it went in the drawer it will be just as bad when it comes out.



6 Take no notice of anyone you don't respect.



7 Take no notice of anyone with a ­gender agenda. A lot of men still think that women lack imagination of the fiery kind.



8 Be ambitious for the work and not for the reward.



9 Trust your creativity.



10 Enjoy this work!

[Thank you, S., for sending this my way. -tp.]

Rhymes.net

Rhymes.net

Poetry and Ambition - Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More

Poetry and Ambition - Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More: "Poetry and Ambition
by Donald Hall"

Donald Hall on Ambition: Poet Laureate on Poetry

Donald Hall on Ambition: Poet Laureate on Poetry

5 Guaranteed Ways to Hate Your Own Writing | Copyblogger

5 Guaranteed Ways to Hate Your Own Writing | Copyblogger: "5 Guaranteed Ways to Hate Your Own Writing" Reverse this to fix things. -tp.

Ten rules for writing fiction | Books | guardian.co.uk

Ten rules for writing fiction | Books | guardian.co.uk

Sign

Buy the Visual Thesaurus : Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus

Buy the Visual Thesaurus : Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus

Cool Tools: Artful Sentences

Cool Tools: Artful Sentences

Ten tips for writing your own movie - Times Online

Ten tips for writing your own movie - Times Online: "Ten tips for writing your own movie
Want to see your story on the big screen? Think beginning, middle and end, and don’t play the show-off"

A writing career becomes harder to scale - latimes.com

A writing career becomes harder to scale - latimes.com: "A writing career becomes harder to scale
Authors used to expect to struggle as they gained experience. But now it is sell -- or else."

Calaméo – Publish and share documents

Calaméo – Publish and share documents FREE basic. Works great. Upload your manuscript and share or keep the link to your ebook private. I set it up for one of my chapbooks in five minutes. -tp

Rosie

Too sick to stand or eat.
A plate of her favorite
scrambled eggs
made sadly at the stove.
Tears danced and sizzled
as they fell on the hot range.

Mike called his friend, Dave.
“Dave can you help?
Can you give her an injection?
Do you have phenobarbital?
It’s what the vets use to put
dogs down.”
No phenobarbital. He asked
a neighbor. No luck.

Dave offered to shoot her through
the ear, twice, to be sure.
Cover the muzzle of the pistol
with a thick wad of towels -
put two, small caliber bullets into her brain.
Quick.

Do this on a big sheet.
Wrap her and drag her tired, red body
to the hole in the pasture nearby.
Make the hole deeper, and put on a heavy, round rock
to mark it.

It will be fast, and there won’t be pain.
Just the pain of hearing
the gunshots
and knowing
Dave has done what you asked
and your best friend lies still
nearby.

Abeeku

Abeeku stole a bright, gold watch from
the busy shop in the market.
The shopkeeper
saw him slip the watch into his waistband -
chased him, yelling and gesturing,
“Thief, thief!”

The crowd caught up -
surrounding Abeeku
in the middle of the street.

They beat him,
someone slipped an old tire around him,
and another and another helped
pull the tire over his arms
pinning them to his side.

The shopkeeper picked up the watch
its crystal broken and its case scratched and split.
He put it on his wrist and
joined the chant, “Thief, thief.”

A boy pressed through the throng
with a tin of petrol,
pouring it over Abeeku’s head.

Another shadow offered matches
and Abeeku was covered in flame.

He was burned alive
at dusk
while the African sky
was ablaze
in red and yellow light.

[2nd rev., 7 Feb. 2010 ]

Tropes - Television Tropes & Idioms

Tropes - Television Tropes & Idioms

Want to be a Poet? [Working copy.]

You don’t have to be rape victim,
or born of an alcoholic, bi-polar mother
or a cruel father with tuberculosis and a prosthetic leg.
You don’t have to have a drug habit or be a drunk,
and you don't have to be on the weed or the weenie.
You don’t have to carve lines in your arms with a razor,
or a broken piece of mirror in the girl’s lavatory.
You don’t have to be a clapped-out skank
or always pissed off.

You have to love words, be honest,
have some intelligence, have something real and honest to say
in your own voice,
and able to scoff at criticism.
Your friends won’t know what to say when they read you,
And you won’t have the nerve to ask them to.
You should want to write, not want to be a writing success.

You have to be in the mood. It’s the mood that comes after I read a good poem, or hear something in the street; like the day some kid in a Future Farmers jacket yelled, “Hey, you bag of dicks!”, to another guy in the parking lot.
It was the day before I wrote a new poem.

Sometimes you can read a line of the newspaper, and the poem
jumps out at you. A ready made.
Sometimes, half-awake, feet on the floor, sitting on the edge of the bed, scratching
rubbing your eyes,
words jump out at you;
you have to remember them until
you scribble them on the back of an envelope.

Imagine the pipsqueak editor
reading the title
or one line of your poem and sending you a rejection.
An english major, barely thirty, wearing a sweater vest
and white tennis shoes. Doesn’t know who
you are or where you’ve been,
shit cans your poem
and sends you
a thanks
but no thanks.

Bukowski said “…if it never does roar out of you, do something else…”
Like work at the post office, or find a job with the county.
If anyone asks what you do
look them in the eye, and say
you’re a poet.

If anyone asks what you’d rather be doing right now,
say revising a poem for the last time.

[Thanks for the inspiration, Mr. Bukowski.]