The February 20 issue of the Guardian contained something remarkable, 28 authors offering advice on how to write fiction (see here and here). It’s a hugely varied recipe book, ranging from terse to wordy, from flippant to earnest, but it’s definitely worth scanning. I noted the following snippets that chimed with me:
- Diana Athill: ‘Read it aloud to yourself because that’s the only way to be sure the rhythms of the sentences are OK (prose rhythms are too complex and subtle to be thought out – they can be got right only by ear).’
- Helen Dunmore: ‘Finish the day’s writing when you still want to continue.’
- ‘Try to be accurate about stuff,’ suggests Anne Enright. Also: ‘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.’
- Michael Morpurgo: ‘Ted Hughes gave me this advice and it works wonders: record moments, fleeting impressions, overheard dialogue, your own sadnesses and bewilderments and joys.’
- Andrew Motion: ‘Decide when in the day (or night) it best suits you to write, and organise your life accordingly.’
- Will Self: ‘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.’
Annie Proulx offers this lifetime manifesto:
Proceed slowly and take care.
To ensure that you proceed slowly, write by hand.
Write slowly and by hand only about subjects that interest you.
Develop craftsmanship through years of wide reading.
Rewrite and edit until you achieve the most felicitous phrase/sentence/paragraph/page/story/chapter.