Over the years, I’ve assembled a number of quotes that I find properly helpful.
They’ve appeared in notebooks, gathered into handouts, split off onto PowerPoint slides, regathered in teaching notes and sometimes wandered off into forgetfulness only to return as lifesavers.
I’m handing them over to you in no particular order of usefulness.
The first quote, although Hemingway is far from my favourite writer, is the single piece of writing advice that most completely transformed me.
This is because before I read it, I couldn’t see how anyone could write a novel, and after I read it, I wrote a novel.
I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day.
That’s Ernest Hemingway in A Moveable Feast
A lot of writers have said this in different ways. Don’t empty the tank. Give the subconscious time to work. Don’t eat your seedcorn. But they amount to the same thing:
If you write to the end of an idea, the first time you sit down, perhaps because you have time (you’re on holiday, someone’s cancelled and you have the weekend) — if you write everything you know, you’re leaving nothing to come back to.
Always leave something unsaid.
I’ve even heard some writers say they end a writing session in the middle of a sentence — just to give themselves a little knowing what is going to happen next to find on their return.
The next quote is about how to get something done even when you’re feeling exhausted, overawed, underwhelmed or fundamentally grief-stricken.
I am very well acquainted with Creative Panic; and, over the years, I have learned to deal with it as a writer, by using the Lawrence of Arabia approach: ‘Yes, it hurts, but the trick is not minding that it hurts.’
As a writer, I’ve tried to train myself to go one achievable step at a time: to say, for example, ‘Today, I don’t have to be particularly inventive, all I have to be is careful, and make up an outline of the actual physical things the character does in Act One.’ And then, the following day to say, ‘Today I don’t have to be careful. I already have this careful, literal outline, and all I have to do is be a little bit inventive,’ et cetera, et cetera.
Many people ask me if I write on a word processor. I write longhand, first, and then do subsequent drafts and corrections on a typewriter. I like to have all the actual physical pages that I have done in front of me: all the drafts, and all the revisions, and all the markings on them. It gives me a sense of security; i.e., ‘look at all these drafts you have done, you must be a very responsible person - now all you have to do is use your good taste and refine these pages.’
That’s David Mamet in ‘A First Time Film Director’ from A Whore’s Profession: Notes and Essays, Faber.
I think Mamet dovetail’s nicely with Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen)’s words. I’ve no longer any idea where I heard this, but I think everyone knows it, and quotes it, because it applies to everyone.
A little every day: without hope; without despair.
Much more personal is the 3”x 5” card I have above my desk. When I was starting as I writer, I wrote to the wonderful short story writer and critic V.S. Pritchett, asking for advice. And this is what he wonderfully wrote back:
It will give you great pleasure to write a story you are satisfied and pleased with. To have that you must write, cut, re-write many times.
Good luck and best wishes
V.S.Pritchett
True. And many accounts of writing leave out the great pleasure part.
The next advice, from Bruce Chatwin, may not apply to you. For me, I know there are thousands of stories and novels that I would have loved if they hadn’t been talked out — before they ever came to be — talked out in the pub, or in the kitchen at a party, or in a late night WhatsApp exchange.
However enthusiastic your best friend’s response to your idea is, however much they jump around and hug you and tell you you’re a genius, it’s never enthusiastic enough.
Far better to go ahead, imagining them jumping around and the hugging in response to your finished story/novel/film.
‘The fatal thing is to ever tell anyone what you’re really writing till it’s done because a) you don’t do it and b) you get people vaguely worked up about it and they try to tell you what to do.’
That’s Bruce Chatwin quoted in Nicholas Shakespeare’s biography, Chatwin, pg 306.
Maybe this doesn’t apply to you. But secrecy — the feeling I’m on the dark side of the moon, out of radio contact with earth — that’s one of the things I love about writing. In your own head, you can get away from the meddlers.
Mostly.
The final quote I’ll leave you with is more a chant than advice. It was told to me in person by Vic Sage, writer and academic. We were in the kitchen at a party. Vic’s is a distilled version of Gertrude Stein’s ‘the way to do it is to do it’. And what Vic said was —
Get it down!
I’ve been reading your entries for a while now and every day I feel like I learn or find new ways to think about writing and the process. It’s invaluable to me. So, thank you!
Great compilation of writing advice, Toby, and much appreciated. Most of this speaks directly to what I struggle with most as a writer. Looking to put these into practice pronto. Thanks!