J.K. Rowling:
The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.
Stephen King:
You have to read widely, constantly refining (and redefining) your own work as you do so. It’s hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not at all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written … Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that. Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life.
Andre Maurois:
Writing is a difficult trade which must be learned slowly by reading great authors; by trying at the outset to imitate them; by daring then to be original and by destroying one’s first productions.
Paul Coelho:
Above all else, the writer has to be a good reader. The kind that sticks to academic texts and does not read what others write (and here I’m not just talking about books but also blogs, newspaper columns and so on) will never know his own qualities and defects.
Laura Hillenbrand:
If you ask me what I am reading on any given day, it is most likely going to be a work from a great author from long ago. Every writer stands on the shoulders of the old authors who have shaped and refined language and storytelling.
Dealing with “Writer’s Block”
Yesterday I was struggling with some character development in my writing—it was frustratingly slow with many starts and stops—so I did the one thing that I knew would help. I grabbed a good book. It was a win-win for me: I not only got to relax and soak in a great story, but I also picked up a few tricks of the trade from Mr. Fitzgerald himself. Here’s some notes I took on the characters he developed for his first published novel, This Side of Paradise.
Photo by Goodreads
The Mother
All in all Beatrice O’Hara absorbed the sort of education that will be quite impossible ever again; a tutelage measured by the number of things and people one could be contemptuous of and charming about; a culture rich in all arts and traditions, barren of all ideas, in the last of those days when the great gardener clipped the inferior roses to produce one perfect bud. …
Though she thought of her body as a mass of frailties, she considered her soul quite as ill, and therefore important in her life. She had once been a Catholic, but discovering that priests were infinitely more attentive when she was in the process of losing or regaining faith in Mother Church, she maintained an enchantingly wavering attitude.
The Priest
He had written two novels: one of them violently anti-Catholic, just before his conversion, and five years later another, in which he had attempted to turn all his clever jibes against Catholics into even cleverer innuendos against Episcopalians. He was intensely ritualistic, startlingly dramatic, loved the idea of God enough to be a celibate, and rather liked his neighbor.
The Girl
[Isabelle] had never been so curious about her appearance, she had never been so satisfied with it. She had been sixteen years old for six months.
The Protagonist
“I’ll never be a poet,” said Amory … “I’m not enough of a sensualist really; there are only a few obvious things that I notice as primarily beautiful: women, spring evenings, music at night, the sea; I don’t catch the subtle things like ‘silver-snarling trumpets.’ I may turn out an intellectual, but I’ll never write anything but mediocre poetry.”
A Different Perspective: You Don’t Have to Write Every Day
If you’ve had a bad writing day, or if you’ve been struggling with your writing recently, I found this article by Cal Newport to be a reassuring read. I also think Newport’s point of view is an important counter to Stephen King’s—because, in the end, the goal of all this writing advice is to help you figure out what works for you, not someone else.
*Photo by Simone Perrone @ Magdeleine / CC0
