I look at every advertisement which has appeared for competing products during the past 20 years. Inspirational Activity: Take notes about random things. An essay can be read in a sitting or on the way from one thing to the next, but a book is a time investment. This essay, published originally in Harper’s Magazine, explores the challenges artists face when composing something that pays homage or outright borrows from older works. The deed was done by Mark Twain’s own hand in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn author’s critical essay “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses.”. Inspirational Activity: Don’t “outgrow” ideas ", Thank goodness for Junot Diaz—he might get up early, but his writing schedule sounds just a little more relaxed (and feasible): "I’m an early waker, not as early as some. It has been my purpose to suggest that, while this Principle itself is, strictly and simply, the Human Aspiration for Supernal Beauty, the manifestation of the Principle is always found in an elevating excitement of the Soul — quite independent of that passion which is the intoxication of the Heart — or of that Truth which is the satisfaction of the Reason.”. B. J. Novak was inspired to write a short story titled “A Good Problem to Have” (which appears in his bestselling collection One More Thing) because he was curious about “the hypothetical publishing rights of an author of a classic textbook problem,” who writes them, and if they seek compensation. B. J. Novak For instance, in quoting a child, do not let him say: “Inadvertently, I picked up the stone and threw it.”. (This has gotten worse since I gave up smoking.). written by Kelton Reid. At this point I can no longer postpone the actual copy. Too many interruptions. Unsubscribe at any time. Where does one draw the line between plagiarism and inspiration? He says, “I’ll have some idea or see something or an event will strike me in a certain way. Legendary American poet, critic, editor, and author Edgar Allan Poe knows how to move you. Or do you like to play it by ear? One of Geraldine Brooks’ pieces of advice to writers is, “Don’t be afraid to see dead people.” In fact, the idea for her first book, Although she was not a big fan of Lewis Carrol’s. An increased appreciation of the techniques in fairy tales not only forges a mutual appreciation between writers from so-called mainstream and avant-garde traditions but also, I would argue, connects all of us in the act of living.”. “A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.”, 48. American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name of Mark Twain, earned the honorific of “father of American literature” by William Faulkner himself. I had the pleasure of interviewing journalist Sarah Stodola, author of Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors, on The Writer Files podcast. You know, sometimes I had to stop for a month because I just had no idea what the next bit of story was going to be.”, 46. Despite Tough Guys, Life Is Not the Only School for Real Novelists by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 6. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards. Somehow the book doesn't leave you when you're asleep right next to it. Make Charts, Plans. “When I talk about pictures in my mind I am talking, quite specifically, about images that shimmer around the edges. In 1965, Kurt Vonnegut, famous American Author known for novel, Slaughterhouse-five, wrote a letter to his wife, Jane, where he reveals his morning routine and daily writing habits. Khaled Hosseini saw a news story on TV in spring of 1999 about the Taliban, which discussed the rules the Taliban had put on Afghan people. 7. Madeline Miller When he didn’t meet this goal, he became inspired to write, After high school, Paul Rome moved to New York City, which he says “[awakened] my senses” and “[stirred] up all these feelings that were inside of me.” Then, he projected himself onto his character for, while researching the main character of his novel, When in a rut, Koch takes Hemingway’s famous advice: “Write drunk, edit sober.” The first time Koch did this, he reread what he had written and allegedly thought “This is so good – I’m never able to write this well!” He got his idea for, When a dentist told Ben Lerner he had to have a tooth pulled immediately because it was, B. J. Novak was inspired to write a short story titled “A Good Problem to Have” (which appears in his bestselling collection, Khaled Hosseini saw a news story on TV in spring of 1999 about the Taliban, which discussed the rules the Taliban had put on Afghan people. I understand that some copywriters have much greater facility. Then I get them organized and relate them to research and the copy platform. I’m not a schizophrenic, nor do I take hallucinogens, but certain images do shimmer for me.”. With speed. Her fascinating collection of the habits and habitats of heralded scribes digs into Papa’s process: Most notable:Ernie had learned to get it done no matter where he was, and he was an itineran… Legendary essayist and activist Susan Sontag, author of In America, exudes a confident personal style. This is so helpful. Haruki Murakami Inspirational Activity: Get ideas from your day job. She writes fiction, non-fiction, books about writing, globe trots while freelancing for magazines, and is a journalist. Without the scanning process engendered by not-knowing, without the possibility of having the mind move in unanticipated directions, there would be no invention.”. Denis Johnson Legendary author Eric Arthur Blair, better known by his pen name George Orwell, stands firmly in the great pantheon of 20th century writers. Make corrections of MS. “He, also, went” means “He, too, went.” “He went also” means he went in addition to taking some other action. She started thinking about who would steal it and why, so when she came up with some answers, she wrote it. “Thus, although in a very cursory and imperfect manner, I have endeavored to convey to you my conception of the Poetic Principle. I didn’t name it as fiction first—I kind of backed into it.”, 23. Are you an early bird writer who keeps religiously to deadlines? At one point, it mentioned that they had banned flying kites, which Hosseini had done many times as a boy in Kabul, so he sat down and wrote a 25-page short story, and left it for two years. She would ask them where they were going to be working the next day and if she could tag along. In addition to writing one of the most-sought books on the writing life and process, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, he’s written numerous essays. Well, if you're Mark Twain, you might try writing while lying in bed. I was offered my first book contract, for The Bean Trees, the day I … I am terrified of producing a lousy advertisement. Inspirational Activity: Walk in graveyards. Most artists are defeating life by their very attempt to grapple with it. Work on one thing at a time until finished. But to hold to such repetition for so long — six months to a year — requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. For One Hundred Years of Solitude,  Gabriel García Márquez decided on a plague to burden his characters. How does he make any money? Inspirational Activity: Watch movies. This post lets you in on the secrets of how professional writers manufacture inspiration (hint: it’s not just reading and taking a long walk). Researching every thing about Patroclus she could find only reaffirmed her hunch that he may have meant more to Achilles than is explicitly stated: “I think there have been many people who have taken them as close companions, but looking at the way Achilles mourns, how incredibly deeply and sensually—holding the dead body all night, wanting their ashes put together—that seems to say something beyond [friendship] to me.”, 37. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Whether you’re writing an academic paper or a casual blog post, understanding the basic, writing-process steps from start to finish can help you produce high-quality work. But how to go about that writing? Poet, essayist, memoirist, novelist, and critic Annie Dillard has a Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction to her name as well as finalist honors for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Whatever your writing style, you're probably in good company with at least one of these famous writers: Poet, author, and activist Maya Angelou used to rent a hotel room to write in, even though she had her own house: "I rent a hotel room for a few months, leave my home at six, and try to be at work by six-thirty. E.L. Doctorow, noted essayist and author of Ragtime, is no stranger to Hollywood. From that point forward, it just bloomed as fiction. The self-awareness we cultivate will, in turn, help us find the inspiration we will need to overcome our own blocks both real and imaginary. ", It should surprise no one that Haruki Murakami is total and complete bad ass when it comes to sticking to a routine: "When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at 4:00 am and work for five to six hours. Improve your book with feedback from a professional editor. Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. In her essay, the author of Pilgim at Tinker Creek offers up directives of great relevance for every writer. Author of 1984 and Animal Farm, one might think Orwell’s reason for writing is solely to correct societal wrongs or fight injustices. Further: the visibility of styles is itself a product of historical consciousness. In Seventies Jamaica, King Tubby and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry deconstructed recorded music, using astonishingly primitive pre-digital hardware, creating what they called ‘versions.’ The recombinant nature of their means of production quickly spread to DJs in New York and London. I do all my writing at home. Secondary characters and everything else came while she was writing. Add to this a bevy of published work, “Write Till You Drop” is certainly a motto Annie Dillard lives by. 1. Seems he’s well qualified for the essay “Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully – in Ten Minutes,” which out of all the essays on our list wins the prize for most enticing title. Inspirational Activity: Take notes about your childhood. (“I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.”), 2. This essay, hosted now by the Poetry Foundation and originally collected in The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism, nearly creates an ouroboros effect. (“I’m aware of narrating certain experiences as they happen or obliterating those experiences with narrative and then those stories—not the experiences themselves—might become material for art.”), 24. The picture of his father was Diaz’s main inspiration for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. In writing of animals, use the neuter gender except when you are writing of a pet that has a name. I’m John Matthew Fox, founder of Bookfox, and I help writers improve their books so they can find their dream publisher. “The writer doesn’t trust his enemies, of course, who are wrong about his writing, but he doesn’t trust his friends, either, who he hopes are right. In “The Poetic Principle,” the author of The Raven and The Fall of the House of Usher breaks down exactly how he achieves this feat. After Tuesdays with Morrie, Albom wanted to write a book about a character who was hopeful despite already having lost. Tobias Wolff I saw The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which I took very hard. I had the pleasure of interviewing journalist Sarah Stodola, author of Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors, on The Writer Filespodcast. Then I go no further until the statement and its principles have been accepted by the client. Madeline Miller first read The Iliad with her mom when she was five years old, and as she grew up she kept returning to the passage where Achilles reacts to losing Patroclus. We don’t send it too often–only when we have great stuff we really want to share. This one might be a little obvious, but take it one step farther: Pay close attention to your conversations, even remembering specific things the other person said. I write a lot of material that I know I’ll throw away. This causes me to throw away the first 20 attempts. Most writers would likely say you’re better off reading a great novel. 3 Famous Writers on Process and Productivity. The effect being that of a warm and communal embrace. If for no other reason than it frames the writing pursuit as a shared experience resplendent in multiple shades and colors. Her essay “Fairy Tale is Form, Form is Fairy Tale” explores the underlying structure of fairy tales and its prevalence in much more than old Brothers Grimm stories. Also, the drink helps. Would love your thoughts, please comment. I will go over them again and again. As Barthelme indicates in “Not Knowing,” his essay on the creative process, lack of knowledge can lead to invention. No intrusions, no diversions. By Marie Arana. Richard Matheson As such an accomplished and versatile writer, Didion makes a singular subject for the age-old question of why do writers write. It makes her especially suited to answer the age old question: why do writers write?eval(ez_write_tag([[250,250],'fictionphile_com-leader-2','ezslot_7',617,'0','0'])); In her essay meditating upon the impetus to write, “Uncanny the Singing That Comes from Certain Husks,” collected first in the anthology Why I Write: Thoughts on the Craft of Fiction, Williams offers several perspectives. Don’t be a draught-horse! Altogether it is a slow and laborious business. Try to recommend a good novel to a writer of this type while he’s writing and he’ll give you a look like you just stabbed him in the heart with a kitchen knife. In her essay, Smith explores many aspects of the writing process, making it a must-read for the sheer fact of learning the variances writers take to arrive at the written word. He credited The Kansas City Star’s simple stylebook (below) as “… the best rules I ever learned for the business of writing.”. Raymond Carver This site contains affiliate links to products. He also wrote down his 11-step daily routine: 1. Instead of writing about drawing after the fact, Anne Carson’s book Short Talks came about because she wrote while drawing; the titles of her drawings “got longer and longer,” until they became more the focal point of the piece rather than the actual drawing, so she used them as inspiration for a book of, well, short talks on various subjects. He says, “I put them away and eventually gave myself over to a very different manuscript.”, 45. I have a glass of water or a cup of tea. Inspirational Activity: Get into a strict routine and exercise, When he’s writing a novel, Haruki Murakami gets up every morning at 4 am, works for five or six hours, runs 10 kilometers or swims 1500 meters (or both), reads for the rest of the day, and then goes to bed promptly at 9 pm. I mean this as a principle of aesthetic, not merely historical, criticism. Read in cafés.Explore unfamiliar sections — on foot if wet, on bicycle if dry.Write, if in mood, but only on Minor program.Paint if empty or tired.Make Notes. So here are a few accomplished author's daily writing routines, to inspire you to stick with that writing schedule. Inspirational Activity: Explore extended metaphors. At 15, Eugenedies believed writers should be able to tell stories from both sexes’ perspectives, so to have a narrator which achieved both at the same time might give him “a measure of that longed-for omniscience.” He was further inspired by Foucault’s Herculine Barbin: Memoir of a 19th Century French Hermaphrodite but believed it to be “melodramatic and sentimental,” so he wanted to try to tell the story a different way. Inspirational Activity: Work with a different medium for a while, then return to writing 50 Ways Famous Authors Get Writing Inspiration. You can do it. His daily routine was intrepid but not unreasonable. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there... You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that. If all else fails, I drink half a bottle of rum and play a Handel oratorio on the gramophone. In fact, inspiration like this appears throughout his novel 10:04. Not all of that time and energy was wasted, however, because he used his life (his fears of not being good enough for a next novel, exasperation at scrapping so much work) as inspiration for the main character of Wonder Boys, which was originally intended to be his “autobiographical brain map.”, 13. Use short sentences. Inspirational Activity: Go people-watching and imagine their lives, Judy Blume, a self-proclaimed “people person,” has enough imagination to take in details while people-watching and come up with what’s missing. One of Geraldine Brooks’ pieces of advice to writers is, “Don’t be afraid to see dead people.” In fact, the idea for her first book, Year of Wonders, came from her “habit of communicating with the dead.” She was in a graveyard in the “plague village” of Eyam when she noticed one of the gravestones had been carved, chipped away, and carved again, as if the first spelling of the name was wrong. Because he doesn’t appear much in The Iliad, Miller wanted to know what exactly Patroclus meant to Achilles and why Achilles mourned so fiercely for him. Inspirational Activity: Keep an inspirational journal. Not only do we live in a fast paced world, it can be a bit of a waste to read an entire book about writing a book. Definitions of research: There are several definitions of research, proposed by famous authors and scholars of their time. Inspirational Activity: Watch the news. Cut the movies! When the gears of your brain get stuck, refer to this list and pick your 3 favorite techniques. I will furnish some circumstantial evidence in support of this charge.”. Some writers are the kind of solo violinists who need complete silence to tune their instruments. Hem knew that his process was best served by editing first, writing second. Later, he found it in his garage in 2001 and turned it into The Kite Runner. As fans of Stephen King, we recommend you gobble up anything he has to say on the profession. Most of us are full up with bad stories, boring stories, self-indulgent stories, searing works of unendurable melodrama. That’s all right. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. Eileen Myles says she likes the idea of “writing a poem I could have written thirty years ago” and keeping the momentum going so that inspiration, from however long ago, never truly dies. When one of today’s greatest originators of fresh concepts tells you that ideas are just one “small component” of writing, you listen. 7. Later, he’ll revisit them with the intention of writing a book, as he did before writing. Inspirational Activity: Talk to people. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at our selection of essays from writers on writing. It makes sense that we should pay attention to her thoughts on style, especially as she argues for its close juxtaposition to artistic norms. Melanie Banjamin Ransom Riggs first started collecting old photographs as a kid because he loved photography, but he couldn’t afford prints of his own. In fact, some dialogue in the book is word-for-word what his son and he said (“Papa, what would you do if I died?” / “I’d want to die, too”). Library for references once a week. Now, get to writing! Miranda July’s idea for The First Bad Man came to her “pretty fully-formed” on a car ride. Funny, considering such eye catching titles as Sixty Stories and Forty Stories. There are no exceptions to this rule.”. Inspirational Activity: Go to an art exhibit. The cumulative purpose of doing these things the same way every day seems to be a way of saying to the mind, you’re going to be dreaming soon. Inspirational Activity: Read the opposite of what you want to write, While translating Proust—and spending every day, from 10 am to 3 pm, slaving over the translations—Lydia Davis wrote her shortest story to date: “I loved constructing those sentences, but I think I also needed to resist [Proust’s writing] a little bit by writing very, very short things. 4. Basically, Palahniuk says he channels “dreadful, horrible things in [his] life that [he] cannot resolve” into writing. He would have hated Netflix. If you're Vladimir Nabokov, you could write out all your plot points on index cards, for easy plotting and re-plotting. I like to have my heart broken. Inspirational Activity: Read ancient literature and fill in the gaps. Others want to hear every member of the orchestra—they’ll take a cue from a clarinet, from an oboe, even. “No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. And even if you're not a caffeine-addled writer trying to frantically crank out an entire novel in a month, you can find a way to balance regular writing with eating, sleeping, and perhaps even socializing. All those sorts of things. Woolly minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters and woolly speeches. eval(ez_write_tag([[250,250],'fictionphile_com-leader-3','ezslot_8',625,'0','0']));eval(ez_write_tag([[250,250],'fictionphile_com-leader-3','ezslot_9',625,'0','1'])); Kurt Vonnegut instead shows another way of looking at creative writing instructors. He shares his process with sincerity, and packages it partly in a little story, because that’s just what good writers do. Kurt Vonnegut: “I do pushups and sit ups all the time.” In 1965, Vonnegut wrote a letter to his wife … Deep breaths, NaNoWriMo people (NaNoWriMoers?). I’m going to read this every time I start writing! “I had the lonely child’s habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued. I keep to this routine every day without variation. Soon, he noticed a pattern in the photos he was collecting (“Edward Gorey-esque Victorian creepiness,” he calls it) which sparked an idea for a book (not necessarily fiction) about the photographs. If the client changes the copy, I get angry — because I took a lot of trouble writing it, and what I wrote I wrote on purpose. I think of a story.”, 4. He didn't get out of bed until the afternoon, and liked to write from midnight untill dawn (when he wasn't too drunk to put pen to paper). One page at a time. He also relied on some great tricks for jump-starting his creativity, like getting lost and painting. 4. Technology has only multiplied the possibilities; musicians have gained the power to duplicate sounds literally rather than simply approximate them through allusion. Although not an essay at first, the speech became a smash hit, garnering the most views of all Harvard commencement addresses. If you want ACTION, don’t write. Inspirational Activity: Write about people close to you who have died, The main character from Mitch Album’s The Five People You Meet in Heaven is directly based on Albom’s Uncle Eddie. Inspirational Activity: Narrate your life, When a dentist told Ben Lerner he had to have a tooth pulled immediately because it was infected, he pictured himself telling his friend about the experience—“then as I inhaled the delicious N20 I had the sensation that I was already telling Yarrow—that I’d floated away from the office back into his presence” and it became inspiration for his writing. First printed in Gangrel (Summer 1946) and later collected in Such, Such Were the Joys, Orwell’s essay “Why I Write” details his motivations to write. Not to disparage the school of hard knocks. To enable your own fantasies and deviant logics and to escape or transform parts of yourself you don’t like. They’re a small component of the whole. Deep breaths, NaNoWriMo people (NaNoWriMoers?). And maybe be taught a thing or two along the way! No intrusions, no diversions. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back – Fictionphile Podcast #5, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi – Fictionphile Podcast #6, Uncanny the Singing That Comes from Certain Husks, 2008 commencement speech at Harvard University, garnering the most views of all Harvard commencement addresses, finalist honors for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully – in Ten Minutes, Despite Tough Guys, Life Is Not the Only School for Real Novelists, 10 Philosophical Movies to Watch Right Now, The Curse of Cassandra: Understanding a Prophetess, 12 Jungian Archetypes and D&D Character Class Cliches (Match-Up), Aeschylus: Ancient Greece’s Father of Dialogue and Drama.

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