Writing Tips for Blockheads* - ILRI-comms - home ·  · 2014-03-17Easy reading is damn hard writing. ... A sentence should contain no unneccesary words, a ... sometimes I have good

Writing Tips

for Blockheads* ___________________ * Sir, no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money. Samuel Johnson

The Great Debate

This writing business. Pencils and what not. Over-rated if you ask me. Eeyore or Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it. Oscar Wilde

Getting started.

Get black on white. Guy de Maupassant Start at the beginning, go to the end and stop.

Grab the reader.

Put the car wreck first, details after. You don’t have a lot of time. You may be dead before you get to the details.

Get the words right.

The difference between the right word and the wrong word is the difference between the lightning and the lightning-bug. Mark Twain There are two kinds of writers, those who are and those who aren’t. Karl Kraus Words have basic inalienable meanings, departure from which is either conscious metaphor or inexcusable vulgarity. Evelyn Waugh The person who does not respect words and their proper relationships cannot have much respect for ideas—very possibly cannot have ideas at all. John Simon

Write with verbs.

When you know how to do that, write with strong verbs. When you catch an adjective, kill it. Mark Twain

Keep things that go together, together.

Make things as simple as you can; no simpler.

When you’re writing about the occupation of grave digging, focus on how to dig the hole.

Rewrite. Then rewrite. The rewrite some more.

Put your drafts into an acid bath before putting them into the world. The best writing is rewriting. E.B. White I write slowly because I write badly. I have to rewrite everything many, many times just to achieve mediocrity. William Gass I write fast because I have not the brains to write slow. Georges Simenon What is written without effort is read without pleasure. Samuel Johnson Easy reading is damn hard writing. Nathaniel Hawthorne The first draft of anything is shit. Ernest Hemingway How do I know what I think until I see what I say? E.M. Forster Response to a woman who sent an unsolicited manuscript for evaluation: ‘I write just like you do. Every day. I just throw that writing away. Every day.’ Flannery O’Connor Having no talent is no longer enough. Gore Vidal

Learn as much grammar as you need. No more.

When you don’t know how to construct a statement, look it up. Throw out your fear of your bully of a grammar school English teacher. Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself. Truman Capote Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its power. Joan Didion English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education—sometimes it’s sheer luck, like getting across a street. E.B. White

Get the ink:data ration right.

Screw down your data:ink ration until it can’t be screwed down tighter. The wastepaper basket is the writer’s best friend. Isaac Bashevis Singer The covers of this book are too far apart. Ambrose Bierce

Omit needless words.

Throw out what isn’t alive. Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear. Ezra Pound The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do. Thomas Jefferson Vigorus writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unneccesary words, a paragraph no unneccesary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unneccesary lines and a machine no unneccesary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentecnes short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. William Strunk, Jr.

Write every day.

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. Jack London Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write. Anthony Trollope I never quite know whn I’m not writing. Sometimes my wife comes up to me at a party and says, ‘Dammit, Thurber, stop writing.’ She usually catches me in the middle of a paragrpah. James Thurber Planning to write is not writing. Outlining a book is not writing. Researching is not writing. Talking to people about what you’re doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing. E.L. Doctorow

Read good stuff.

You can only be an artist if you’ve been up to a point lucky with your background and put in years of reading; you can’t step off the factory conveyor-belt and do it. Martin Amis The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book. Samuel Johnson

Steal from others.

With good judgement. Adam was the only man who, when he said a good thing, knew that nobody had said it before him. Mark Twain The difference between a bad artist and a good one is: The bad artist seems to copy a great deal; the good one really does. William Blake Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal. Lionel Trilling Taking something from one man and making it worse is plagiarism. George Moore

Write to say something.

It has been said that writing comes more easily if you have something to say. Sholem Asch Literature is language charged with meaning. Ezra Pound A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite. Edward Albee A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed keeping rabbits. Edith Sitwell

Stay at home in your mind, with what you know

best. It’s all right to learn things after you’ve written about them, but not too much ahead of time. John Barth Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer. Barbara Kingsolver

Write for others.

The ideal reader of my novels is a lapsed Catholic and failed musician, short-sighted, color-blind, auditorily biased, who has read the books that I have read. He should also be about my age. Anthony Burgess Autobiography is now as common as adultery, and hardly less reprehensible. John Grigg If you must ridicule, do so without malice so that even those you hit will laugh out loud.

Speak from the heart.

If you don’t have a heart, develop one.

Tell a human story.

The universe is made of stories, not atoms. Muriel Rukeyser Literature uncerned with sex is inconceivable. Gertrude Stein A historical romance is the only kind of book where chastity really counts. Barbara Cartland The trouble with fiction is that it makes too much sense, whereas reality never makes sense. Aldous Huxley Information is true if accurate. A poem is true if it holds together. E.M. Forster

Tell the truth.

When you’re tempted to lie, make the truth work for you instead. The truth is always more interesting. It adds energy---tends to wake readers right up every time they hear it, which isn’t often. Writing keeps me from believing everything I’ve read. Gloria Steinem

Don’t be presumptuous.

Take nothing for granted except your reader’s intelligence, sensibility and ethics. If you are going to be presumptuous, be very presumtuous. To be a writer you need to see things as they are, and to see things as they are you need a certain basic innocence. Tobias Wolff Write as though you didn’t know the ending to Romeo and Juliet.

Don’t drone on.

Don’t spend time on the obvious. Don’t waste people’s time with information. You’re not writing to inform but to persuade. You’re not writing to present facts but to answer a question. Imprint the pressure of trying to answer that question on every statement. No human being ever spoke of scenery for above two minutes at a time, which makes me suspect that we hear too much of it in literature. Robert Louis Stevenson Everywhere I go, I’m asked if the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. Flannery O'Connor Remarks are not literature. Gertrude Stein

Don’t overwrite.

Be clear, then be precise. If you must be obscure, be obscure clearly. Don’t let literature come between you and the thing you have to say. Read over your compositions and, when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out. Samuel Johnson In literature the ambition of a novice is to acquire the litarary language; the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it. George Bernard Shaw Poetry should be great and unobstrusive, a thing which enters into one’s soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself or with its subject. John Keats

Be persistent.

Editors change; editorial tastes change; markets change. Too many beginning writers give up too easily. John Jakes People ask you for criticism but they only want praise. W. Somerset Maugham

Be courageous.

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure. Oliver Herford If you don not write for publication, there is little point in writing at all. George Berard Shaw The unpublished manuscript is like an unconfessed sin that festers in the soul, corrupting and contaminating it. Antonio Machado Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing. Sylvia Plath A failure of nerve is the best definition I know for writer’s block. John Gregory Dunne Failure is very difficult for a writer to bear, but very few can manage the shock of early success. Maurice Valency Success and failure are equally disastrous. Tennessee Williams Success if very hazardous to your health, as well as to your daily routine. . . . You get the idea that anything you do is in some way marvelous. John Updike

Be vulnerable.

In print and person. Say what you don’t know. The better the artist, the more vulnerable he seems to be. Al Alvarez

Be interesting.

You don’t have a right to bore your audience. That is an offence against nature, and nature is never boring. Practice on children: you have to be very very good to impress an eight-year-old. There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers. H.L. Mencken

Be original.

Make it new. Ezra Pound Literature is news that stays news. Ezra Pound

Be confident.

Self-confidence is your responsibility. Publishing is your responsibility. Not publishing is a failure of nerve. A failure of nerve is a failure of confidence.

Be ambitious.

I have tried simply to write the best I can; sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can. Ernest Hemingway I don’t want to just mess with your head. I want to mess with your . . . . I want you to miss appointments, burn dinner, skip homework. I want you to tell your wife to take that moonlight stroll the beach at Waikiki with the resort tennis pro while you read a few more chapters. Stephen King

Be happy.

You are one of the few people on earth paid to do what you like to do. Bring that to your writing.

Write as though writing matters.

You don’t write because you want to say something; you write because you’ve got something to say. F. Scott Fitzgerald Books take their place according to their specific gravity as surely as potatoes in a tub. Ralph Waldo Emerson The act of writing is an act of optimism. You would not take the trouble to do it if you felt that it didn’t matter. Edward Albee

Writing matters.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . .The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us . . . full of grace and truth. The Gospel According to St. John

The last rule.

There are no rules. There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. W. Somerset Maugham

The talent for making difficult things seem simple belongs to great minds. Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman had talent in spades. They won Nobel Prizes for theories most people cannot pronounce. And made themselves clear and interesting to children.

Writing is hard work. When it tires you, sleep. When it gives you a headache, take an aspirin. You chose to write when you chose to do science. If you don’t like writing, do something else with your life.

Words are dangerous. When they put Galileo under house arrest, they arrested scientific progress, which then moved from Florence to Grantham, England, where Newton was born on the day Galileo died.

In the beginning was the Word. The Word was good. Keep it so. It matters. Sometimes it is the only thing that matters.

More of the good news:

There is nothing like literature: I lose a cow, I write about her death, and my writing pays me enough to buy another cow. Jules Renard Writers can treat their mental illnesses every day. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Getting even is one reason for writing. William Gass History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. Winston Churchill A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it’s better than no inspiration at all. Rita Mae Brown It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous. Robert Benchley I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk. H.L. Mencken

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. Francis Bacon If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing. Kingsley Amis Writing a book is like driving a car at nihgt. You only see as far as your headlights go, but you can make the whole trip that way. E.L. Doctorow

More of the bad news:

Writing isn’t typing. Writing is pretty crummy on the nerves. Paul Theroux All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. Oscar Wilde Most writers are not quick-witted when they talk. Novelists, in particular, drag themselves around in society like gut-shot bears. Kurt Vonnegut Who casts to write a living line must sweat. Ben Jonson (1573-1637) Writing is easy. You just sit down at the typewriter and open a vein. Red Smith Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. Gene Fowler Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life. Lawrence Kasdan Writing is incompatible with everything. Paul Theroux

Writers don’t have lifestyles. They sit in little rooms and write. Norman Mailer A writer is one for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. Thomas Mann Only a mediocre writer is always at his best. Somerset Maugham A bad book is as much a labour to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author’s soul. Aldous Huxley In every man’s writings, the character of the writer must lie recorded. Thomas Carlyle All writing is communication; creative writing is communication through revelation—it is the self escaping into the open. No writer long remains incognito. E.B. White Against the disease of writing one must take special precautions, since it is a dangerous and contagious disease. Peter Abelard (1079-1142) No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else’s draft. H.G. Wells Let blockheads read what blockheads write. Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773) O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves, Lend me a little tobacco-shop or install me in any profession Save this damn'd profession of writing, where one needs one's brains all the time. Ezra Pound A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barely domesticated, a mustang on which you one fastened a halter, but which now you can’t catch. It is a lion you cage in your study. As the work grows, it gets harder to; it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it every day and reassert your mastery over it. If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly, afraid to open the door to its room. You enter its room with bravura, holding a chair at the thing and shouting, “Simba!” Annie Dillard Anything that isn’t writing is easy. Jimmy Breslin Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators Olin Miller Writers . . . live over-strained lives in which far too much humanity is sacrificed to far too little art. Raymond Chandler

And the mix.

Books succeed, and lives fail. Elizabeth Barrett Browning In America only the successful writer is important, in France all writers are important, in England no writer is important, in Australia you have to explain what a writer is. Geoffrey Cotterell Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. Rudyard Kipling

Last Last Words You all care about what you do. You all do special things. You all believe in what you do. These are all uncommon things. Cherish them.