I read this article in a newsletter and wanted to share it.
5 Writing Tips by Barbara Kingsolver
"The
enterprise of writing a book has to feel like walking into a cathedral."
Writers work successfully in so many
different ways, I never assume that what works for me is best for someone else.
But if a common denominator exists among us, it might be attitude: the
enterprise of writing a book has to feel like walking into a cathedral. It
demands humility. The body of all written words already in print is vaulted and
vast. You think you have something new to add to that? If so, it can only come
from a position of respect: for the form, the process, and eventually for a
reader’s valuable attention.
But if you’ve got a writer’s blood
in your veins, you’re going to do it anyway. So it’s a project of balancing the
audacity to do this work, and the humility to keep trying until you’ve gotten
it right. Here are some strategies.
1. To begin, give yourself
permission to write a bad book. Writer’s
block is another name for writer’s dread—the paralyzing fear that our work
won’t measure up. It doesn’t matter how many books I’ve published, starting the
next one always feels as daunting as the first. A day comes when I just have to
make a deal with myself: write something anyway, even if it’s awful. Nobody has
to know. Maybe it never leaves this room! Just go. Bang out a draft.
2.
Then revise until it’s not a bad book. Revision is my favorite work, the
part of the process when art really happens. Once you know where you’re going,
you can back up and tilt every scene in just the right direction. You can
replace every serviceable sentence with one that glows with its own original
light. This of course requires an eagerness to throw away a lot of serviceable
sentences. Lean on the delete key. It’s frustrating to write a hundred pages
you know will not survive, but this is the dirt you have to excavate to get to
the vein of gold. These are pages of your novel too, just the unseen ones—let’s
call them pages negative-100 to zero—and you can’t skip them. If it helps, keep
a “recycle” folder: when you’ve written a scene you love, but reluctantly
concede that it’s not moving your story forward, clip and save it in a “maybe”
file in case you find some good use for it later. Probably you won’t. But if
that illusion helps you cut harder and deeper, this is all to the good.
3. Get cozy with your own company. It’s no coincidence that a lot of writers are introverts.
At some point in the life of a manuscript you’ll want to get feedback, but not
while it’s in the birth canal. Ninety-nine percent of your working life will be
spent laboring in a room by yourself. I can’t overstate the value of silencing
the social noise and writing with nobody looking over your shoulder. Other
people may tell you what sells, what the market is hungry for, and to my mind
that information is unhelpful, if not toxic. If you hope to add some original
stone to the cathedral of books in print, it will have to come from your unique
position in the universe. It takes a quiet acquaintance with your own mind to
identify that place.
4. Study something other than
writing. In school, in life, wherever you
can get it, acquiring authority over interesting material will boost the
confidence side of your writing equation. I feel incredibly lucky to be one of
the few novelists on the planet who followed the (somewhat accidental) plan of
getting undergraduate and graduate degrees in biology before starting my
literary career. If I had it all to do over again, on purpose, I would follow
the same course, not just because I love science but also because of the career
edge it offers. I have at my disposal a well of information on, say,
evolutionary theory, genetics, the mechanics of climate change and such as
that, which I can work to translate into literature for readers who didn’t take
those classes but are honestly eager to learn. If I had three wishes, I might
spend one on giving more scientists the facility and will to write novels. We
could also use more novelist-anthropologists, civil engineers, farmers, you
name it. Craft is a lifelong study for writers: debut novels I read for
fresh vision; classics I reread carefully for technique; the plots of movies I
deconstruct while my patient husband drives us home from the theater. Craft is
always on the table. But content can make the meal.
5.
If you’re young, and a smoker, you should quit. Ditto for all other
habits likely to shorten your life. Self-destructive behaviors are useful to a
writing career only in the movies. In actual experience I’ve never known a
manuscript to be moved forward by a reckless affair, drinking binge, or tangle
with the law. The boring truth is we need to look after ourselves, for a good
reason: getting old is our secret weapon. Readers come to books for many
reasons, but ultimately they’re looking for wisdom. That’s something writers
can offer only after we’ve accrued it, like scar tissue, usually by surviving
things we didn’t want to deal with—a process otherwise known as aging. This is
fantastically good news! Twenty, thirty, or forty years after all the athletes,
dancers, models and actors of our cohort have been put out to pasture, we can
look forward to doing our greatest work.
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