One hundred and fifty ‘rules’ for writing fiction: 141 – 144

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A few more provocations on the writing life…

141).  A writer, like an athlete, must ‘train’ every day. What did I do today to keep in ‘form’?
  (Susan Sontag)

142).  If you’re actually allowing your creative part to control your writing rather than a more commercial instinct or motive, then you’ll find that all sorts of interesting things will bubble up to the surface.  (Emma Thompson)

143).  You will have to write and put away or burn a lot of material before you are comfortable in this medium. You might as well start now and get the necessary work done. For I believe that eventually quantity will make for quality. How so? Quantity gives experience. From experience alone can quality come. All arts, big and small, are the elimination of waste motion in favor of the concise declaration. The artist learns what to leave out. His greatest art will often be what he does not say, what he leaves out, his ability to state simply with clear emotion, the way he wants to go. The artist must work so hard, so long, that a brain develops and lives, all of itself, in his fingers.  (Ray Bradbury)

144).  Write for tomorrow, not for today.  (Andrew Motion)

One hundred and fifty ‘rules’ for writing fiction: 137 – 140

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A few more shots in the arm from published writers on process and making fiction, and a life.

137).  The only story that seems worth writing is a cry, a shot, a scream. A story should break the reader’s heart.   (Susan Sontag)

138).  Keep human.  See places, go places, drink if you feel like it. Don’t be a draught horse! Work with pleasure only.  (Henry Miller)

139).  Language is lazy, it wants to revert to what’s obvious, to what’s been said before, to short cuts to seeing (blue sky, torrential rain, a kindly old lady, and so on). The writer is pushing back against that inertia in expression all the time, refusing the package of familiar associations that offers itself, refusing the comfort of easy moralising, refusing the well-worn perspective.  (Tessa Hadley)

140).  You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.  (Joseph Campbell)

In their own words: Interviews with giants of Twentieth century English literature…

I am addicted to interviews with writers. Those who follow my 150 ‘rules’ for writing fiction will know I seek interviews out, skin, fillet, and debone them, slicing away the choicest quotations and sharing them here on this blog. It is a compulsion, a relatively harmless habit I like to think, a leisure activity as well as being part of my professional development. I love thinking about process and hearing about what other writers, of all forms, do.  When those writers are some of the pillars of twentieth century English literature, I know I need to pay attention, but I’m in for a phenomenal time.

Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, Rebecca West, Christopher Isherwood, EM Forster, Muriel Spark, Aldous Huxley, Daphne du Maurier…

It is a roll call of the great – and  not only in their own words, but their own voices, too. I have stumbled across an archive of BBC interviews, a treasure trove of experience and anecdote, and in spoken word. This resource has been readily available and for some time on the net – but assuming you too have overlooked the archive, I urge you to seek it out.

Here is eleven minutes with Elizabeth Bowen from October 1956, discussing the importance of character to the novel – her voice regal and of another age. Or twenty four minutes and forty two seconds with Iris Murdoch from May 1965, debating the artistic conflict between philosophy and novel-writing, freedom and form….

There are more recent names, too: Toni Morrison, Alan Bennett, Kazuo Ishiguro, John Berger, Angela Carter, Zadie Smith, Hilary Mantel…. It is a wonderful resource and well worth exploring. You’ll find it at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/writers/

One hundred and fifty ‘rules’ for writing fiction: 115 – 119

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More quotations on writing collected from interviews and festival interviews over the years…

115)  Writing is finally a series of permissions you give yourself to be expressive in certain ways. To invent. To leap. To fly. To fall. To be strict without being too self-excoriating. Not stopping too often to think it’s going well (or not too badly), simply to keep rowing along.  (Susan Sontag)

116)  Write a book you’d like to read. If you wouldn’t read it, why would anybody else? Don’t write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book’s ready.  (Hilary Mantel)

117)   Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.  (Ray Bradbury)

118)   Never fear [the audience] or despise it. Coax it, charm it, interest it, stimulate it, shock it now and then if you must, make it laugh, make it cry, but above all . . . never, never, never bore the hell out of it.  (Noel Coward)

119)  The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.  (William Saroyan)

On writing and rewriting…

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Dorothy Parker. Photo from the Internet.

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I am circling and recircling the final chapter of my novel-in-progress. It’s been a long time writing, and an even longer time revising and rewriting…

I found solace in these quotations, which may also be of solace to you, fellow writers and makers…

I’m all for the scissors. I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

Truman Capote in Conversations With Capote, by Lawrence Grobel.

It takes me six months to do a story. I think it out and write it sentence by sentence–no first draft. I can’t write five words but that I can change seven.
      

Dorothy Parker, “The Art of Fiction,” The Paris Review Interview, 1956.

I would write a book, or a short story, at least three times–once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say.

Somewhere I put it this way: first drafts are for learning what one’s fiction wants him to say. Revision works with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to reform it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

Bernard Malamud quoted in The Magic Worlds of Bernard Malamud, by Evelyn Gross Avery.

To be a writer is to sit down at one’s desk in the chill portion of every day, and to write; not waiting for the little jet of the blue flame of genius to start from the breastbone–just plain going at it, in pain and delight. To be a writer is to throw away a great deal, not to be satisfied, to type again, and then again and once more, and over and over.

John Hersey, quoted in The Craft of Revision, by Donald Murray.

Whatever your form, whatever the ambition, wherever you may be in your process, good luck and keep going….

One hundred and fifty ‘rules’ for writing fiction: 106-110.

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Further stimuli on writing from the experts, garnered from interviews, festival appearances and articles.

106.  You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write. (Saul Bellow).

107.  Do be kind to yourself. Fill pages as quickly as possible; double space, or write on every second line. Regard every new page as a small triumph – until you get to page 50. Then calm down, and start worrying about the quality. Do feel anxiety – it’s the job.  (Roddy Doyle).

108.  Write without pay until somebody offers pay; it nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for. (Mark Twain). 

109.  Art, though, is never the voice of a country; it is an even more precious thing, the voice of the individual, doing its best to speak, not comfort of any sort, but truth. And the art that speaks it most unmistakably, most directly, most variously, most fully, is fiction, in particular, the novel. (Eudora Welty). 

110. Do back exercises. Pain is distracting. (Margaret Atwood).

One hundred ‘rules’ for writing fiction: 92-96.

 

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Further thoughts from the great and good on writing, gleaned from interviews, articles and festivals:

92.  You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance. (Ray Bradbury).

93.  Woolf was right. Make sure you’ve got a room –or even a house – of your own, so that you can work away when necessary. House-sit, pet-sit, plant-sir, go on retreat, residency, writing course – or just make sure your family, friends and neighbours respect your closed door. (Helen Simpson).

94.   Writing fiction is not “self-­expression” or “therapy”. Novels are for readers, and writing them means the crafty, patient, selfless construction of effects. I think of my novels as being something like fairground rides: my job is to strap the reader into their car at the start of chapter one, then trundle and whizz them through scenes and surprises, on a carefully planned route, and at a finely engineered pace.  (Sarah Waters).

95.   Have humility. Older/more ­experienced/more convincing writers may offer rules and varieties of advice. ­Consider what they say. However, don’t automatically give them charge of your brain, or anything else – they might be bitter, twisted, burned-out, manipulative, or just not very like you. (AL Kennedy)

96.   Be ambitious for the work and not for the reward. (Jeanette Winterson).

The show must go on – and spectacularly so…. In Water I’m Weightless.

David Toole – In Water I’m Weightless. Photo: Kaite O’Reilly

It’s a cliche, the show must go on – and we know cliches exist because they are true…. In the break before the dress rehearsal for National Theatre Wales’s production of my script In Water I’m Weightless last Wednesday 25th July, one of our performers, the phenomenal Mandy Colleran, had an accident and had to be taken to Accident and Emergency. We cancelled the first preview the following night, and, under Mandy’s encouragements, began to consider our options for the performance continuing until she was able to join us again.

There were various possibilities: To get someone, probably the production’s emerging director, Sara Beer, to read in the lines, acknowledging our Mandy-shaped hole in the production, or to rework the complete performance, re-assigning Mandy’s lines to other members of the cast, re-casting, re-blocking and re-choreographing the performance. Cancelling more than the first preview was not, we all agreed, an option, so we chose to do the latter, reworking the whole performance in 24 hours. And so we set off on this Herculean task – and never have I been more aware of the humour, strengths, flexibility, and professionalism of a company…

In Water I’m Weightless is a collage of monologues which are performed collectively, chorally, bilingually, and as solos. It is an ensemble piece, so the cast are practised in working together as one entity – but as it is an ensemble, Mandy’s absence was sorely felt. Swiftly Sara Beer, John McGrath, and I re-allocated the lines, making edits, shifts, and cutting one scene. Overnight the actors – Mat Fraser, David Toole, Karina Jones, Nick Phillips and Sophie Stone – learnt new scenes and staging – appearing virtually word-perfect the next morning for rehearsals.

John worked us chronologically through the script, the technical crew and cast adjusting, amending, reinventing, but always staying true to the original concept and interpretations of the text. We broke for lunch – the actors dotted individually around the front of the Wales Millennium Centre, enjoying the rare summer sun, sandwiches and scripts in hand, running lines, learning the new texts, whilst in the dark of the studio, designer  Paul Clay and the technical crew re-edited videos and replotted the lighting design.

We finished rehearsing the new order in time for a run at 5pm – the whole company going above and beyond expectations in their focus and mastery of the new version – with just enough time for dinner before preparing for the opening, at 8pm. The show went up to a packed audience and with a mixture of pure adrenaline, professionalism, and extraordinary skill the cast and crew carried it off with aplomb. We have a new version which will work well until Mandy rejoins us – and now have a glorious week of performances ahead of us…

One hundred ‘rules’ for writing fiction: 87-91.

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Five more pieces of advice collected from interviews with writers of fiction.

87.  A writer’s past is the most important thing he has. Sometimes an object, a mask, a ticket stub, anything at all, helps me remember a whole experience, and out of that may come an idea for a story. (Ray Bradbury).

88. Never ride a bike with the brakes on. If something is proving too difficult, give up and do something else. Try to live without resort to per­severance. But writing is all about ­perseverance. You’ve got to stick at it. In my 30s I used to go to the gym even though I hated it. The purpose of ­going to the gym was to postpone the day when I would stop going. That’s what writing is to me: a way of ­postponing the day when I won’t do it any more, the day when I will sink into a depression so profound it will be indistinguishable from perfect bliss. (Geoff Dyer).

89.  Do spend a few minutes a day working on the cover biog – “He divides his time between Kabul and Tierra del Fuego.” But then get back to work. (Roddy Doyle).

90.  Write what you need to write, not what is currently popular or what you think will sell. (P.D. James).

91. Write. No amount of self-inflicted misery, altered states, black pullovers or being publicly obnoxious will ever add up to your being a writer. Writers write. On you go. (A.L. Kennedy).

One hundred ‘rules’ for writing fiction: 82-86.

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Further quotations and advice on writing fiction, gathered from interviews and articles over the years.

82. Keep an idea or two in your head. Once you focus on one that you’re going to use, do a lot of reading around the subject. Educate yourself. (Helen Simpson).

83.  You should never read just for ‘enjoyment.’ Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgemental. More apt to understand your friends’ insane behaviour, or better yet, your own. Pick ‘hard books.’ Ones you have to concentrate on while reading. And for god’s sake, don’t let me ever hear you say, ‘I can’t read fiction. I only have time for the truth.’ Fiction is the truth, fool! Ever hear of ‘literature’? That means fiction, too, stupid. (John Waters).

84.  Who says you have to start writing first thing in the morning? People worry that you have t have a structure to the day; that you have to get a structure to the day; that you have to get a certain number of words written. Who makes these rules? This sort of thing makes people anxious about their writing before they’ve even started. (Susan Hill).

85.  Writing is not a serious business. It’s a joy and a celebration. You should be having fun with it. (Ray Bradbury).

86.  Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said” he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances “full of rape and adverbs”. (Elmore Leonard).