The Craft of Writing

If there were only one way to master the craft of writing, the chore of learning to write well would be greatly simplified, but it would also be inestimably less challenging and exciting. Here we offer observations that writers have made about the craft.

The House of Fiction has in short not one window, but a million--a number of possible windows not to be reckoned, rather; every one of which has been pierced or is till pierceable, in its vast front, by the need of the individual vision and by the pressure of the individual will. --Henry James

The answer to the question, "How do you write?" is deceptively simple: turn on your word- processor and key in data. It is, of course, not the answer most beginning writers want to hear. All too many of them seem to believe that writing is essentially the execution of a series of "tricks" one can learn from writers or teachers of writing. And there are "tricks" of sorts, bits of knowledge about the conventions of a genre that provide the writer with a kind of useful shorthand. The writer's task, however, is much more complicated than learning processes; it entails, among many other things, developing a sensibility for the craft of a genre that can best be developed only by intense and extensive reading in that genre. In short, the best training for the fiction writer is reading fiction. --Carlos Parados

It is misleading to say that writing is a pleasure, though there will be moments of great, unparalleled pleasure at times when one is writing. Most of the time, however, writing is a painful activity, a task so difficult as to drive its practitioner half mad. I cannot recall the times I have asked myself why in God's name I pursue a vocation so rife with disappointment and failure. Then I promptly go back to work. --J.M. Brower

When I write, I am transported to another, inner world that bears no resemblance to the one I live in day to day, a transcendent, spiritual realm. The process of translating that world, of making it comprehensible in this one is mystical, and I am completely unable to say how I do it. Others do it. Perhaps they can explain. --Mary Alice Magri

Writing is damned hard work. And I'm glad that it is because it discourages others from getting into the business. Only a fool would choose to spend a wonderful summer's day behind the typewriter when he could be out in the sun and fresh air. What kind of person likes to sit around reading proof when he could be out in the world engaged with real people? A person like me, I guess. I can't imagine spending a day without writing. But don't ask if I have any special insights into the task. I don't. Well, maybe the desire to play God. --Harris Bently

Many writers like to talk about writing. But I'm not one of them. I like to write; I love to write. I'd rather write than do anything except have sex, eat good food, and drink beer. But I'd rather talk about almost anything except writing. Talking about writing is a distraction. It keeps a writer from the task. If I talk about a story I'm writing, I lose the impulse to write it. If I talk about a story after I've completed it, I feel like I'm talking about another life. If I talk to a person about my story that she hasn't read, it's not much different than talking about the taste of an orange instead of trying one. There's only one rule to learn about writing: practice it obsessively until you understand what you're doing. --Lewis R. Indivus

Be suspicious of writers who like to talk too much about the craft of writing. Writing reasonably well takes a lot of time. Writing extremely well takes damned near forever. Writers who write extremely well don't have time to talk about it. They probably haven't figured it out anyway. Learn from good fiction and poetry what these things are. If you must talk with writers, ask them what they had for lunch or when they were last at Walmart. --Lucinda Beatty

Despite the proliferation of creative writing programs on college campuses across the nation, I fail to detect any noticeable improvement in the quality of published writing in America. If there's a cause-effect relationship there, I can't discern it. And I've yet to hear a successful novelist or poet say, "I owe my successes to such and such a program in creative writing." Except that creative programs afford would-be writers a little more time to write than, say, a standard program in English might, I think their value is highly questionable. But then the value of many university programs is problematic at best. --Barbara Enlissen

The eighth kind of loneliness is the writer's special plague. From the initial idea through the compositional process to the birth of the piece, the writer goes it alone. Throughout this entire time, other writers and readers are nothing but distractions. Having gotten the sense of the material, the writer is in the position of the gods, which sounds better than it is in fact. Like the gods, writers must suffer the consequences of their creations, and more often than not, those consequences will not be entirely positive. --Mary Abbott

Actually, writing is a good deal simpler than most writers would have you think. In particular, if you have a story to tell, then there are plenty of examples available which will show you how you might tell your story. Read Hemingway and you'll see one way of doing it; read Baldwin and you'll see another; read O'Connor and you'll see yet another. The possibilities are very significant. But if you don't have a story to tell, the process suddenly becomes exceedingly difficult. No amount of formal education can supply you with the most important element in writing fiction--the yarn. If you consistently have no story to tell, I'd suggest going into banking. You'll make a lot more money there. --R.L. Snow

I've always wanted to give advice to other writers, all the while knowing that what I had to say most of them don't want to hear: this is a rough business, and there aren't any easy roads to proficiency. At the same time, however, nothing brings more satisfaction than producing a good piece. Nothing. --Charles Cogles

When I was an undergraduate, every time I turned around somebody insisted that I write only about my own experience. If that were all writers like me could write about, we'd run dry awfully quickly. If you extend the definition of experience to include the products of your research, then the proposition makes sense to me. Otherwise I find it no less than an intrusion on my rights as a writer. I can write about anything I damned well please. The problem is writing well about what I please. No one has a right to demand anything other than that we write well. --Curtis Roads

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it. --Ernest Hemingway

A fellow in Hollywood claims “writing is not a solo endeavor.” And if you’re talking about Hollywood that may be true; however, one would do well to consider the results of that group-write. To put it gently, writing that comes out of that part of the world commands respect from almost no one. If he were talking about sitcoms and that sort of thing, the level of our respect drops down several more notches. That stuff comprises the dregs of the writer’s craft and probably needs to be written by groups. Surely an individual would go mad writing that drivel, all the big money notwithstanding. Groups of writers have tried to collaborate on novels before, and the results were predictably horrible. Groups of writers probably do write the silliness on cereal boxes. Once again Hollywood is an alien life form. –Lamar Veigel

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Last Updated March 15, 2002 by the Writing North staff.