olumns, by Billie Sue Mosiman
I was also a Regular Book Reviewer for HORROR Magazine, 1996-1997. The reason I left it was because the new editor thought I should eviserate the authors of novels, I should make them bleed, make them faint with despair. I decided, being an author myself, that was not something I would ever like to do. I gave up my humble reviewership position so that someone of harder character could please the new editor. I don't miss it.
WRITERS ON WRITING:
I had marked down in my notebook three characteristics a work
of fiction must possess in order to be successful:
1. It must have a precise and suspenseful plot.
2. The author must feel a passionate urge to
write it.
3. He must have the conviction, or at least the
illusion, that he is the only one who can
handle this particular theme.
--Isaac Bashevis Singer
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nothing is sillier than the creative writing teacher's dictum,
"Write about what you know." But whether you're writing about
people or dragons, your personal observation of how things
happen in the world--how character reveals itself--can turn a
dead scene into a vital one. Preliminary good advice might
be: Write as if you were a movie camera. Get down exactly
what is there. . . . The trick is to bring it out, get it
down. Getting it down precisely is all that is meant by "the
accuracy of the writer's eye." Getting down what the writer
really cares about--setting down what the writer himself
notices, as opposed to what any fool might notice--is all that
is meant by the _originality_ of the writer's eye. Every
human being has original vision. Most can't write it down
without cheapening or falsifying.
--John Gardner
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don't get discouraged because there's a lot of mechanical work
to writing. . . . I rewrote the first part of _A Farewell to
Arms_ at least fifty times. . . . The first draft of anything
is shit. When you first start to write you get all the kick
and the reader gets none, but after you learn to work it's
your objective to convey everything to the reader so that he
remembers it not as a story he had read but something that
happened to himself. That's the true test of writing.
--Ernest Hemingway
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I would rather be a fool than a wise-man. I love all men who
_dive_. Any fish can swim near the surface, but it takes a
great whale to go downstairs five miles or more; & if he don't
attain the bottom, why all the lead in Galena can't fashion
the plummet that will. I'm not talking about Mr. Emerson
now--but of that whole corps of thought- divers, that have
been diving & coming up again with bloodshot eyes since the
world began.
--Herman Melville
------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was from Handel that I learned that style consists in force
of assertion. If you can say a thing with one stroke,
unanswerably you have style; if not, you are at best a
_marchande de plaisir_, a decorative litterateur, or a musical
confectioner, or a painter of fans with cupids and coquettes.
Handel had power.
--George Bernard Shaw
------------------------------------------------------------------------
If he is an artist, the realist will seek not to
give us a banal photograph of life, but rather to give us the
most complete, impressive, and convincing vision of life--more
than reality itself.
To relate everything would be impossible, because
you would have to have at least a volume for each day in order
to enumerate the mass of insignificant incidents that fill up
our lives.
A choice therefore obtrudes itself--which is the
first blow struck against a theory about "the whole truth." .
. . The artist, having chosen his theme, only picks out
details that are characteristic and of value for his subject,
out of this life so burdened with chance and futility; and he
rejects all the remainder and puts it to one side.
--Guy de Maupassant
------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you do not make the right beginning, you will never be able
to write. They will put you down as one who has been
influenced by another, and that will be the end. If they do
that with your first stories, and your first book, there will
never be any freedom from their judgement. The way not to
write like anybody else in the world is to go to the world
itself, to life itself, to the senses of the living body
itself, and to _translate_ in your _own_ way what you see, and
hear, and smell, and taste, and feel, and imagine, and dream
and do: _translate_ the thing or the act or the thought or
the mood into your own language. If you make the right
beginning, nothing can stop you, and all you will have to do
is survive.
--William Saroyan, in a letter to a
young, unpublished writer
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why talk in subtleties, when there are so many flagrant truths
to be told? . . . [When an artist begins to say], "I am not
understood, not because I am incomprehensible (that is, bad)
but because my listeners- readers-spectators have not yet
reached my intellectual level," he has abandoned the natural
imperatives of art and signed his own death warrant by
ignoring the mainspring of creation. . . . The artist of
tomorrow will realize that it is more important and useful to
compose a tale, a touching little song, a _divertissement_ or
sketch or light interlude, or draw a picture that will delight
dozens of generations, that is, millions of children and
adults, than a novel, symphony or painting that will enchant a
few representatives of the wealthy classes and then be
forgotten forever.
--Leo Tolstoi
------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you try to nail anything down, in the novel, either it
kills the novel or the novel gets up and walks away with the
nail. . . . Never trust the artist. Trust the tale.
--D. H. Lawrence
------------------------------------------------------------------------
If I stop writing and just try to enjoy myself, I get very
neurotic and guilt-ridden. Orwell was the same. Like the man
who, if he stops running, becomes afraid. Or the shark, which
must move to breathe.
--Arthur Koestler
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Writing is my religion. . . . I do believe that somehow, no
matter what the writing task, no matter how interesting or
straightforward the technique, no matter how mercenary the
reasons for writing it, if I search my soul and my heart I
will find a way to capture some kind of energy, to somehow
bring down a little fire to change my readers and change
myself.
--David Bradley
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with
writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until
death--fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous,
constant.
--Edna Ferber
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Every character is a mixture of people you've known.
Characters come to me--and I think this is behind the
Madeleine business in Proust-- when people are talking to me.
I feel I have heard this, this tone of voice, in other
circumstances. And, at the risk of seeming rude, I have to
hold on to this and chase it back until it clicks with someone
I've met before. The second secretary at the embassy in
Bangkok may remind me of the chemistry assistant at Oxford.
And I ask myself, what have they in common? Out of such
mixtures I can create characters.
--Angus Wilson
------------------------------------------------------------------------
So poetry, which is in Oxford made
An art, in London only is a trade.
--John Dryden
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Because of this [fear], the young man or woman writing
today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in
conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because
only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the
sweat.
He must learn them again. He must teach
himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and,
teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in
his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths
lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed-- love and
honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until
he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love
but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of
value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without
pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones,
leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the
glands.
Until he relearns these things, he will write
as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I
decline to accept the end of man. . . . I believe that man
will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not
because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice,
but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and
sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to
write about these things. It is his privilege to help man
endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage
and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and
sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's
voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of
the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.
--William Faulkner, in his
acceptance speech for the
1949 Nobel Prize
------------------------------------------------------------------------
To have something to say is a question of sleepless nights and
worry and endless ratiocination of a subject--of endless
trying to dig out the essential truth, the essential justice.
As a first premise you have to develop a conscience and if on
top of that you have talent so much the better. But if you
have talent without the conscience, you are just one of many
thousand journalists.
--F. Scott Fitzgerald
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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
------------------------------------------------------------------------
When you get down to work, just do the work the best you can.
Don't ever think about the public, or the critics, or any of
those things. You are a born writer if there ever was one and
have no need to worry about whether this new book will be as
good as the "Angel," and that sort of thing. If you simply
can get yourself into it, as you can, it _will_ be as good. I
doubt if you will really think of any of the extrinsic matters
when you are at work, but if you did, that might make it less
good.
--Maxwell Perkins, editor at Scribner's,
in a letter to Thomas Wolfe as he
worked on what was to become his
second novel
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Always get to the dialogue as soon as possible. I always feel
the thing to go for is speed. Nothing puts the reader off
more than a great slab of prose at the start. I think the
success of every novel--if it's a novel of action--depends on
the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, "Which
are my big scenes?" and then get every drop of juice out of
them. The principle I always go on in writing a novel is to
think of the characters in terms of actors in a play. I say
to myself, if a big name were playing this part, and if he
found that after a strong first act he had practically nothing
to do in the second act, he would walk out. Now, then, can I
twist the story so as to give him plenty to do all the way
through? I believe the only way a writer can keep himself up
to the mark is by examining each story quite coldly before he
starts writing it and asking himself if it is all right _as a
story_. I mean, once you go saying to yourself, "This is a
pretty weak plot as it stands, but I'm such a hell of a writer
that my magic touch will make it okay," you're sunk. If they
aren't in interesting situations, characters can't be major
characters, not even if you have the rest of the troop talk
their heads off about them.
--P. G. Wodehouse
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recording of everyday gestures, habits, manners, customs,
styles of travelling, eating, keeping house, modes of behaving
toward children, servants, superiors, inferiors, peers, plus
the various looks, glances, poses, styles of walking and other
symbolic details that might exist within a scene . . . is not
mere embroidery in prose. It lies as close to the center of
the power of realism as any other device in literature.
--Tom Wolfe
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have very seldom asked myself about the technique I
was using. When I begin to write I don't stop and wonder if I
am interfering too directly in the story, or if I know too
much about my characters, or whether or not I ought to judge
them. I write with complete naivete, spontaneously. I've
never had any preconceived notion of what I could or could not
do. . . . I believe that my younger fellow novelists are
greatly preoccupied with technique. They seem to think a good
novel ought to follow certain rules imposed from outside. In
fact, however, this preoccupation hampers them and embarrasses
them in their creation. The great novelist doesn't depend on
anyone but himself. Proust resembled none of his predecessors
and he did not have, he could not have, any successors. The
great novelist breaks his mold; he alone can use it. Balzac
created the "Balzacian" novel; its style was suitable only for
Balzac.
There is a close tie between a novelist's originality
in general and the personal quality of his style. A borrowed
style is a bad style. American novelists from Faulkner to
Hemingway invented a style to express what they wanted to
say--and it is a style that can't be passed on to their
followers.
--Francois Mauriac
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps in the
works of the poem so that something that is _not_ in the poem
can creep, crawl, flush, or thunder in.
--Dylan Thomas
------------------------------------------------------------------------
One of the problems in a longish task is it's hard to
stay oriented to the goal. If I begin on page 244 and end on
page 249 on a given day, was it a good day, or not? Many
writers are troubled by a feeling of getting lost in the
process, and feeling a lack of feedback or reward during this
long time. So I discovered that I could graph my day's output
(in the old days with MockChart, later with Works). And my
reward was a dot on the graph. It had several advantages. It
made the work "visible" and it allowed me to play a game with
myself. I always begin by just working for a few days. To
see how the book is going. Then after a week or so, I see I
am getting a certain page count. Maybe it's 3 a day, or 5 a
day. So whatever I am getting, I try to push it. Try to get
it up from 5 to 5.5, and then to 6 . . . I find it a useful
way to work, since the actual activity of writing is painful
to me. So if I can get it done faster, great. But the result
is that I have all these graphs, now. Which means I can
COMPARE how I am doing now to how I did then.
The other thing I do is I keep a diary daily. A very
short entry (also on the computer.) It is very valuable for
many reasons, but especially about writing. Sometimes when it
isn't going well, I look back at JP [Jurassic Park] or SPHERE,
and read my diary . . . and see all these expressions of
doubt, and discouragement. It isn't working. I will NEVER
finish. All that stuff. Then I feel better about my current
difficulties.
--Michael Crichton, in a Writers'
Ink RTC, December 1992
------------------------------------------------------------------------
If we work upon marble it will perish; if on brass, time will
efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust;
but if we work upon immortal minds . . . we will engrave on
those tablets something that will brighten all eternity.
--Noah Webster
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Find a subject you care about and which in your heart
feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and
not your games with language, which will be the most
compelling and seductive element in your style.
I am not urging you to write a novel, by the
way--although I would not be sorry if you wrote one, provided
you genuinely cared about something. A petition to the mayor
about a pothole in front of your house or a love letter to the
girl next door will do.
--Kurt Vonnegut
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I mean to utter certain thoughts, whether all the artistic
side of it goes to the dogs or not . . . even if it turns into
a mere pamphlet, I shall say all that I have in my heart.
--Fyodor Dostoyevsky
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I should write for the mere yearning and fondness I have for
the beautiful, even if my night's labors should be burnt every
morning and no eye shine upon them.
--John Keats
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A lifetime's experience urges me to utter a warning cry: do
anything else, take someone's golden retriever for a walk, run
away with a saxophone player. Perhaps what's wrong with being
a writer is that one can't even say "good luck"--luck plays no
part in the writing of a novel. No happy accidents as with
the paint pot or chisel. I don't think you can say anything,
really. I've always wanted to juggle and ride a unicycle, but
I dare say if I ever asked the advice of an acrobat he would
say, "All you do is get on and start pedaling. . . ."
--J. G. Ballard
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I can't do anything else. I have always regretted having
gotten involved with literature up to my neck. I would have
preferred to have been a monk; but, as I said, I was torn
between wanting fame and wishing to renounce the world. The
basic problem is that if God exists, what is the point of
literature? And if He _doesn't_ exist, what is the point of
literature? Either way, my writing, the only thing I have
ever succeeded in doing, is invalidated.
--Eugene Ionesco
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The dancer realizes someone else's dance, the writer her own.
The relationship of any writer towards a vocation so exacting
in its specificity, so demanding of love and energy and time,
so resistant to all efforts to define its essence or to
categorize its best effects, is bound to be an edgy one . . .
--Margaret Atwood
------------------------------------------------------------------------
. . . The heat of writing. I call it heat not because one
does or should write in a fever, but because the deliberate
choice of words and links and transitions is easiest and best
when it is made from a throng of ideas bubbling under the
surface of consciousness. On this account, I strongly
recommend writing ahead full tilt, not stopping to correct.
Cross out no more than the few words that will permit you to
go on when you foresee a blind alley. Leave some words in
blank, some sentences not complete. Keep going!
--Jacques Barzun
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader
. . . by either the author or the people in the tale.
The personages of a tale shall confine themselves to
possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a
miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make
it look possible and reasonable.
The author shall make the reader feel a deep interest
in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he
shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and
hate the bad ones.
Use the right word and not it's second cousin.
--Mark Twain
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let him mature the strength of his imagination amongst
the things of this earth, which it is his business to cherish
and know, and refrain from calling down his inspiration
ready-made from some heaven of perfections of which he knows
nothing. And I would not grudge him the proud illusion that
will come sometimes to a writer: the illusion that his
achievement has almost equalled the greatness of his dream. .
. . My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of
the written word to make you hear, to make you feel--it is,
before all, to make you see. That--and no more, and it is
everything.
--Joseph Conrad
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don't tell us petty stories of our own pettiness. We have
enough little Harvard men to do that. Tell us of things new
and strange and novel as you to do. Tell us of love and war
and action that thrills us because we know it not, of
boundless freedom that delights us because we have it not. . .
. Go back where there are temples and jungles and all manner
of unknown things, where there are mountains whose summits
have never been scaled, rivers whose sources have never been
reached, deserts whose sands have never been crossed.
--Willa Cather, in a letter to
Rudyard Kipling who was living in
Vermont, spending what was to be a
short time in the U.S.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Whatever the thing you wish to say, there is but one word to
express it, but one word to give it movement, but one
adjective to qualify it; you must seek until you find this
noun, this verb, this adjective. . . . When you pass a grocer
sitting in his doorway, a porter smoking a pipe, or a cab
stand, show me that grocer and that porter . . . in such a way
that I could never mistake them for any other grocer or
porter, and by a single word give me to understand wherein the
cab horse differs from fifty others before or behind it.
--Gustave Flaubert
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Writers and artists . . . can vanquish lies! in the struggle
against lies, art has always won and always will. Lies can
stand up against much of the world but not against art.
--Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
------------------------------------------------------------------------
As you know, the future itself is perilous. But as regards
books, there is first the financial aspect of publishing.
Already books are very expensive, so that a first novel of
quality will have less of a chance of being picked up. Say a
new Djuna Barnes, or indeed Nathalie Sarraute, might not get
published. If Woolf's _The Waves_ were to be published today
it would have pitiful sales. Of course, "how-to" books, spy
stories, thrillers, and science-fiction all sell by the
millions. What would be wonderful--what we _need_ just now--is
some astonishing fairy tale. I read somewhere the other day
that the cavemen did not paint what they saw, but what they
_wished_ they had seen. We need that, in these lonely,
lunatic times.
--Edna O'Brien
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The novelist should, I think, always settle when he starts
what is going to happen, what his major event is going to be.
He may alter this event as he approaches it, indeed he
probably will, indeed he probably had better, or the novel
becomes tied up and tight. But the sense of a solid mass
ahead, a mountain round or over or through which the story
must somehow go, is most valuable and, for the novels I've
tried to write, essential. There must be something, some
major object towards which one is to approach. When I began
_A Passage to India_ I knew that something important happened
in the Malabar Caves, and that it would have a central place
in the novel--but I didn't know what it would be. The Malabar
Caves represented an area in which concentration can take
place. A cavity. Something to focus everything up: to
engender an event like an egg.
--E.M. Forster
------------------------------------------------------------------------
What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done
reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific
friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone
whenever you felt like it.
--J.D. Salinger
------------------------------------------------------------------------
First remember George Seither's rule: "We don't reject
writers; we reject pieces of paper with typing on them." Then
scream a little. . . . Don't stay mad and decide you are the
victim of incompetence and stupidity. If you do, you'll learn
nothing and you'll never become a writer. . . . Don't get
huffy because you have already made sales and therefore feel
that no editor dare reject you. That's just not so. He _can_
reject you and he need not even offer any reason. . . . Don't
make the opposite mistake and decide the story is worthless.
Editors differ and so do tastes and so do magazines' needs.
Try the story somewhere else. . . . What doesn't fit one
magazine might easily fit another.
--Isaac Asimov
You want more? 
