Advice for writers #11: hidden gems or crazy counsel? Lessons we fail to learn, not just as writers

Next in THIS SERIES of quotes is number #11.

“I can shake off everything as I write. My sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn” (Anne Frank)

Nothing to argue with here. It isn’t a quote given as advice to others, it is Anne Frank talking about herself. Considering the conditions under which she wrote most of her work, it is incredible that she packed in so much of life, of emotion, of philosophy.

She had done considerable rewriting of her diaries with a view to publishing them after the war but of course the job was left unfinished. Happily for future generations the numerous notebooks were not destroyed. Less happily, and fewer than a hundred years later, we are living in a world where too many people seem to thirst for war – maybe they have no imaginations, maybe they never read, maybe they believe that war will never touch them. And whilst they thirst for the bloodshed of others they justify the starving and brutalising of children Anne Frank’s age and younger.

I don’t believe there can be a serious argument that says we don’t all have much to learn from Anne Frank – I don’t just mean this quote and I don’t just mean writers and writing – but looking around the world today it is distressingly easy to find people who have learnt nothing at all.

Advice for writers #10: hidden gems or crazy counsel? Wait a minute! Food for Thought

Next in THIS SERIES of quotes is number 10.

“You don’t write because you want to say something. You write because you have something to say” (F Scott Fitzgerald)

If it’s true that you write because you have something to say, does it follow that if you have something to say, then you write?

No of course not. If you have something to say, then often you ... well ... you simply say it. Though there are times when someone has something to say that has to be written down. It happened to Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. No way would Elizabeth Bennett have waited around for him to insult her family before getting to the truth about Wickham. Though I think it would be hard to pull off such a long letter in a modern novel. There must be examples but I can’t bring one to mind.

How about having a story to tell? Do writers write because they have a story to tell? Fitzgerald seems to imply more than that, a message behind the story, a fundamental truth perhaps.

It’s an interesting quote, and I’m inclined to think that there’s something in it because the alternative is the writer who writes when they have nothing to say at all. Ah... wait a minute... Now I believe I can bring to mind certain books where I would be hard pressed to know what possessed the writer to string the words together.

However, that doesn’t negate the sense behind what Fitzgerald said. In fact it underlines it. It’s worth taking the time to think about what you want to say – not in meticulous detail but in solid overview. Can you sum up your novel in a sentence? If not, are you really clear about what you’re writing about?

Useful food for thought here.

Advice for writers #7 #8 #9: hidden gems or crazy counsel? Gold Dust and Garbage

Next in THIS SERIES of quotes are numbers 7,  8 and 9.

Quote 7 provides some sound practical advice from one of the greats of crime fiction.

“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can’t allow what we learnt in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative” (Elmore Leonard)

Exactly right. It’s all too easy to go with the early programming of school English lessons; no prepositions at the ends of sentences, no ands, ors or buts at the start. But if the reader is always aware of the writer behind the prose, they are not being sucked into the world of the story.

The dialogue must find a direct route from the page into the reader’s head where it manifests as a character speaking. The descriptions must feel to the reader as though they are standing at the edge looking out on the landscape of the tale or looking in on the inner angst of the drama. Neither realistic dialogue nor a view of the landscape comes wrapped in complex grammatical niceties.

Know the rules before you break them, so that you know how and when best to do the deed, but be aware too that many so-called grammatical truths stand on shaky foundations (that’s a whole new blog of course).

And while we’re being practical and useful, here’s no 8:

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader” (Robert Frost)

Quite so. If you didn’t laugh or cry or if you didn’t have to write that scene with your eyes tight shut and your breath held, then how is the reader going to find it funny, sad or truly scary.

Yes, that’s great advice, but just for balance and just to show that great writers are not inevitably founts of constructive wisdom, here’s a counter example.

“Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college” (Kurt Vonnegut)

Come off it, Kurt! What sort of college did you go to? Semicolons are a respectable member of the punctuation tribe. Sure, no one wants to see them spread everywhere with a scatter-gun, and no manuscript will fall apart if every semicolon were to be replaced with a comma, but there are times when the comma doesn’t quite hit the note. Sometimes the elements within a list belong together in a way that the comma doesn’t fully catch. It’s a nuance, a shade, a trace. But then isn’t great writing – as opposed to just OK writing – often a case of catching those nuances right on the nose.

And you know what, Kurt? Your writing at its best can do just that. We used Slaughterhouse-Five in our Writers’ Toolkit as an example of how good it can get.

Advice for writers #6 #7: hidden gems or crazy counsel? The Why and the How

As inspiration for the New Year, quotes six and seven IN THIS SERIES get the treatment.

Quote number 6 is:

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect” (Anais Nin)

There are many ways of putting this one and you’ll find variations on the theme from other writers, some of which I intend to unpack later, but this one just kind of chimed with me.

In a nutshell is it the absolute reason why I write? Well, no. If I’d had to think it out for myself I doubt I’d have said it at all, and if I had I wouldn’t have put it so neatly. And yet... and yet... there’s something in it, and I like that I didn’t think of it myself. It gives me a sense of learning something I didn’t already know.

Now for some pragmatism and quote 7.

“This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it’s done. It’s that easy and that hard” (Neil Gaiman)

And that is spot on. Agatha Christie said something similar when asked how she wrote her books. You think of an idea then you force yourself to write it.

The planning, the plotting, getting the shape of the thing on paper (or screen) is a process that I enjoy. Getting from the rough outline to a set of words that makes sense is the bit I find pedestrian, a bit of a chore. But polishing that set of words to make a scene spring to life, fly off the page, crackle with tension – that’s the bit I really love.

And there’s something about that final polish that has an air of tasting life the second time, but Neil Gaiman has the nail on its clichéd head. It’s a funny business, writing, and it really is that easy and that hard.