Writing tips
Writing Short Stories
29 March 2011
by Stuart Evers
I'm wary about giving advice. Writing
is such a personal thing that putting across a set of edicts everyone
should follow seems rather reductive. After all, I write in a certain
way that would, for example, probably be of no use to someone writing
an historical or SF novel. That said there are some general things that
I think do apply to all creative writing.
> If you're a writer, you have to be a reader
I
became a writer because I was a reader first; and I wouldn't have
written anything without that grounding. When I was an editor, I used
to receive cover letters from people proud of the fact that they hadn't
read many books. They'd claim that, as a consequence, their typescript
was undoubtedly original. They never, ever were.
Read as widely as you can, in the genre in which you wish to write,
and far outside of it. Keep reading. Read some more. Ask booksellers
for recommendations, read blogs about books, go to the library. Read
some more. The best writers were and are readers; bestselling novelists
are readers too. If you want to be anything in between - or preferably
that rare bird that is both - you need to read too.
> Do not compare yourself favourably or unfavourably to another writer
While
reading is vital, it's just as important to not get bogged down by
thinking too much about other writers. Reading a book like Austerlitz by W G Sebald, The Collected Stories of Grace Paley or The Unconsoled by
Kazuo Ishiguro can be a debilitating experience: you read them and
think, well I could never write as well as that. Similarly you can read
the hot new debut, or novel that has received acres of fawning reviews
and think, I could do better than that; I'm a much better writer, why
don't I get the plaudits? Both responses are as damaging. One can lead
to a crushing lack of confidence; the other an unbearable kind of
arrogance.
Your work is your work. It has nothing to do with
any other writer. You need all the energy you can muster to be a write,
so why waste it on railing against the system, or other writers?
Conserve the energy, channel it into your fiction. And if you do read
something that so floors you that you can't imagine writing again,
remember that someone might just think the same thing of yours at some
point, but unless you keep writing, you'll never know.
> You're a writer, so write!
Peter Cook - or so the story that I once heard goes - was at a
party. He was talking to a journalist and asked him what he was
working on at that moment. 'Actually,' the man said, 'I'm writing a
novel.' Cook looked him up and down: 'How interesting!' he said.
'Neither am I.'
Writing is a slog. It takes effort, discipline, nerve and devotion.
Haruki Murakami said writing a book is like long distance running, and
it's true: you have to do a lot of training before you can attempt the
marathon. Find a routine that works for you and stick to it. Raymond
Carver, at first, only wrote once his kids had gone down for the night;
Jonathan Franzen hired an office and treated writing like a day job.
How you do it is irrelevant: all that matters is that you're producing
the work. Without that you might as well call yourself an astronaut, a
footballer or Jon Bon Jovi.
> Find an encouraging, but honest, reader
Of
all my suggestions, this is the most difficult one - because this is
the one thing you have no control over. I've been exceptionally lucky to
have people who are sympathetic to what I write, but are not afraid to
say when something doesn't work or could be improved upon. If you find
such a person, or persons, hang on to them like you're scrabbling on
the edge of a precipice: they are unbelievably precious.
> Look around you: there are stories everywhere
Near the beginning of Robert Altman's film The Player the
new studio executive flicks through a paper and finds a story he thinks
could make a movie. 'What do we pay the writers for?' he says (or
words to that effect at least) and perhaps the answer is: to bring life
to such narratives . No matter what genre you're writing in, if you're
alive to the stories around you - conversations in pubs or at the bus
stop, the way an old woman dresses, the kids hanging about outside the
school - you'll never be short on inspiration. Writing may be a
solitary pursuit, but generating ideas should not be.
Writing Short Stories
29 March 2011
by Stuart Evers
I'm wary about giving advice. Writing
is such a personal thing that putting across a set of edicts everyone
should follow seems rather reductive. After all, I write in a certain
way that would, for example, probably be of no use to someone writing
an historical or SF novel. That said there are some general things that
I think do apply to all creative writing.
> If you're a writer, you have to be a reader
I
became a writer because I was a reader first; and I wouldn't have
written anything without that grounding. When I was an editor, I used
to receive cover letters from people proud of the fact that they hadn't
read many books. They'd claim that, as a consequence, their typescript
was undoubtedly original. They never, ever were.
Read as widely as you can, in the genre in which you wish to write,
and far outside of it. Keep reading. Read some more. Ask booksellers
for recommendations, read blogs about books, go to the library. Read
some more. The best writers were and are readers; bestselling novelists
are readers too. If you want to be anything in between - or preferably
that rare bird that is both - you need to read too.
> Do not compare yourself favourably or unfavourably to another writer
While
reading is vital, it's just as important to not get bogged down by
thinking too much about other writers. Reading a book like Austerlitz by W G Sebald, The Collected Stories of Grace Paley or The Unconsoled by
Kazuo Ishiguro can be a debilitating experience: you read them and
think, well I could never write as well as that. Similarly you can read
the hot new debut, or novel that has received acres of fawning reviews
and think, I could do better than that; I'm a much better writer, why
don't I get the plaudits? Both responses are as damaging. One can lead
to a crushing lack of confidence; the other an unbearable kind of
arrogance.
Your work is your work. It has nothing to do with
any other writer. You need all the energy you can muster to be a write,
so why waste it on railing against the system, or other writers?
Conserve the energy, channel it into your fiction. And if you do read
something that so floors you that you can't imagine writing again,
remember that someone might just think the same thing of yours at some
point, but unless you keep writing, you'll never know.
> You're a writer, so write!
Peter Cook - or so the story that I once heard goes - was at a
party. He was talking to a journalist and asked him what he was
working on at that moment. 'Actually,' the man said, 'I'm writing a
novel.' Cook looked him up and down: 'How interesting!' he said.
'Neither am I.'
Writing is a slog. It takes effort, discipline, nerve and devotion.
Haruki Murakami said writing a book is like long distance running, and
it's true: you have to do a lot of training before you can attempt the
marathon. Find a routine that works for you and stick to it. Raymond
Carver, at first, only wrote once his kids had gone down for the night;
Jonathan Franzen hired an office and treated writing like a day job.
How you do it is irrelevant: all that matters is that you're producing
the work. Without that you might as well call yourself an astronaut, a
footballer or Jon Bon Jovi.
> Find an encouraging, but honest, reader
Of
all my suggestions, this is the most difficult one - because this is
the one thing you have no control over. I've been exceptionally lucky to
have people who are sympathetic to what I write, but are not afraid to
say when something doesn't work or could be improved upon. If you find
such a person, or persons, hang on to them like you're scrabbling on
the edge of a precipice: they are unbelievably precious.
> Look around you: there are stories everywhere
Near the beginning of Robert Altman's film The Player the
new studio executive flicks through a paper and finds a story he thinks
could make a movie. 'What do we pay the writers for?' he says (or
words to that effect at least) and perhaps the answer is: to bring life
to such narratives . No matter what genre you're writing in, if you're
alive to the stories around you - conversations in pubs or at the bus
stop, the way an old woman dresses, the kids hanging about outside the
school - you'll never be short on inspiration. Writing may be a
solitary pursuit, but generating ideas should not be.
