Favourite Tips From 'Real' Authors

I found this list from The Guardian last week; Ten Rules For Writing Fiction

It's an old one, but the content is still applicable, and in my slower moments, or when I just need to step away from the page and look at something else for a while, or when I need something to inspire me to just get the hell on with writing; at those moments I have been dipping in and out of this, and I am loving it. There are some sage pieces of advice in here, my favourites being:

Elmore Leonard

Keep your exclamation points ­under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.

Ooh! I've been known to scatter them like Confetti! Damn! 


Margaret Atwood

You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there's no free lunch. Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you're on your own. ­Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.

Useful slap in the face from the hand of reality there...

Roddy Doyle

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 ­–

I can see it now: 
"how's it coming, have you got much done today?"
"oh yes darling, I've done load. I've written 50 pages today" (in double spaced, narrowed margins, size 120 Ariel...)

Geoff Dyer

Have more than one idea on the go at any one time. If it's a choice between writing a book and doing nothing I will always choose the latter. It's only if I have an idea for two books that I choose one rather than the other. I ­always have to feel that I'm bunking off from something.

 Pretty much the raison d'être for this blog.

Esther Freud

Find your best time of the day for writing and write. Don't let anything else interfere. Afterwards it won't matter to you that the kitchen is a mess.

I may print this one off and leave it on the fridge, as my excuse for when the house looks like a bomb has hit and I'm too busy staring at a screen to have noticed. 

AL Kennedy

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.

*Cancels trip to vintage market for roll-neck jumper purchasing*

Will Self

Don't look back until you've written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceding day. This prevents those cringing feelings, and means that you have a substantial body of work before you get down to the real work which is all in . . . (the edit)

Such a good tip - I am currently unable to resist going back and having a little look at what I've already done and tidying it up a bit. I am coming to realise that 'just writing' is a much better use of my time at the minute and the editing can wait until there's enough of it to actually work with.

Helen Simpson

The nearest I have to a rule is a Post-it on the wall in front of my desk saying "Faire et se taire" (Flaubert), which I translate for myself as "Shut up and get on with it." 

This particular piece of advice was given to me when I was a 20something PR exec, by my then line manager. She is someone who I am glad to still call my friend today, despite her somewhat poorly received motivational speech.

Zadie Smith

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the ­internet.

(oops!)

Colm Tóibín

Get on with it.

There is a theme developing here...

Sarah Waters

Treat writing as a job. Be disciplined. Lots of writers get a bit OCD-ish about this. Graham Greene famously wrote 500 words a day. Jean Plaidy managed 5,000 before lunch, then spent the afternoon answering fan mail. My minimum is 1,000 words a day – which is sometimes easy to achieve, and is sometimes, frankly, like shitting a brick, but I will make myself stay at my desk until I've got there, because I know that by doing that I am inching the book forward. Those 1,000 words might well be rubbish – they often are. But then, it is always easier to return to rubbish words at a later date and make them better. 

Some days I manage 500 words, some says it's 5000 - I'm still finding my stride, but it's good to know that everyone is different. And, that the words I write don't always have to be any good in the first instance.  

And on that note.... I suppose I should go and start work. Got a favourite tip or motivational quote you'd like to share? Pop it in the comments :)