Everything You Need To Know About Writing In Just 10 Minutes
And other great essays on writing by famous authors
If you think of what is at the heart of being a writer, what is the soul of their given profession, it is the gift of conveying a message, telepathy, from one mind to the other.
Which is why they’re natural teachers, didactic in spirit, with swords sharpened for pedagogy.
So here are five articles I love, from writers you (hopefully) love, on writing, summarized so you don’t have to read them—but trust me, you should.
Write Till You Drop by Annie Dillard
Write as if you were dying, and your audience also consisted of terminally ill patients, because that’s, after all, what you’re doing.
A well-known writer got collared by a university student who asked, ‘’Do you think I could be a writer?’’
‘’Well,’’ the writer said, ‘’I don’t know. . . . Do you like sentences?’’
Fail Better by Zadie Smith
Writing fiction is the great craftsmanship, unlike other craftsmanships. Skilled carpenters will inevitably make great shelves, but skilled writers do not make great novels. There is something more to writing fiction, which one might have called the soul in the past, a point of character, one of a deep ethical being, of ‘telling the truth’ which says something about the writer writing.
So when we write, we our attempting to reveal ourselves, who we are, but we are imperfect, we are incapable, we are human. So we fail. But to be a great writer, you just have to fail better.
Why I Write by George Orwell
There are four reasons that writers become writers, and most writers are not limited to one or two or three. They are:
Sheer egoism
Aesthetic Enthusiasm
Historical Impulse
Political Purpose
Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.
Everything You Need To Know About Writing In Just 10 Minutes by Stephen King
To put it simply, you write, then edit out the bad parts. That’s it. That’s writing in a nutshell.
But to be more specific, the great Mr. King breaks it down into further points.
Be talented
Be neat
Be self-critical
Remove any extraneous word
Never look at a reference book while doing a first draft
Know the markets
Write to entertain
Ask yourself frequently, “am I having fun?”
Distinguish good from bad criticism
Observe all rules for proper submission
Forget about an agent for now
If it’s bad, kill it
What’s your favourite article on writing?
