Advice for the Budding Writer

Myself included

It appears, from interviews, opinion pieces and essays by many writers, that the secret to becoming one of them is, to put it bluntly, to write. This might seem a little bit too obvious, but it appears to be true. It reminds me a little of what Ion Heliade Radulescu, a literary gentleman who wanted to develop national literature in 19th Century Romania said to his young protégés: Scrieti, baieti, orice, numai scrieti! — write, my boys, write anything, but write!

While this encouragement was gently mocked later on, as a pointer of an apparent failure to recognise quality, I would argue that Heliade was completely right. It is only by writing things down — and then taking one or several good, objective looks at it later — that you can achieve something in this field. It is a truth universally acknowledged that the exercise of writing, coupled with lots of reading, generally brings refinement and substance.

There is some interesting advice on writing published in the Books section of the Guardian newspaper some time ago, which I would recommend to all. Some of it must be taken with a pinch of salt, some of it is very tongue in cheek, some clearly contradicts other advice on the same page, but all of it amounts to useful knowledge that can be applied in various situations in the writer’s life.

I will quote a little from the ‘Ten Rules for Writing Fiction’: if you have the time, read both part One and part Two.

Elmore Leonard advised us to “Never use a verb other than ‘said’ to carry dialogue. … ‘said’ is far less intrusive than ‘grumbled’, ‘gasped’, ‘cautioned’, ‘lied’.”

On my own behalf, I will add ‘sighed’ to the list.

Diana Athill advises to read aloud what you’ve written, and make sure it all sounds right. Margaret Atwood advises, among other things, that “Prayer might work. Or reading something else.” Helen Dunmore thinks you should “Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite.”

Richard Ford says you should not “drink and write at the same time” (although literary history knows of a good number of people who did precisely this, and to great acclaim, too), and Neil Gaiman that you should “finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it”, while Andrew Motion says you should “think big and stay particular.”

Zadie Smith comes in with the very handy advice to “leave a decent space of time between writing something and editing it”, and Jeanette Winterson encourages you to “enjoy this work”, which is just as well, as you might be the only one to do so for a while (like a great deal of postings on Medium after their change of policy, for the matter, mine included).

Everything above looks like sound advice to me. While I’m at it, I might also direct you to a blog by crime writer Timothy Hallinan, hosted by Soho Press. If you have “started a novel but are having trouble finishing it, or you want to start a novel but aren’t sure you’ll be able to finish it” it is definitely for you.

Happy writing!