WRITING TIPS FROM A GURU
G'day folks,
Welcome to you writers out there. Today, I offer some tips from someone who should know what this is all about.
Geoff Dyer
1 Never worry about the commercial
possibilities of a project. That stuff is for agents and editors to fret over –
or not. Conversation with my American publisher. Me: "I'm writing a book
so boring, of such limited commercial appeal, that if you publish it, it will
probably cost you your job." Publisher: "That's exactly what makes me
want to stay in my job."
2 Don't write in public places. In
the early 1990s I went to live in Paris. The usual writerly reasons: back then,
if you were caught writing in a pub in England, you could get your head kicked
in, whereas in Paris, dans les cafés . . . Since then I've developed an
aversion to writing in public. I now think it should be done only in private,
like any other lavatorial activity.
3 Don't be one of those writers
who sentence themselves to a lifetime of sucking up to Nabokov.
4 If you use a computer,
constantly refine and expand your autocorrect settings. The only reason I stay
loyal to my piece-of-shit computer is that I have invested so much ingenuity
into building one of the great autocorrect files in literary history. Perfectly
formed and spelt words emerge from a few brief keystrokes:
"Niet" becomes "Nietzsche", "phoy" becomes "photography"
and so on. Genius!
5 Keep a diary. The biggest regret
of my writing life is that I have never kept a journal or a diary.
6 Have regrets. They are fuel. On
the page they flare into desire.
7 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.
8 Beware of clichés. Not just the clichés
that Martin Amis is at war with. There are clichés of response as well as
expression. There are clichés of observation and of thought – even of
conception. Many novels, even quite a few adequately written ones, are clichés
of form which conform to clichés of expectation.
9 Do it every day. Make a habit of
putting your observations into words and gradually this will become instinct.
This is the most important rule of all and, naturally, I don't follow it.
10 Never ride a bike with the brakes
on. If something is proving too difficult, give up and do something else. Try
to live without resort to perseverance. But writing is all about perseverance.
You've got to stick at it. In my 30s I used to go to the gym
even though I hated it. The purpose of going to the gym was to
postpone the day when I would stop going. That's what writing is to me: a way
of postponing the day when I won't do it any more, the day when I
will sink into a depression so profound it will be indistinguishable from
perfect bliss.
Clancy's comment: Hope these have fired you up to keep writing.
I'm ...
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