JOHN STEINBECK'S TIPS
G'day guys,
Welcome to some top tips from John Steinbeck ... and some of his quotes. John Steinbeck (1902-1968), winner of the Nobel
Prize in Literature, achieved popular success in 1935 when he published Tortilla Flat. He went on to write more than twenty-five novels,
including The Grapes of
Wrath and Of Mice and Men.
1. Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400
pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets
finished, you are always surprised.
2. Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.
3. Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.
4. If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.
5. Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.
6. If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.
These tips were included in a letter Steinbeck wrote to a friend and were published in the Fall 1975 issue of The Paris Review.
STEINBECK QUOTES:
I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen.
Oh, we can populate the
dark with horrors, even we who think ourselves informed and sure,
believing nothing we cannot measure or weigh. I know beyond all doubt
that the dark things crowding in on me either did not exist or were not
dangerous to me, and still I was afraid.
My dreams are the problems
of the day stepped up to absurdity, a little like men dancing, wearing
the horns and masks of animals.
To finish is sadness to a
writer—a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it
isn't really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for
no story is ever done.
The free, exploring mind
of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And
this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it
wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any religion, or
government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am
and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern
must try to destroy the free mind, for it is the one thing which can by
inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I
hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that
separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we
are lost.
I believe a strong woman
may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in
her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.
Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.
His ear heard more than was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.
Man, unlike anything
organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up
the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.
It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There's a punishment for it, and it's usually crucifixion.
A question is a trap, and an answer your foot in it.
I believe that there is
one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caught—in their
lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their
avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net
of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. A man, after he has
brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the
hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or
ill?
2. Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.
3. Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.
4. If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.
5. Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.
6. If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.
These tips were included in a letter Steinbeck wrote to a friend and were published in the Fall 1975 issue of The Paris Review.
STEINBECK QUOTES:
I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen.
JOHN STEINBECK, The Winter of Our Discontent
JOHN STEINBECK, Travels with Charley: In Search of America
JOHN STEINBECK, The Winter of Our Discontent
JOHN STEINBECK, The Paris Review, fall 1975
JOHN STEINBECK, East of Eden
- We have usurped many of the powers we once ascribed to God. Fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life or death of the whole world — of all living things. The danger and the glory and the choice rest finally in man. The test of his perfectibility is at hand. Having taken Godlike power, we must seek in ourselves for the responsibility and the wisdom we once prayed some deity might have.
JOHN STEINBECK, Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Dec. 10, 1962
JOHN STEINBECK, East of Eden
JOHN STEINBECK, Quote Magazine, Jun. 18, 1961
JOHN STEINBECK, Of Mice and Men
JOHN STEINBECK, The Grapes of Wrath
JOHN STEINBECK, East of Eden
JOHN STEINBECK, Travels with Charley: In Search of America
JOHN STEINBECK, East of Eden
Now, you might like to watch a video of his acceptance of the Nobel Prize for Literature:
Clancy's comment: One interesting character, eh?
I'm ...
Think about this!
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