Walter Benjamin’s 13 Oracular Writing Tips

in Literature, Philosophy, Writing | March 1st, 2016

benjamin writing tips

Image by Wal­ter Ben­jamin Archiv, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

The prob­a­bil­i­ty of Wal­ter Ben­jamin’s name com­ing up in your aver­age MFA work­shop, or fic­tion writ­ers’ group of any kind, like­ly approach­es zero. But head over to a name-your-crit­i­cal-polit­i­cal-lit­er­ary-the­o­ry class and I’d be sur­prised not to hear it dropped at least once, if not half a dozen times. Ben­jamin, after all, men­tored or befriend­ed the first gen­er­a­tion Frank­furt School, Han­nah Arendt, Bertolt Brecht, Leo Strauss, and near­ly every oth­er twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Ger­man intel­lec­tu­al who escaped the Nazis. Trag­i­cal­ly, Ben­jamin him­self did not fare so well. It has long been believed that he killed him­self rather than face Nazi cap­ture. Anoth­er the­o­ry spec­u­lates that Stal­in had him mur­dered.

Since his death, the leg­end of Ben­jamin as a kind of het­ero­dox Marx­ist prophet—an image he fos­tered with his embrace of Jew­ish mysticism—has grown and grown. And yet, despite his rar­i­fied aca­d­e­m­ic pedi­gree, I main­tain that writ­ers of all kinds, from the most pedan­tic to the most vis­cer­al, can learn much from him.

Ben­jamin did not strict­ly con­fine him­self to the arcane tex­tu­al analy­sis and lit­er­ary-the­o­log­i­cal hermeneu­tics for which he’s best known; he spent most of his career work­ing as a free­lance crit­ic and jour­nal­ist, writ­ing almost casu­al trav­el­ogues, per­son­al rem­i­nis­cences of Weimar Berlin, and approach­able essays on a vari­ety of sub­jects. For a few years, he even wrote and pre­sent­ed pop­u­lar radio broad­casts for young adults—acting as a kind of “Ger­man Ira Glass for teens.”

And, like so many writ­ers before and since, Ben­jamin once issued a list of “writer’s tips”—or, as he called it, “The Writer’s Tech­nique in Thir­teen The­ses,” part of his 1928 trea­tise One-Way Street, one of only two books pub­lished in his life­time. In Ben­jam­in’s hands, that well-worn, well mean­ing, but often less than help­ful genre becomes a series of orac­u­lar pro­nounce­ments that can seem, at first read, com­i­cal, super­sti­tious, or puz­zling­ly idio­syn­crat­ic. But read them over a few times. Then read them again. Like all of his writ­ing, Ben­jam­in’s sug­ges­tions, some of which read like com­mand­ments, oth­ers like Niet­zschean apho­risms, reveal their mean­ings slow­ly, illu­mi­nat­ing the pos­tures, atti­tudes, and phys­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­plines of writ­ing in sur­pris­ing­ly humane and astute ways.

The Writer’s Tech­nique in Thir­teen The­ses:

  1. Any­one intend­ing to embark on a major work should be lenient with him­self and, hav­ing com­plet­ed a stint, deny him­self noth­ing that will not prej­u­dice the next.
  2. Talk about what you have writ­ten, by all means, but do not read from it while the work is in progress. Every grat­i­fi­ca­tion pro­cured in this way will slack­en your tem­po. If this regime is fol­lowed, the grow­ing desire to com­mu­ni­cate will become in the end a motor for com­ple­tion.
  3. In your work­ing con­di­tions avoid every­day medi­oc­rity. Semi-relax­ation, to a back­ground of insipid sounds, is degrad­ing. On the oth­er hand, accom­pa­ni­ment by an etude or a cacoph­o­ny of voic­es can become as sig­nif­i­cant for work as the per­cep­ti­ble silence of the night. If the lat­ter sharp­ens the inner ear, the for­mer acts as a touch­stone for a dic­tion ample enough to bury even the most way­ward sounds.
  4. Avoid hap­haz­ard writ­ing mate­ri­als. A pedan­tic adher­ence to cer­tain papers, pens, inks is ben­e­fi­cial. No lux­u­ry, but an abun­dance of these uten­sils is indis­pens­able.
  5. Let no thought pass incog­ni­to, and keep your note­book as strict­ly as the author­i­ties keep their reg­is­ter of aliens.
  6. Keep your pen aloof from inspi­ra­tion, which it will then attract with mag­net­ic pow­er. The more cir­cum­spect­ly you delay writ­ing down an idea, the more mature­ly devel­oped it will be on sur­ren­der­ing itself. Speech con­quers thought, but writ­ing com­mands it.
  7. Nev­er stop writ­ing because you have run out of ideas. Lit­er­ary hon­our requires that one break off only at an appoint­ed moment (a meal­time, a meet­ing) or at the end of the work.
  8. Fill the lacu­nae of inspi­ra­tion by tidi­ly copy­ing out what is already writ­ten. Intu­ition will awak­en in the process.
  9. Nul­la dies sine lin­ea [‘No day with­out a line’] — but there may well be weeks.
  10. Con­sid­er no work per­fect over which you have not once sat from evening to broad day­light.
  11. Do not write the con­clu­sion of a work in your famil­iar study. You would not find the nec­es­sary courage there.
  12. Stages of com­po­si­tion: idea — style — writ­ing. The val­ue of the fair copy is that in pro­duc­ing it you con­fine atten­tion to cal­lig­ra­phy. The idea kills inspi­ra­tion, style fet­ters the idea, writ­ing pays off style.
  13. The work is the death mask of its con­cep­tion.

via Clar­i­on 18/Brain­Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wal­ter Benjamin’s Radio Plays for Kids (1929–1932)

Umber­to Eco Dies at 84; Leaves Behind Advice to Aspir­ing Writ­ers

David Ogilvy’s 1982 Memo “How to Write” Offers 10 Pieces of Time­less Advice

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Umberto Eco Dies at 84; Leaves Behind Advice to Aspiring Writers

in Life, Writing | February 19th, 2016

Umber­to Eco, the Ital­ian semi­oti­cian, philoso­pher, lit­er­ary crit­ic, and nov­el­ist — and, of course, author of Fou­cault’s Pen­du­lum — has died at his home in Milan. He was 84.

Eco’s pass­ing adds some poignan­cy to a video he record­ed just last year, on behalf of The Louisiana Chan­nel, a media out­let based, of all places, in Den­mark. In the clip above, Eco gives some coun­sel to aspir­ing writ­ers: Keep your ego in check, and your ambi­tions, real­is­tic. Put in the time and the hard work, and don’t shoot for the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture straight out of the gate. That, Eco says, kills every lit­er­ary career. And remem­ber that writ­ing is “10% inspi­ra­tion and 90% per­spi­ra­tion.” They’re truisms–you dis­cov­er after spend­ing decades as a writer–that turn out to be true. That con­fir­ma­tion is one of the gifts he leaves behind.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Umber­to Eco’s How To Write a The­sis: A Wit­ty, Irrev­er­ent & High­ly Prac­ti­cal Guide Now Out in Eng­lish

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“20 Rules For Writing Detective Stories” By S.S. Van Dine, One of T.S. Eliot’s Favorite Genre Authors (1928)

in Literature, Writing | February 5th, 2016

ss dine rules for writing detective fiction

Every gen­er­a­tion, it seems, has its pre­ferred best­selling genre fic­tion. We’ve had fan­ta­sy and, at least in very recent his­to­ry, vam­pire romance keep­ing us read­ing. The fifties and six­ties had their west­erns and sci-fi. And in the for­ties, it won’t sur­prise you to hear, detec­tive fic­tion was all the rage. So much so that—like many an irri­ta­ble con­trar­i­an crit­ic today—esteemed lit­er­ary tastemak­er Edmund Wil­son penned a cranky New York­er piece in 1944 declaim­ing its pop­u­lar­i­ty, writ­ing “at the age of twelve… I was out­grow­ing that form of lit­er­a­ture”; the form, that is, per­fect­ed by Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Wilkie Collins, and imi­tat­ed by a host of pulp writ­ers in Wilson’s day. Detec­tive sto­ries, in fact, were in vogue for the first few decades of the 20th century—since the appear­ance of Sher­lock Holmes and a deriv­a­tive 1907 char­ac­ter called “the Think­ing Machine,” respon­si­ble, it seems, for Wilson’s loss of inter­est.

Thus, when Wil­son learned that “of all peo­ple,”Paul Grim­stad writes, T.S. Eliot “was a devot­ed fan of the genre,” he must have been par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­mayed, as he con­sid­ered Eliot “an unim­peach­able author­i­ty in mat­ters of lit­er­ary judg­ment.” Eliot’s tastes were much more ecu­meni­cal than most crit­ics sup­posed, his “atti­tude toward pop­u­lar art forms… more capa­cious and ambiva­lent than he’s often giv­en cred­it for.” The rhythms of rag­time per­vade his ear­ly poet­ry, and “in his lat­er years he want­ed noth­ing more than to have a hit on Broad­way.” (He suc­ceed­ed, six­teen years after his death.) Eliot pep­pered his con­ver­sa­tion and poet­ry with quo­ta­tions from Arthur Conan Doyle and wrote sev­er­al glow­ing reviews of detec­tive nov­els by writ­ers like Dorothy Say­ers and Agatha Christie dur­ing the genre’s “Gold­en Age,” pub­lish­ing them anony­mous­ly in his lit­er­ary jour­nal The Cri­te­ri­on in 1927.

One nov­el that impressed him above all oth­ers is titled The Ben­son Mur­der Case by an Amer­i­can writer named S.S. Van Dine, pen name of an art crit­ic and edi­tor named Willard Hunt­ing­ton Wright. Refer­ring to an emi­nent art his­to­ri­an—whose tastes guid­ed those of the wealthy indus­tri­al class—Eliot wrote that Van Dine used “meth­ods sim­i­lar to those which Bernard Beren­son applies to paint­ings.” He had good rea­son to ascribe to Van Dine a cura­to­r­i­al sen­si­bil­i­ty. After a ner­vous break­down, the writer “spent two years in bed read­ing more than two thou­sand detec­tive sto­ries, dur­ing with time he method­i­cal­ly dis­tilled the genre’s for­mu­las and began writ­ing nov­els.” The year after Eliot’s appre­cia­tive review, Van Dine pub­lished his own set of cri­te­ria for detec­tive fic­tion in a 1928 issue of The Amer­i­can Mag­a­zine. You can read his “Twen­ty Rules for Writ­ing Detec­tive Sto­ries” below. They include such pro­scrip­tions as “There must be no love inter­est” and “The detec­tive him­self, or one of the offi­cial inves­ti­ga­tors, should nev­er turn out to be the cul­prit.”

Rules, of course, are made to be bro­ken (just ask G.K. Chester­ton), pro­vid­ed one is clever and expe­ri­enced enough to cir­cum­vent or dis­re­gard them. But the novice detec­tive or mys­tery writer could cer­tain­ly do worse than take the advice below from one of T.S. Eliot’s favorite detec­tive writ­ers. We’d also urge you to see Ray­mond Chan­dler’s 10 Com­mand­ments for Writ­ing Detec­tive Fic­tion.

THE DETECTIVE sto­ry is a kind of intel­lec­tu­al game. It is more — it is a sport­ing event. And for the writ­ing of detec­tive sto­ries there are very def­i­nite laws — unwrit­ten, per­haps, but none the less bind­ing; and every respectable and self-respect­ing con­coc­ter of lit­er­ary mys­ter­ies lives up to them. Here­with, then, is a sort Cre­do, based part­ly on the prac­tice of all the great writ­ers of detec­tive sto­ries, and part­ly on the prompt­ings of the hon­est author’s inner con­science. To wit:

1. The read­er must have equal oppor­tu­ni­ty with the detec­tive for solv­ing the mys­tery. All clues must be plain­ly stat­ed and described.

2. No will­ful tricks or decep­tions may be placed on the read­er oth­er than those played legit­i­mate­ly by the crim­i­nal on the detec­tive him­self.

3. There must be no love inter­est. The busi­ness in hand is to bring a crim­i­nal to the bar of jus­tice, not to bring a lovelorn cou­ple to the hyme­neal altar.

4. The detec­tive him­self, or one of the offi­cial inves­ti­ga­tors, should nev­er turn out to be the cul­prit. This is bald trick­ery, on a par with offer­ing some one a bright pen­ny for a five-dol­lar gold piece. It’s false pre­tens­es.

5. The cul­prit must be deter­mined by log­i­cal deduc­tions — not by acci­dent or coin­ci­dence or unmo­ti­vat­ed con­fes­sion. To solve a crim­i­nal prob­lem in this lat­ter fash­ion is like send­ing the read­er on a delib­er­ate wild-goose chase, and then telling him, after he has failed, that you had the object of his search up your sleeve all the time. Such an author is no bet­ter than a prac­ti­cal jok­er.

6. The detec­tive nov­el must have a detec­tive in it; and a detec­tive is not a detec­tive unless he detects. His func­tion is to gath­er clues that will even­tu­al­ly lead to the per­son who did the dirty work in the first chap­ter; and if the detec­tive does not reach his con­clu­sions through an analy­sis of those clues, he has no more solved his prob­lem than the school­boy who gets his answer out of the back of the arith­metic.

7. There sim­ply must be a corpse in a detec­tive nov­el, and the dead­er the corpse the bet­ter. No less­er crime than mur­der will suf­fice. Three hun­dred pages is far too much pother for a crime oth­er than mur­der. After all, the read­er’s trou­ble and expen­di­ture of ener­gy must be reward­ed.

8. The prob­lem of the crime must he solved by strict­ly nat­u­ral­is­tic means. Such meth­ods for learn­ing the truth as slate-writ­ing, oui­ja-boards, mind-read­ing, spir­i­tu­al­is­tic se’ances, crys­tal-gaz­ing, and the like, are taboo. A read­er has a chance when match­ing his wits with a ratio­nal­is­tic detec­tive, but if he must com­pete with the world of spir­its and go chas­ing about the fourth dimen­sion of meta­physics, he is defeat­ed ab ini­tio.

9. There must be but one detec­tive — that is, but one pro­tag­o­nist of deduc­tion — one deus ex machi­na. To bring the minds of three or four, or some­times a gang of detec­tives to bear on a prob­lem, is not only to dis­perse the inter­est and break the direct thread of log­ic, but to take an unfair advan­tage of the read­er. If there is more than one detec­tive the read­er does­n’t know who his cod­e­duc­tor is. It’s like mak­ing the read­er run a race with a relay team.

10. The cul­prit must turn out to be a per­son who has played a more or less promi­nent part in the sto­ry — that is, a per­son with whom the read­er is famil­iar and in whom he takes an inter­est.

11. A ser­vant must not be cho­sen by the author as the cul­prit. This is beg­ging a noble ques­tion. It is a too easy solu­tion. The cul­prit must be a decid­ed­ly worth-while per­son — one that would­n’t ordi­nar­i­ly come under sus­pi­cion.

12. There must be but one cul­prit, no mat­ter how many mur­ders are com­mit­ted. The cul­prit may, of course, have a minor helper or co-plot­ter; but the entire onus must rest on one pair of shoul­ders: the entire indig­na­tion of the read­er must be per­mit­ted to con­cen­trate on a sin­gle black nature.

13. Secret soci­eties, camor­ras, mafias, et al., have no place in a detec­tive sto­ry. A fas­ci­nat­ing and tru­ly beau­ti­ful mur­der is irre­me­di­a­bly spoiled by any such whole­sale cul­pa­bil­i­ty. To be sure, the mur­der­er in a detec­tive nov­el should be giv­en a sport­ing chance; but it is going too far to grant him a secret soci­ety to fall back on. No high-class, self-respect­ing mur­der­er would want such odds.

14. The method of mur­der, and the means of detect­ing it, must be be ratio­nal and sci­en­tif­ic. That is to say, pseu­do-sci­ence and pure­ly imag­i­na­tive and spec­u­la­tive devices are not to be tol­er­at­ed in the roman polici­er. Once an author soars into the realm of fan­ta­sy, in the Jules Verne man­ner, he is out­side the bounds of detec­tive fic­tion, cavort­ing in the unchart­ed reach­es of adven­ture.

15. The truth of the prob­lem must at all times be appar­ent — pro­vid­ed the read­er is shrewd enough to see it. By this I mean that if the read­er, after learn­ing the expla­na­tion for the crime, should reread the book, he would see that the solu­tion had, in a sense, been star­ing him in the face-that all the clues real­ly point­ed to the cul­prit — and that, if he had been as clever as the detec­tive, he could have solved the mys­tery him­self with­out going on to the final chap­ter. That the clever read­er does often thus solve the prob­lem goes with­out say­ing.

16. A detec­tive nov­el should con­tain no long descrip­tive pas­sages, no lit­er­ary dal­ly­ing with side-issues, no sub­tly worked-out char­ac­ter analy­ses, no “atmos­pher­ic” pre­oc­cu­pa­tions. such mat­ters have no vital place in a record of crime and deduc­tion. They hold up the action and intro­duce issues irrel­e­vant to the main pur­pose, which is to state a prob­lem, ana­lyze it, and bring it to a suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion. To be sure, there must be a suf­fi­cient descrip­tive­ness and char­ac­ter delin­eation to give the nov­el verisimil­i­tude.

17. A pro­fes­sion­al crim­i­nal must nev­er be shoul­dered with the guilt of a crime in a detec­tive sto­ry. Crimes by house­break­ers and ban­dits are the province of the police depart­ments — not of authors and bril­liant ama­teur detec­tives. A real­ly fas­ci­nat­ing crime is one com­mit­ted by a pil­lar of a church, or a spin­ster not­ed for her char­i­ties.

18. A crime in a detec­tive sto­ry must nev­er turn out to be an acci­dent or a sui­cide. To end an odyssey of sleuthing with such an anti-cli­max is to hood­wink the trust­ing and kind-heart­ed read­er.

19. The motives for all crimes in detec­tive sto­ries should be per­son­al. Inter­na­tion­al plot­tings and war pol­i­tics belong in a dif­fer­ent cat­e­go­ry of fic­tion — in secret-ser­vice tales, for instance. But a mur­der sto­ry must be kept gemütlich, so to speak. It must reflect the read­er’s every­day expe­ri­ences, and give him a cer­tain out­let for his own repressed desires and emo­tions.

20. And (to give my Cre­do an even score of items) I here­with list a few of the devices which no self-respect­ing detec­tive sto­ry writer will now avail him­self of. They have been employed too often, and are famil­iar to all true lovers of lit­er­ary crime. To use them is a con­fes­sion of the author’s inep­ti­tude and lack of orig­i­nal­i­ty. (a) Deter­min­ing the iden­ti­ty of the cul­prit by com­par­ing the butt of a cig­a­rette left at the scene of the crime with the brand smoked by a sus­pect. (b) The bogus spir­i­tu­al­is­tic se’ance to fright­en the cul­prit into giv­ing him­self away. © Forged fin­ger­prints. (d) The dum­my-fig­ure ali­bi. (e) The dog that does not bark and there­by reveals the fact that the intrud­er is famil­iar. (f)The final pin­ning of the crime on a twin, or a rel­a­tive who looks exact­ly like the sus­pect­ed, but inno­cent, per­son. (g) The hypo­der­mic syringe and the knock­out drops. (h) The com­mis­sion of the mur­der in a locked room after the police have actu­al­ly bro­ken in. (i) The word asso­ci­a­tion test for guilt. (j) The cipher, or code let­ter, which is even­tu­al­ly unrav­eled by the sleuth.

You can find S.S. Van Dine’s detec­tive nov­els on Ama­zon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ray­mond Chandler’s Ten Com­mand­ments for Writ­ing a Detec­tive Nov­el

H.P. Love­craft Gives Five Tips for Writ­ing a Hor­ror Sto­ry, or Any Piece of “Weird Fic­tion”

Stephen King’s Top 20 Rules for Writ­ers

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Ursula Le Guin Gives Insightful Writing Advice in Her Free Online Workshop

in Writing | January 21st, 2016

ursula k le guin writing advice

Image by Gor­thi­an, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Though it’s some­times regard­ed as a pre­ten­tious-sound­ing term for genre writ­ers who don’t want to asso­ciate with genre, I’ve always liked the phrase “spec­u­la­tive fic­tion.” J.G. Bal­lard, Philip K. Dick, Shirley Jack­son, Mar­garet Atwood, Neil Gaiman… A touch of sur­re­al­ist humor, a high­ly philo­soph­i­cal bent, and a some­what trag­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty can be found among them all, and also in the work of Ursu­la K. Le Guin, who does not shy away from the genre labels of sci­ence fic­tion and fan­ta­sy, but who approach­es these cat­e­gories in the way of, say, Vir­ginia Woolf in her Orlan­do: as fem­i­nist thought exper­i­ments and fables about human eco­log­i­cal fail­ings and inter-cul­tur­al poten­tial.

That’s not to say that Le Guin’s writ­ing is dri­ven by polit­i­cal agen­das, but that she has a very clear, uncom­pro­mis­ing vision, which she has real­ized over the course of over five decades in nov­els, short sto­ries, and chil­dren’s fic­tion. LeGuin’s writ­ing takes us away from the famil­iar to worlds we rec­og­nize as alter­na­tives to our own.

Like those in ancient epics, her char­ac­ters under­take jour­neys to realms unknown, where they learn as much or more about them­selves as about the alien inhab­i­tants. And though we expe­ri­ence in her sto­ries the thrill of dis­cov­ery and dan­ger com­mon to fan­ta­sy and sci-fi, we also enter a world of ideas about who we are as human beings, and how we might be dif­fer­ent. For Le Guin, fic­tion is a ves­sel that can car­ry us out of our­selves and return us home changed.

Le Guin stat­ed last year that she no longer has the “vig­or and sta­mi­na” for writ­ing nov­els, and hav­ing giv­en up teach­ing as well, said she missed “being in touch with seri­ous pren­tice writ­ers.” Thus, she decid­ed to start an online writ­ing work­shop at the site Book View Café, describ­ing it as “a kind of open con­sul­ta­tion or infor­mal ongo­ing work­shop in Fic­tion­al Nav­i­ga­tion.” In keep­ing with the metaphor of sea voy­ag­ing, she called her work­shop “Nav­i­gat­ing the Ocean of Sto­ry” and declared that she would not take read­er ques­tions about pub­lish­ing or find­ing an agent: “We won’t be talk­ing about how to sell a ship, but how to sail one.” Read­er ques­tions poured in, and Le Guin did her best to answer as many as she could, post­ing advice every oth­er Mon­day for all of the sum­mer and much of the fall of 2015.

The first ques­tion she received was a doozy—“How do you make some­thing good?”—and her lengthy answer sets the tone for all of her coun­sel to fol­low. She is wit­ty and hon­est, and sur­pris­ing­ly help­ful, even when con­front­ed with such a vague, seem­ing­ly unan­swer­able query. The dozens of ques­tions she select­ed in the fol­low­ing weeks tend to deal with much more man­age­able issues of style and tech­nique, and in each instance, Le Guin offers the quer­ent a clear set of coor­di­nates to help them nav­i­gate the waters of their own fic­tion­al jour­neys. Below are just a few choice excerpts from the many hun­dreds of words Le Guin gen­er­ous­ly donat­ed to her read­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

  • The prob­lem of expo­si­tion:

In answers to two read­ers’ ques­tions about pro­vid­ing suf­fi­cient back­sto­ry, Le Guin refers to an old New York­er fea­ture called “The Depart­ment of Fuller Expla­na­tion, where they put tru­ly and grand exam­ples of unnec­es­sary explain­ing.” Most of us, Le Guin writes, “tend to live in the Depart­ment of Fuller Expla­na­tion” when writ­ing; “We are telling our­selves back­sto­ry and oth­er infor­ma­tion, which the read­er won’t actu­al­ly need to know when read­ing it.”

To avoid the “Expos­i­to­ry Lump or the Info­dump,” as she calls it, Le Guin advis­es the writer to “decide—or find out when revising—whether the infor­ma­tion is actu­al­ly nec­es­sary. If not, don’t both­er. If so, fig­ure out how to work it in as a func­tion­al, for­ward-mov­ing ele­ment of the sto­ry… giv­ing infor­ma­tion indi­rect­ly, by hint and sug­ges­tion.”

  • The prob­lem of descrip­tion:

When it comes to describ­ing char­ac­ters’ appear­ances, Le Guin sug­gests get­ting spe­cif­ic:

It’s not just facial features—a way of mov­ing, a voice qual­i­ty, can ’embody’ a char­ac­ter. Spe­cif­ic fea­tures or man­ner­isms (even absurd­ly spe­cif­ic ones!) can help fix a minor char­ac­ter in the read­er’s mind when they turn up again…. To work on this skill, you might try describ­ing peo­ple you see on the bus or in the cof­fee shop: just do a sen­tence about them in your head, try­ing to catch their looks in a few words.

  • The prob­lem of set­ting:

Le Guin answers a read­er who con­fess­es to trou­ble with “world build­ing” by point­ing out the cen­tral impor­tance of set­ting:

 Event requires loca­tion. Where we are affects who we are, what we say and and do, how and why we say and do it. It mat­ters, doesn’t it, whether we’re in Mia­mi or Mum­bai — even more whether we’re on Earth or in Made-Up Place? So, I don’t know if it would work to try and build up a world– “all those details” – and tack it onto what you’ve writ­ten. If invent­ing a world isn’t your thing, OK. Stick close to this world, or use ready­made, con­ven­tion­al sf and fan­ta­sy props and scenery. They’re there for all of us to use.

  • The prob­lem of dia­logue:

Le Guin offers some very prac­ti­cal advice on how to make speech sound con­vinc­ing and gen­uine:

All I can rec­om­mend is to read/speak your dia­logue aloud. Not whis­per­ing, not mut­ter­ing, OUT LOUD. (Vir­ginia Woolf used to try out her dia­logue in the bath­tub, which great­ly enter­tained the cook down­stairs.) This will help show you what’s fakey, hokey, book­ish — it just won’t read right out loud. Fix it till it does. Speak­ing it may help you to vary the speech man­ner­isms to suit the char­ac­ter. And prob­a­bly will cause you to cut a lot. Good! Many con­tem­po­rary nov­els are so dia­logue-heavy they seem all quo­ta­tion marks — dis­em­bod­ied voic­es yad­der­ing on in a void.

  • Get­ting start­ed:

Many read­ers wrote to ask Le Guin about their dif­fi­cul­ty in get­ting a sto­ry start­ed at all. She replied with the caveat that “no answer to this ques­tion is going to fit every writer.” While some writ­ers work from “a rough sketch, notes as to where the sto­ry is head­ed and how it might get there, with more extend­ed notes about the world it takes place in,” for oth­ers, “a com­plete out­line is absolute­ly nec­es­sary before start­ing to write.” What­ev­er the method:

A sto­ry is, after all, and before every­thing else, dynam­ic: it starts Here, because it’s going There. Its life prin­ci­ple is the same as a riv­er: to keep mov­ing. Fast or slow, straight or errat­ic, head­long or mean­der­ing, but going, till it gets There. The ideas it express­es, the research it embod­ies, the time­less inspi­ra­tions it may offer, are all sub­or­di­nate to and part of that onward move­ment. The end itself may not be very impor­tant; it is the jour­ney that counts. I don’t know much about “flow” states, but I know that the onward flow of a sto­ry is what car­ries a writer from the start to the end of it, along with the whole boat­load of char­ac­ters and ideas and knowl­edge and mean­ing — and car­ries the read­er in the same boat.

There are dozens more ques­tions from read­ers, and dozens more insight­ful, fun­ny, and very help­ful answers from Le Guin. Whether you are a writer of sci­ence fic­tion, fan­ta­sy, spec­u­la­tive fic­tion, or none of the above, much of her advice will apply to any kind of fic­tion writ­ing you do—or will give you unique insights into the tech­niques and tri­als of the fic­tion writer. Read all of the ques­tions and Le Guin’s answers in her “Nav­i­gat­ing the Ocean of Sto­ry” posts at Book View Café.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Toni Mor­ri­son Dis­pens­es Writ­ing Wis­dom in 1993 Paris Review Inter­view

Hear Ursu­la K. Le Guin’s Pio­neer­ing Sci-Fi Nov­el, The Left Hand of Dark­ness, as a BBC Radio Play

Hear Inven­tive Sto­ries from Ursu­la LeGuin & J.G. Bal­lard Turned Into CBC Radio Dra­mas

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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John Cleese’s Advice to Young Artists: “Steal Anything You Think Is Really Good”

in Comedy, Creativity, Writing | December 23rd, 2015

So you want to be a rock and roll star? Or a writer, or a film­mak­er, or a come­di­an, or what-have-you…. And yet, you don’t know where to start. You’ve heard you need to find your own voice, but it’s dif­fi­cult to know what that is when you’re just begin­ning. You have too lit­tle expe­ri­ence to know what works for you and what doesn’t. So? “Steal,” as the great John Cleese advis­es above, “or bor­row or, as the artists would say, ‘be influ­enced by’ any­thing that you think is real­ly good and real­ly fun­ny and appeals to you. If you study that and try to repro­duce it in some way, then it’ll have your own stamp on it. But you have a chance of get­ting off the ground with some­thing like that.”

Cleese goes on to sen­si­bly explain why it’s near­ly impos­si­ble to start with some­thing com­plete­ly new and orig­i­nal; it’s like “try­ing to fly a plane with­out any lessons.” We all learn the rudi­ments of every­thing we know by imi­tat­ing oth­ers at first, so this advice to the bud­ding writer and artist shouldn’t sound too rad­i­cal. But if you need more val­i­da­tion for it, con­sid­er William Faulkner’s exhor­ta­tion to take what­ev­er you need from oth­er writ­ers. The begin­ning writer, Faulkn­er told a class at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, “takes what­ev­er he needs, wher­ev­er he needs, and he does that open­ly and hon­est­ly.” There’s no shame in it, unless you fail to ever make it your own. Or, says Faulkn­er, to make some­thing so good that oth­ers will steal from you.

One the­o­ry of how this works in lit­er­a­ture comes from crit­ic Harold Bloom, who argued in The Anx­i­ety of Influ­ence that every major poet more or less stole from pre­vi­ous major poets; yet they so mis­read or mis­in­ter­pret­ed their influ­ences that they couldn’t help but pro­duce orig­i­nal work. T.S. Eliot advanced a more con­ser­v­a­tive ver­sion of the claim in his essay “Tra­di­tion and the Indi­vid­ual Tal­ent.” We have a “ten­den­cy to insist,” wrote Eliot, on “those aspects or parts of [a poet’s] work in which he least resem­bles any­one else.” (Both Eliot and Faulkn­er used the mas­cu­line as a uni­ver­sal pro­noun; what­ev­er their bias­es, no gen­der exclu­sion is implied here.) On the con­trary, “if we approach a poet with­out this prej­u­dice we shall often find that not only the best, but the most indi­vid­ual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ances­tors, assert their immor­tal­i­ty most vig­or­ous­ly.”

It may have been a require­ment for Eliot that his lit­er­ary pre­de­ces­sors be long deceased, but John Cleese sug­gests no such thing. In fact, he worked close­ly with many of his favorite com­e­dy writ­ers. The point he makes is that one should “copy some­one who’s real­ly good” in order to “get off the ground.” In time—whether through becom­ing bet­ter than your influ­ences, or mis­read­ing them, or com­bin­ing their parts into a new whole—you will, Cleese and many oth­er wise writ­ers sug­gest, devel­op your own style.

Cleese has lib­er­al­ly dis­cussed his influ­ences, in his recent auto­bi­og­ra­phy and else­where, and one can clear­ly see in his work the impres­sion comedic for­bears like Lau­rel and Hardy and the writer/actors of The Goon Show had on him. But what­ev­er he stole or bor­rowed from those come­di­ans he also made entire­ly his own through prac­tice and per­se­ver­ance. Just above, see a tele­vi­sion spe­cial on Cleese’s com­e­dy heroes, with inter­views from Cleese, leg­ends who fol­lowed him, like Rik May­all and Steve Mar­tin, and those who worked side-by-side with him on Mon­ty Python and oth­er clas­sic shows.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese Explores the Health Ben­e­fits of Laugh­ter

John Cleese’s Eulo­gy for Gra­ham Chap­man: ‘Good Rid­dance, the Free-Load­ing Bas­tard, I Hope He Fries’

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

John Cleese, Ringo Starr and Peter Sell­ers Trash Price­less Art (1969)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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28 Tips for Writing Stories from Edgar Allan Poe, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway & F. Scott Fitzgerald

in Literature, Writing | December 14th, 2015

Faulkner Hemingway Fitzgerald Poe

Most writ­ers find their indi­vid­ual voice only after they sojourn through peri­ods of imi­ta­tion. Though it’s an excel­lent way to appro­pri­ate exper­i­men­tal tech­niques and move out of com­fort­able ruts, imi­ta­tion can only take us so far. But more pre­scrip­tive guide­lines from famous authors can offer ways to refine our indi­vid­ual styles and visions. Advice, for exam­ple, from such a clear and suc­cinct the­o­rist as Kurt Von­negut can go a very long way indeed for aspir­ing fic­tion writ­ers.

Anoth­er rea­son for appre­ci­at­ing great writ­ers’ how-to guide­lines accords with the injunc­tion we often hear: to read, read, read as much as pos­si­ble. Learn­ing how William Faulkn­er con­ceived of his craft can give us use­ful insights into his nov­els. What did Faulkn­er think of the writ­ing enter­prise and the social role of the writer? How did he come to for­mu­late his impres­sive­ly dense style? What was his view of learn­ing from oth­er writ­ers?

We can answer the last ques­tion by ref­er­ence to sev­en writ­ing tips we pre­vi­ous­ly com­piled from lec­tures and Q&A ses­sions Faulkn­er con­duct­ed while serv­ing as writer-in-res­i­dence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia from 1957 to ’58. The first tip? Take what you need from oth­er writ­ers. To that end, we offer sev­en writ­ing tips each from four Amer­i­can greats (or 28 tips in total). As writ­ers, we’re free to take or leave their guide­lines; as read­ers we may always find their philoso­phies of keen inter­est.

William Faulkn­er: 

Take What You Need From Oth­er Writ­ers

Dur­ing a writ­ing class on Feb­ru­ary 25, 1957, Faulkn­er said the fol­low­ing:

I think the writer, as I’ve said before, is com­plete­ly amoral. He takes what­ev­er he needs, wher­ev­er he needs, and he does that open­ly and hon­est­ly because he him­self hopes that what he does will be good enough so that after him peo­ple will take from him, and they are wel­come to take from him, as he feels that he would be wel­come by the best of his pre­de­ces­sors to take what they had done.

Faulkner’s advice can help tremendously–at least in a psy­cho­log­i­cal sense–those writ­ers who might have qualms about “steal­ing” from oth­ers. You have per­mis­sion to do so from none oth­er than per­haps the great­est Amer­i­can mod­ernist writer of them all.

Faulkn­er also said “the young writer would be a fool to fol­low a the­o­ry,” a piece of advice we might bear in mind as we peruse famous writ­ing the­o­ries. “The good artist,” he said, “believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice.”

See the full list of Faulkner’s sev­en tips here.

Ernest Hem­ing­way:

Faulkner’s mod­ernist foil and some­time rival Ernest Hem­ing­way had some char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly prag­mat­ic advice for bud­ding writ­ers. Like many writ­ers’ tips, some of his advice may do lit­tle but help you write more like Hem­ing­way. And some of it, like “use a pen­cil,” is per­fect­ly use­less if you’ve already found your pre­ferred method of work­ing. One guide­line, how­ev­er, is intrigu­ing­ly counter-intu­itive. Hem­ing­way coun­sels us to

Nev­er Think about the Sto­ry When You’re Not Work­ing

This is one thing Faulkn­er and Hem­ing­way might agree on. In an Esquire arti­cle, Hem­ing­way describes his expe­ri­ence dur­ing the com­po­si­tion of A Move­able Feast, one Faulkn­er char­ac­ter­izes in his writ­ing advice as “nev­er exhaust your imag­i­na­tion.”

When I was writ­ing, it was nec­es­sary for me to read after I had writ­ten. If you kept think­ing about it, you would lose the thing you were writ­ing before you could go on with it the next day. It was nec­es­sary to get exer­cise, to be tired in the body, and it was very good to make love with whom you loved. That was bet­ter than any­thing. But after­wards, when you were emp­ty, it was nec­es­sary to read in order not to think or wor­ry about your work until you could do it again. I had learned already nev­er to emp­ty the well of my writ­ing, but always to stop when there was still some­thing there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

Read all of Hemingway’s 7 writ­ing tips here.

F. Scott Fitzger­ald:

Despite his rep­u­ta­tion as an undis­ci­plined and messy writer, Fitzger­ald has some of the most prac­ti­cal tips of all for orga­niz­ing your ideas. One of his more philo­soph­i­cal pre­scrip­tions takes a sim­i­lar tone as Hemingway’s in regard to the pri­vate world of the imag­i­na­tion:

Don’t Describe Your Work-in-Progress to Any­one

Fitzger­ald offered this piece of advice in a 1940 let­ter to his daugh­ter, Scot­tie, writ­ing,

I think it’s a pret­ty good rule not to tell what a thing is about until it’s fin­ished. If you do you always seem to lose some of it. It nev­er quite belongs to you so much again.

This seems to me a good piece of advice for hold­ing on to the mag­ic of a cre­ative­ly imag­ined world. Try­ing to sum­ma­rize a good sto­ry in brief—like try­ing to explain a joke—generally has the effect of tak­ing all the fun out of it.

Read Fitzgerald’s 7 tips for writ­ers here.

Edgar Allan Poe:

Final­ly, we reach back to the 19th cen­tu­ry, to the father of the Amer­i­can goth­ic and the detec­tive sto­ry, Edgar Allan Poe, who had some very spe­cif­ic, very Poe things to say about the art of fic­tion. In his essay “The Phi­los­o­phy of Com­po­si­tion,” Poe focus­es on how to achieve what he vague­ly called a “uni­ty of effect,” the qual­i­ty he desired most to pro­duce in his nar­ra­tive poem “The Raven.” Per­haps the clear­est piece of advice Poe offers in his trea­tise is:

Know the End­ing in Advance, Before You Begin to Write

You will like­ly find oth­er authors who advise against this and tell you to write your way to the end. Bear­ing in mind Faulkner’s disclaimer—that we would be “fool to fol­low a theory”—we might at least try this prac­tice and see if it works for us as it did for Poe. As he described it, “noth­ing is more clear than that every plot, worth the name, must be elab­o­rat­ed to its dénoue­ment before any thing be attempt­ed with the pen.”

Keep­ing the end “con­stant­ly in view,” wrote Poe, gives “a plot its indis­pens­able air of con­se­quence.” Poe’s advice applies to short works that can be read in a sin­gle sit­ting, the only ones he gen­er­al­ly allows can achieve “uni­ty of effect.” Nov­el-writ­ing is dif­fer­ent. I don’t know if it’s nec­es­sary to ful­ly know the end­ing of a short sto­ry before one begins, but Von­negut coun­sels writ­ers to “start as close to the end as pos­si­ble” when writ­ing one.

See Poe’s full list of 7 tips here.

Should you desire more writ­ing advice, you’ll find no short­age here at Open Cul­ture, from writ­ers as diverse as Stephen King, Toni Mor­ri­son, Rober­to Bolaño, H.P. Love­craft, Haru­ki Muraka­mi, Ray Brad­bury, and many more. Whether or not we decide to take any of their advice, it always opens a win­dow onto their art of cre­at­ing fic­tion­al worlds, which can seem to many of us a cre­ative act akin to mag­ic.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 55 Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es: From Dante and Mil­ton to Ker­ouac and Tolkien

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

Rober­to Bolaño’s 12 Tips on “the Art of Writ­ing Short Sto­ries”

Writ­ing Tips by Hen­ry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Mar­garet Atwood, Neil Gaiman & George Orwell

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Lists the Three Essen­tial Qual­i­ties For All Seri­ous Nov­el­ists (And Run­ners)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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George Saunders Demystifies the Art of Storytelling in a Short Animated Documentary

in Literature, Writing | December 11th, 2015

An inter­est­ing thing hap­pens when you read cer­tain of George Saun­ders’ sto­ries. At first, you see the satirist at work, skew­er­ing Amer­i­can mean­ness and banal­i­ty with the same unspar­ing knife’s edge as ear­li­er post­mod­ernists like John Barth or Don­ald Barthelme. Then you begin to notice some­thing else tak­ing shape… some­thing per­haps unex­pect­ed: com­pas­sion. Rather than serv­ing as paper tar­gets of Saun­ders’ dark humor, his mis­guid­ed char­ac­ters come to seem like real peo­ple, peo­ple he cares about; and the real tar­get of his satire becomes a cul­ture that alien­ates and deval­ues those peo­ple.

Take the oft-anthol­o­gized “Sea Oak,” a far­ci­cal melo­dra­ma about a dead aunt who returns rean­i­mat­ed to annoy and depress her down­ward­ly mobile fam­i­ly mem­bers. The stage is set for a series of buf­foon­ish episodes that, in the hands of a less mature writer, might play out to empha­size just how ridicu­lous these char­ac­ters’ lives are, and how jus­ti­fi­ably we—author and reader—might mock them from our perch­es. Saun­ders does not do this at all. Rather than dis­tanc­ing, he draws us clos­er, so that the char­ac­ters in the sto­ry become more sym­pa­thet­ic and three-dimen­sion­al even as events become increas­ing­ly out­landish.

All of this human­iz­ing is by design, or rather, we might say that empa­thy is baked into Saun­ders’ ethos—one he has artic­u­lat­ed many times in essays, inter­views, and a mov­ing 2013 Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty com­mence­ment speech. Now we can see him in a can­did filmed appear­ance above, in a doc­u­men­tary titled “George Saun­ders: On Sto­ry” by Red­g­lass Pic­tures (exec­u­tive pro­duced by Ken Burns). Cre­at­ed from a two-hour inter­view with Saun­ders, the short video at the top offers “a direct look at the process by which he is able to take a sin­gle mun­dane sen­tence and infuse it with the dis­tinct blend of depth, com­pas­sion, and out­right mag­ic that are the trade­marks of his most pow­er­ful work.”

In Saun­ders’ own words, “a good sto­ry is one that says, at many dif­fer­ent lev­els, ‘we’re both human beings, we’re in this crazy sit­u­a­tion called life, that we don’t real­ly under­stand. Can we put our heads togeth­er and con­fer about it a lit­tle bit at a very high, non-bull­shit­ty lev­el?’ Then, all kinds of mag­ic can hap­pen.” The rest of Saun­ders’ fas­ci­nat­ing mono­logue on sto­ry gets an ani­mat­ed treat­ment that illus­trates the mag­ic he describes. If you haven’t read Saun­ders, this is almost as good an intro­duc­tion to him as, say, “Sea Oak.” His thoughts on the role fic­tion plays in our lives and the ways good sto­ries work are always lucid, his exam­ples vivid­ly inven­tive. The effect of lis­ten­ing to him mir­rors that of sit­ting in a sem­i­nar with one of the best teach­ers of cre­ative writ­ing, which Saun­ders hap­pens to be as well.

I would love to take a class with him, but bar­ring that, I’m very hap­py for the chance to hear him dis­cuss writ­ing tech­niques and phi­los­o­phy in the short film at the top and in the inter­view extras below it: “On the rela­tion­ship between read­er and writer,” “On the tricks of the writ­ing process,” and “In defense of dark­ness.” Praised by no less a post­mod­ernist lumi­nary than Thomas Pyn­chon, Saun­ders’ sto­ry col­lec­tions like Civil­WAr­Land in Bad Decline, Pas­toralia, and In Per­sua­sion Nation get at much of what ails us in these Unit­ed States, but they do so always with an under­ly­ing hope­ful­ness and a “non-bull­shit­ty” con­vic­tion of shared human­i­ty.

You can read 10 of Saun­ders’ sto­ries free—including “Sea Oak” and the excel­lent “The Red Bow”—here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Impor­tance of Kind­ness: An Ani­ma­tion of George Saun­ders’ Touch­ing Grad­u­a­tion Speech

10 Free Sto­ries by George Saun­ders, Author of Tenth of Decem­ber, “The Best Book You’ll Read This Year”

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Daily Habits of Famous Writers: Franz Kafka, Haruki Murakami, Stephen King & More

in Creativity, Life, Literature, Writing | December 10th, 2015

stephenking

Image by The USO, via Flickr Com­mons

Though few of us like to hear it, the fact remains that suc­cess in any endeav­or requires patient, reg­u­lar train­ing and a dai­ly rou­tine. To take a mun­dane, well-worn exam­ple, it’s not for noth­ing that Stephen R. Covey’s best-sell­ing clas­sic of the busi­ness and self-help worlds offers us “7 Habits of High­ly Effec­tive Peo­ple,” rather than “7 Sud­den Break­throughs that Will Change Your Life Forever”—though if we cred­it the spam emails, ads, and spon­sored links that clut­ter our online lives, we may end up believ­ing in quick fix­es and easy roads to fame and for­tune. But no, a well-devel­oped skill comes only from a set of prac­ticed rou­tines.

That said, the type of rou­tine one adheres to depends on very per­son­al cir­cum­stances such that no sin­gle cre­ative person’s habits need exact­ly resem­ble any other’s. When it comes to the lives of writ­ers, we expect some com­mon­al­i­ty: a writ­ing space free of dis­trac­tions, some pre­ferred method of tran­scrip­tion from brain to page, some set time of day or night at which the words flow best. Out­side of these basic para­me­ters, the dai­ly lives of writ­ers can look as dif­fer­ent as the images in their heads.

But it seems that once a writer set­tles on a set of habits—whatever they may be—they stick to them with par­tic­u­lar rig­or. The writ­ing rou­tine, says hyper-pro­lif­ic Stephen King, is “not any dif­fer­ent than a bed­time rou­tine. Do you go to bed a dif­fer­ent way every night?” Like­ly not. As for why we all have our very spe­cif­ic, per­son­al quirks at bed­time, or at writ­ing time, King answers hon­est­ly, “I don’t know.”

So what does King’s rou­tine look like? “There are cer­tain things I do if I sit down to write,” he’s quot­ed as say­ing in Lisa Rogak’s Haunt­ed Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King:

“I have a glass of water or a cup of tea. There’s a cer­tain time I sit down, from 8:00 to 8:30, some­where with­in that half hour every morn­ing,” he explained. “I have my vit­a­min pill and my music, sit in the same seat, and the papers are all arranged in the same places. The cumu­la­tive pur­pose of doing these things the same way every day seems to be a way of say­ing to the mind, you’re going to be dream­ing soon.”

The King quotes come to us via the site (and now book) Dai­ly Rou­tines, which fea­tures brief sum­maries of “how writ­ers, artists, and oth­er inter­est­ing peo­ple orga­nize their days.” We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured a few snap­shots of the dai­ly lives of famous philoso­phers. The writ­ers sec­tion of the site sim­i­lar­ly offers win­dows into the dai­ly prac­tices of a wide range of authors, from the liv­ing to the long dead.

HarukiMurakami3

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

A con­tem­po­rary of King, though a slow­er, more self-con­scious­ly painstak­ing writer, Haru­ki Muraka­mi incor­po­rates into his work­day his pas­sion for run­ning, an avo­ca­tion he has made cen­tral to his writ­ing phi­los­o­phy. Expect­ed­ly, Muraka­mi keeps a very ath­let­ic writ­ing sched­ule and rou­tine.

When I’m in writ­ing mode for a nov­el, I get up at 4:00 am and work for five to six hours. In the after­noon, I run for 10km or swim for 1500m (or do both), then I read a bit and lis­ten to some music. I go to bed at 9:00 pm. I keep to this rou­tine every day with­out vari­a­tion. The rep­e­ti­tion itself becomes the impor­tant thing; it’s a form of mes­merism. I mes­mer­ize myself to reach a deep­er state of mind. But to hold to such rep­e­ti­tion for so long — six months to a year — requires a good amount of men­tal and phys­i­cal strength. In that sense, writ­ing a long nov­el is like sur­vival train­ing. Phys­i­cal strength is as nec­es­sary as artis­tic sen­si­tiv­i­ty.

Not all writ­ers can adhere to such a dis­ci­plined way of liv­ing and work­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly those whose wak­ing hours are giv­en over to oth­er, usu­al­ly painful­ly unful­fill­ing, day jobs.

Franz-Kafka

Image of Franz Kaf­ka, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

An almost arche­typ­al case of the writer trapped in such a sit­u­a­tion, Franz Kaf­ka kept a rou­tine that would crip­ple most peo­ple and that did not bring about phys­i­cal strength, to say the least. As Zadie Smith writes of the author’s por­tray­al in Louis Begley’s biog­ra­phy, Kaf­ka “despaired of his twelve hour shifts that left no time for writ­ing.”

[T]wo years lat­er, pro­mot­ed to the posi­tion of chief clerk at the Work­ers’ Acci­dent Insur­ance Insti­tute, he was now on the one-shift sys­tem, 8:30 AM until 2:30 PM. And then what? Lunch until 3:30, then sleep until 7:30, then exer­cis­es, then a fam­i­ly din­ner. After which he start­ed work around 11 PM (as Beg­ley points out, the let­ter- and diary-writ­ing took up at least an hour a day, and more usu­al­ly two), and then “depend­ing on my strength, incli­na­tion, and luck, until one, two, or three o’clock, once even till six in the morn­ing.” Then “every imag­in­able effort to go to sleep,” as he fit­ful­ly rest­ed before leav­ing to go to the office once more. This rou­tine left him per­ma­nent­ly on the verge of col­lapse.

Might he have cho­sen a health­i­er way? When his fiancée Felice Bauer sug­gest­ed as much, Kaf­ka replied, “The present way is the only pos­si­ble one; if I can’t bear it, so much the worse; but I will bear it some­how.” And so he did, until his ear­ly death from tuber­cu­lo­sis.

While writ­ers require rou­tine, nowhere is it writ­ten that their habits must be salu­bri­ous or mea­sured. Accord­ing to Simone De Beau­voir, out­ré French writer Jean Genet “puts in about twelve hours a day for six months when he’s work­ing on some­thing and when he has fin­ished he can let six months go by with­out doing any­thing.” Then there are those writ­ers who have relied on point­ed­ly unhealthy, even dan­ger­ous habits to pro­pel them through their work­day. Not only did William S. Bur­roughs and Hunter S. Thomp­son write under the influ­ence, but so also did such a seem­ing­ly con­ser­v­a­tive per­son as W.H. Auden, who “swal­lowed Ben­zedrine every morn­ing for twen­ty years… bal­anc­ing its effect with the bar­bi­tu­rate Sec­onal when he want­ed to sleep.” Auden called the amphet­a­mine habit a “labor sav­ing device” in the “men­tal kitchen,” though he added that “these mech­a­nisms are very crude, liable to injure the cook, and con­stant­ly break­ing down.”

So, there you have it, a very diverse sam­pling of rou­tines and habits in sev­er­al suc­cess­ful writ­ers’ lives. Though you may try to emu­late these if you har­bor lit­er­ary ambi­tions, you’re prob­a­bly bet­ter off com­ing up with your own, suit­ed to the odd­i­ties of your per­son­al make­up and your tolerance—or not—for seri­ous phys­i­cal exer­cise or mind-alter­ing sub­stances. Vis­it Dai­ly Rou­tines to learn about many more famous writ­ers’ habits.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dai­ly Rou­tines of Famous Cre­ative Peo­ple, Pre­sent­ed in an Inter­ac­tive Info­graph­ic

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Lists the Three Essen­tial Qual­i­ties For All Seri­ous Nov­el­ists (And Run­ners)

Stephen King’s Top 20 Rules for Writ­ers

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

The Dai­ly Habits of High­ly Pro­duc­tive Philoso­phers: Niet­zsche, Marx & Immanuel Kant

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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