The Little Black Book of Writers' Wisdom

By Steven D. Price

Author and journalist Gene Fowler put it best: “Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.” Anyone who has ever wanted or been required to create something more complicated than a shopping list or a Tweet knows there’s more truth than poetry in the observation. The process can be difficult, frustratingly so when we realize that although we use words all the time, coming up with the right ones can be a daunting task.

Even the most celebrated writers have reflected on this creative process, and their observations and conclusions are collected in this book. The compiler, himself no stranger to a blank page or computer screen, has selected the wisest and wittiest utterances on such subjects as why we write (Ernest Hemingway: “I have a good life but I must write because if I do not write a certain amount I do not enjoy the rest of my life.”); how to write (Anton Chekhov: “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”); and writing for money (Cormac McCarthy: “I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this.”).

It has been said that reading won’t make you a good writer, but it will make you a better writer. Dip into this lively and useful treasure trove, and you’ll be well on your way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Release date: Aug 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781626365148

Book preview

chapter one

The Inner Music: Why We Write (and Read)

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.

—J. D. SALINGER

• • •

I think I am starving for publication: I love to get published; it maddens me not to get published. I feel at times like getting every publisher in the world by the scruff of the neck, forcing his jaws open, and cramming the Mss down his throat— God-damn you, here it is—I will and must be published!

You know what it means—you’re a writer and you understand it. It’s not just the satisfaction of being published. Great God! It’s the satisfaction of getting it out, or having that, so far as you’re concerned, gone through with it! That good or ill, for better or for worse, it’s over, done with, finished, out of your life forever and that, come what may, you can at least, as far as this thing is concerned, get the merciful damned easement of oblivion and forgetfulness.

—TOM WOLFE

• • •

Why do writers write? Because it isn’t there.

—THOMAS BERGER

• • •

Would you not like to try all sorts of lives—one is so very small—but that is the satisfaction of writing—one can impersonate so many people.

—KATHERINE MANSFIELD

• • •

Writing is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.

—WINSTON CHURCHILL

• • •

It wasn’t only that this writing seemed beautiful. . . . What made Madeleine sit up in bed was something closer to the reason she read books in the first place. . . . Here was a sign that she wasn’t alone.

—ROLAND BARTHES

• • •

When I want to read a good book, I write one.

—BENJAMIN DISRAELI

• • •

Eugene O’Neil, Hemera Technologies, PhotoObjects.net, Thinkstock

I have a good life but I must write because if I do not write a certain amount I do not enjoy the rest of my life.

—ERNEST HEMINGWAY

• • •

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.

—SIR FRANCIS BACON

• • •

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music that words make.

—TRUMAN CAPOTE

• • •

My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you see. That—and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm—all you demand; and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.

—JOSEPH CONRAD

• • •

I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live.

—FRANÇOISE SAGAN

• • •

I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.

—JOHN STEINBECK

• • •

It is the writer’s privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart.

—WILLIAM FAULKNER

• • •

Words are a writer’s tears.

—ARTHUR PLOTNIK

• • •

If a writer is honest, if what is at stake for him can seem to matter to his readers, then his work may be read. But a writer will work anyway, as I do, and as I have, in part to explore this terra incognita, this dangerous ground I seem to need to risk.

—FREDERICK BUSCH

• • •

If you did not write every day, the poisons would accumulate and you would begin to die, or act crazy, or both.

—RAY BRADBURY

• • •

Writing actually empties us and gives us the capacity to love in a completely different way.

—JULIA CAMERON

• • •

You go really deep and connect really large when you write, no matter what you’re writing about.

—NATALIE GOLDBERG

Oscar Wilde, Photos.com, Thinkstock

There is no agony like having an untold story inside you.

—TRUMAN CAPOTE

• • •

Of all the inanimate objects, of all men’s creations, books are the nearest to us, for they contain our very thoughts, our ambitions, our indignations, our illusions, our fidelity to truth, and our persistent leaning toward error.

—JOSEPH CONRAD

• • •

Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do—the actual act of writing—turns out to be the best part. It’s like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.

—ANNE