The rest is easy
I like a lot of talk in a book
and I don’t like to have nobody tell me what the guy that’s talking looks like I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks. Never say ‘suddenly’ or ‘all hell broke loose’. The reader will just leaf ahead looking for people. When an idea comes, spend silent time with it. Good ideas are often murdered by better ones. Afterwards it won’t matter to you that the kitchen’s a mess. The rest is easy. Perfectly formed and spelt words emerge from a few brief keystrokes. On the page they flare into desire. A lot of men still think that women lack imagination of the fiery kind. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with ‘she asseverated’ and I had to stop reading. If it was bad when it went in the drawer it will be worse when it comes out. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Jean Plaidy managed 5,000 before lunch then spent the afternoon answering fan mail. No amount of black pullovers or being publicly obnoxious will ever add up to your being a writer. Your own life will never have atmosphere. Dickens knew Bleak House was going to be called Bleak House before he started writing it. But if you’re writing a novel with a contemporary setting there need to be long passages where nothing happens save for TV watching. Don’t write in public places. Don’t make telephone calls or go to a party. No going to London. No going anywhere else either. The first twelve years are the worst. If nobody will put your play on put it on yourself. No one cares. Don’t write letters to the editor. No one cares. Read Keats’s letters. In my 30s I used to go to the gym even though I hated it. Was I performing a haka, or just shuffling my feet? But it is the gestation time which counts. Writers write. On you go.
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