John
Steinbeck, a Pulitzer Prize winning author (Grapes of Wrath) and Nobel
laureate offers six basic tips on writing in his interview it the Fall 1975
issue of The Paris Review.
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. (This concept of small daily incremental
progress is key to long term writing success.)
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. (Self-censorship and a constant reworking of material
day-by-day is absolutely antithetical to finishing anything!)
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. (This helps to tell a story with real
intimacy. It’s just you and one other person.)
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. (Constant forward momentum is the only way anything gets
done. Don’t let any one scene, or sequence stop or stymie you.)
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. (Kill kill kill your
darlings.)
6.
If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it
have the sound of speech. (This is excellent advice even for purely narrative
passages too!)
Follow
the link below to the full article.
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4156/the-art-of-fiction-no-45-continued-john-steinbeck
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4156/the-art-of-fiction-no-45-continued-john-steinbeck
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