by Mardy Grothe
Throughout history, aspiring as well as experienced writers have been provided with advice about writing, exposed to rules of composition, and offered a wide variety of pronouncements about the literary life. Let’s take a look at some of the most memorable contributions—all expressed neveristically.
Never trust a spell checker.ANONYMOUS
Never say “In my book” in a radio or television interview.ANONYMOUS
I don’t know who first offered this advice to authors embarking on a book promotion tour, but it is now a maxim among publicists, who argue that it comes across as self-serving. It also assumes—often erroneously—that listeners or viewers will actually remember the title of the book.
Never judge your own writing. You’re not fit to do so.ISAAC ASIMOV, in a 1971 letter
Asimov, the author of more than five hundred books, added: “Always allow others to do so—preferably professionals, like editors. If they don’t like it, maybe they’ll like the next one.”
Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas.WALTER BENJAMIN
Never expect your partner to understand your work.RITA MAE BROWN
This comes from Starting from Scratch: A Different Kind of Writers’ Manual (1988). Brown added: “You can hope that he or she appreciates it, but don’t push your luck. Hell, you might not even understand your work.” Brown’s book, a truly different kind of writers’ manual, contains a number of other thoughtful admonitions for writers:
Never hope more than you work.
Never let anyone or any social attitude stand in the way of your productivity.
Never measure literature by accounting statistics.
A quarter of working authors earn less than $1,000.
Never read bad stuff if you’re an artist;
it will impair your own game.JAMES LEE BURKE, in a 2000 interview
Burke, the author of many popular mystery and crime novels, said this after being asked if he read less-than-perfect books in order “to catch the imperfections.” He added: “I don’t know if you ever played competitive tennis, but you learn not to watch bad tennis; it messes up your game. Art’s the same way.” In that same interview, when asked what advice he had for novice writers, Burke said:
The only thing an artist has to remember is to never lose faith in his vision.
It’s that simple—that’s the big lesson. All the rest is of secondary importance.
Never demean yourself by talking back to a critic, never.
Write those letters to the editor in your head, but don’t put them on paper.TRUMAN CAPOTE, in a 1957 Paris Review interview
Capote began by saying: “I’ve had, and continue to receive, my full share of abuse, some of it extremely personal, but it doesn’t faze me anymore. I can read the most outrageous libel about myself and never skip a pulse-beat.” Capote may have been influenced by a remark from Voltaire: “If you are attacked on your style, never answer; your work alone should reply.” Perhaps the best advice on responding to critics, though, came from the American financier Bernard M. Baruch: “Never answer a critic, unless he’s right.”
I have made three rules of writing for myself that are absolutes:
Never take advice.
Never show or discuss work in progress.
Never answer a critic.RAYMOND CHANDLER, in a 1954 letter to the editor
of The Third Degree, a mystery writers’ publication
Never think of mending what you write. Let it go.WILLIAM COBBETT, in A Grammar
of the English Language (1818)
Given what we now know about self-editing, this may be regarded as one of the most questionable pieces of writing advice ever given. Cobbett, a British writer who wrote his famous grammar book while living in Long Island in the early 1800s, added: “No patching; no after-pointing. As your pen moves, bear constantly in mind that it is making strokes which are to remain forever.”
Never pursue literature as a trade.SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, in Biographia Literaria (1817)
Coleridge offered this as “An affectionate exhortation to those who early in life feel themselves disposed to become authors.” Coleridge believed that writers should spend the greater part of each working day in some other job, and at day’s end devote several hours to their literary pursuits. He wrote: “Three hours of leisure . . . looked forward to with delight as a change and recreation, will suffice to realize in literature a larger product of what is truly genial than weeks of compulsion.”
Never buy an editor or publisher a lunch or a drink
until he has bought an article, story, or book from you.
This rule is absolute and may be broken only at your peril.JOHN CREASEY
Never neglect the charms of narrative for the human heart.ROBERTSON DAVIES, from a character
in The Cunning Man (1994)
Never write a biography of anyone whose children are still alive.SCOTT DONALDSON
This was Donaldson’s reply when asked what lessons he learned during the writing of his 1988 book John Cheever: A Biography. A few months after Cheever’s 1982 death, Donaldson received permission from Cheever’s widow to write a biography of her late husband. While writing the book, though, he faced lawsuits from some of Cheever’s children over publication of certain material. The book was published a few years behind schedule, and a battle-weary author described the experience as “an ordeal.”
Remember that you must never sell your soul.FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
These words first appeared in A Writer’s Diary, a monthly journal Dostoevsky wrote and published from 1873 to 1881. On the surface, it would be hard to disagree, but Dostoevsky was suggesting that authors who accepted an advance of money from a publisher were selling their souls. There are few authors today who would agree with the great Russian novelist, who completed his thought this way:
Never accept payment in advance. . . .
Never give a work to the printer before it is finished.
This is the worst thing you can do. . . . It constitutes the murder of your own ideas.
A novelist friend years ago gave me two pieces of sage advice—
(1) never fuck a fan, and
(2) never engage in an argument with a correspondent.JOHN GREGORY DUNNE, from an essay in Harp (1991)
Never be so brief as to become obscure.TRYON EDWARDS, in A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908)
The three practical rules, then, which I have to offer are: 1. Never read any book that is not a year old. 2. Never read any but famed books. 3. Never read any but what you like.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON, from “Books,” an essay
in Society and Solitude (1870)
Never start to write without a plan.RUDOLF FLESCH & ABRAHAM LASS,
in The Way to Write (1947)
A little later in their classic book, the authors offered a stern word of warning for those tempted to simply glance through a thesaurus to help them sound better: “Don’t just hunt for synonyms, and never, never pick a synonym at random from a book of synonyms where words with different flavors are listed but not explained.”
Never use the word “audience.”
The very idea of a public, unless the poet is writing for money,
seems wrong to me.ROBERT GRAVES
Graves was one of the twentieth century’s most prominent literary figures, a respected poet, a major translator of ancient authors, and a popular historical novelist. He added, “Poets don’t have an ‘audience.’ They’re talking to a single person all the time.”
Never force an idea; you’ll abort it if you do.ROBERT A. HEINLEIN, in Time Enough for Love (1973)
This entry from “The Notebooks of Lazarus Long” appears in the middle of a longer passage that speaks to a common experience among writers:
If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work,
never force an idea; you’ll abort it if you do.
Be patient and you’ll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait.
Never write about a
place until you’re away from it,
because that gives you perspective.ERNEST HEMINGWAY
This came in a conversation with Arnold Samuelson, who recorded it in With Hemingway: A Year in Key West and Cuba (1984). Hemingway added:Immediately after you’ve seen something you can give a photographic description of it and make it accurate. That’s good practice, but it isn’t creative writing.
Samuelson hitchhiked from Minnesota to Key West, Florida, in 1934, hoping to meet Hemingway, his literary hero. The writer took an immediate liking to the adventurous young man and hired him as a deckhand for his new fishing boat, the Pilar. After a year, Samuelson returned home, and the two men continued a correspondence until Hemingway’s death in 1961. Samuelson eventually settled in Colorado, where he built homes by day and violins by night. After he died in 1981, his daughter Darby found a draft of the With Hemingway manuscript stashed away in a trunk. She spent over a year readying the manuscript for publication.
Never tell your reader what your story is about.GEORGE V. HIGGINS
In On Writing, a 1990 writing guide, Higgins added: “Reading is a participatory sport. People do it because they are intelligent and enjoy figuring things out for themselves.”
Never put off till to-morrow the book you can read today.HOLBROOK JACKSON, tweaking a classic saying,
in his 1930 book The Anatomy of Bibliomania
Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure;
emotion is easily propagated from the writer to the reader.JOSEPH JOUBERT
Never insult a writer.
You may find yourself immortalized in ways you may not appreciate.GARRISON KEILLOR
Never force yourself to read a book— it is a wasted effort.ARTHUR KOESTLER
Koestler offered this in his 1945 book of essays The Yogi and the Commissar. He added: “That book is right for you which needs just the amount of concentration on your part to make you turn the radio off.”
Never use an abstract term if a concrete one will serve.DAVID LAMBUTH
In The Golden Book on Writing (1976), Lambuth added, “Appeal directly to your reader’s emotions rather than indirectly through the intermediary of the intellectualizing process. Tell him that the man gave a dollar to the tramp rather than that he indulged in an act of generosity.”
Never trust the artist. Trust the tale.
The proper function of a critic
is to save the tale from the artist who created it.D. H. LAWRENCE, in Studies in
Classic American Literature (1923)
Lawrence, a novelist who was writing as a critic in this observation, believed there was often a great difference between the tale authors intended to tell and the story that was eventually told. Speaking as a critic, Lawrence said the “didactic statements” that authors make about their works should be ignored. It’s an audacious pronouncement, suggesting that critics know more about an author’s work than the authors themselves.
Never open a book with weather.ELMORE LEONARD
This was the first of ten writing rules that Leonard originally enumerated in a 2001 New York Times op-ed piece. In 2007, it was published as Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing, a beautifully produced gift book with illustrations by Joe Ciardiello. Noting that readers are more interested in characters than weather, he warned, “The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people.” Leonard’s list also included these no-nos:
Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”
Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said” . . . he admonished gravely.
(Notice here that Leonard violates his own rule to make the point.)
Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.
On this last point, Leonard wrote, “The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in.” He illustrated his point by writing: “I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with ‘she asseverated,’ and I had to stop reading to get the dictionary.”
Never exaggerate. Never say more than you really mean.C. S. LEWIS, in a 1959 letter to an aspiring writer
Never be sincere—sincerity is the death of writing.GORDON LISH
This was a stock saying that Lish offered in his writing workshops as well as in his everyday conversation. After serving as fiction editor at Esquire, Lish became an editor at the publishing firm of Alfred A. Knopf, where he was known as “Captain Fiction” for his work with such writers as Cynthia Ozick and Raymond Carver (many believed he served as more than an editor for Carver, with some even suggesting he was Carver’s “ghostwriter”).
Never give away a copy of your book to anyone who might buy it—
except maybe your mother.PAUL RAYMOND MARTIN
This comes from Martin’s Writer’s Little Instruction Book: Getting Published (2005). The book contains numerous suggestions and tips, many expressed neveristically:
Never excuse your work as “just a draft.”
Never submit a story still damp with inspiration.
Never argue with an editor over a rejection or a killed assignment.
Never allow the editor in your head to
dampen the emotions in your heart or the enthusiasm in your soul.
Never take your professional relationships for granted—
not with editors, not with agents, not with publishers.
Freshen these relationships with every new moon.
Never ask anyone, “Have you read my book?”DAVID L. MCKENNA
I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century:
that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.JAMES A. MICHENER, embracing an old tradition
William Safire told me something that really helped:
“Never feel guilty about reading. That’s what you do .”PEGGY NOONAN
Never say, “I’m nauseous.”
Even if it’s true, it’s not something you ought to admit.PATRICIA T. O’CONNER, in Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s
Guide to Better English in Plain English (2009)
In her bestselling style guide, O’Conner pointed out that we are made sick (nauseated) by someone or something that is sickening (nauseous). People who say “I am nauseous” are—technically—saying, “I am sickening.”
Never forget you are writing to be read,
to have your words experienced by others.ALICE ORR, in No More Rejections: 50 Secrets
to Writing a Manuscript That Sells (2004)
Orr, a literary agent and book editor as well as a novelist, continued: “How will your work sound to someone reading it? Does your meaning come across the way you intend it to? Does your voice ring true?” She also offered these warnings:
Never stop studying your craft, because you can never be perfect at it.
Never edit your work on screen. Always print it out and edit on hard copy.
Whatever your writing medium,
never submit a manuscript with typos or mistakes.
Never make excuses,
never let them see you bleed,
and never get separated from your baggage.WESLEY PRICE, “Three Rules of Professional Comportment for
Writers” (originally published in The Saturday Evening Post)
Never let a domestic quarrel ruin a day’s writing.
If you can’t start the next day fresh, get rid of your wife.MARIO PUZO
This was one of “Mario Puzo’s Godfatherly Rules for Writing a Bestselling Novel,” first offered in a Time magazine interview in 1978. The rule was offered facetiously. Puzo met his German wife Erika during WWII and he remained married to her until her death in 1978, several months after the Time interview. His other rules were expressed seriously—and some neveristically:
Never write in the first person.
Never show your stuff to anybody. You can get inhibited.
Never sell your book to the movies until after it is published.
Never talk about what you are going to do until afte
r you have written it.
Never trust anybody but yourself.
That includes critics, friends, and especially publishers.
Never write on a subject without first having read yourself full on it;
and never read on a subject till you have thought yourself hungry on it.JEAN PAUL RICHTER
Never forget that writing is as close as we get
to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things—
childhood, certainties, cities, doubts,
dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves—
that go on slipping, like sand, through our fingers.SALMAN RUSHDIE, in the Introduction to Günter Grass’s
On Writing and Politics (1985)
Never put the story in the lead.WILLIAM SAFIRE, advice for beginning columnists
Writing a column is different from straight newspaper reporting, according to Safire, more akin to philosophizing than to journalism. As a result, beginning columnists would be wise to ignore the old saw about writing an information-packed lead. “Let ’em have a hot shot of ambiguity right between the eyes,” advised Safire, adding that it was okay to have column readers initially “wondering what your message really is.”
Whenever you write, whatever you write,