Advice to Writers: A Compendium of Quotes, Anecdotes, and Writerly Wisdom from a Dazzling Array of Literary Lights - Hardcover

Winokur, Jon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679443878 ISBN 13: 9780679443872

Publisher: Pantheon, 1999

Synopsis

Here from more than four hundred of the world's most celebrated writers and booksmiths--from Euripides and Eudora Welty to Cynthia Ozick and P. J. O'Rourke--is a treasury of useful advice on the world and work of writing. Compiled by the author of The Rich Are Different and the best-selling Portable Curmudgeon, Advice to Writers includes priceless counsel on subjects ranging from writer's block and writing dialogue to dealing with agents and editors and appearing on television; from work habits and procrastination rituals to drinking on the job; from success, money, and fame to the lack of one or all of them.

Flaubert, Twain, and Kipling impart their venerable wisdom. Red Smith tells us that "writing is easy. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein." Annie Dillard, David Guterson, and Maureen Dowd offer practical suggestions. David Remnick describes the ideal editor. A genre's-eye view comes from science-fiction master Harlan Ellison and sportswriter Frank Deford. Provocative insights come from David Mamet, Russell Banks, and Joyce Carol Oates.

Clever and sagacious, pragmatic and heartening, this is an essential volume for both the aspiring writer and the devoted reader.

About this title

About the Author

Jon Winokur is the author of The Rich Are Different. He lives in Pacific Palisades, California.

From the Back Cover

On Agents:
"Choose your agent as carefully as you would choose your accountant or lawyer. Or dentist."
--Russell Banks

On Characters:
"Make your characters want something right away--even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time."
--Kurt Vonnegut

On Critics:
"Never demean yourself by talking back to a critic. . . . Write those letters to the editor in your head, but don't put them on paper."
--Truman Capote

On Dialogue:
"Remember that each character must sound different from the others. And they should not all sound like you."
--Anne Lamott

On Drink:
"Boozing does not necessarily have to go hand in hand with being a writer, as seems to be the concept in America. I therefore solemnly declare to all young men trying to become writers that they do not actually have to become drunkards first."
--James Jones

On Punctuation:
"Cut out all those exclamation marks. An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own joke."
--F. Scott Fitzgerald

On Work Habits:
"Best advice on writing I've ever received: Finish."
--Peter Mayle

From the Inside Flap

re than four hundred of the world's most celebrated writers and booksmiths--from Euripides and Eudora Welty to Cynthia Ozick and P. J. O'Rourke--is a treasury of useful advice on the world and work of writing. Compiled by the author of <b>The Rich Are Different</b> and the best-selling <b>Portable Curmudgeon</b>, <b>Advice to Writers</b> includes priceless counsel on subjects ranging from writer's block and writing dialogue to dealing with agents and editors and appearing on television; from work habits and procrastination rituals to drinking on the job; from success, money, and fame to the lack of one or all of them.<br><br>Flaubert, Twain, and Kipling impart their venerable wisdom. Red Smith tells us that "writing is easy. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein." Annie Dillard, David Guterson, and Maureen Dowd offer practical suggestions. David Remnick describes the ideal editor. A genre's-eye view comes from science-fiction master Harlan Ellison and

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

On agents: "Choose your agent as carefully as you would choose your accountant or lawyer. Or dentist." -- Russell Banks

On characters: "The characters have their own lives and their own logic, and you have to act accordingly." -- Isaac Bashevis Singer

On colleagues: "Artists never thrive in colonies. Ants do. What the budding artist needs is the privilege of wrestling with his problems in solitude -- and now and the a piece of red meat." -- Henry Miller

On critics and criticism: "It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at only one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends." -- Samuel Johnson

On dialogue: "Dialogue in fiction should be reserved for the culminating moments and regarded as the spray into which the great wave of narrative breaks in curving toward the watcher on the shore." -- Edith Wharton

On discouragement: "Writing is easy. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein." -- Red Smith

On drink: "First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald

On editors and editing: "Bow down before them. They know what they are doing." -- Quentin Crisp

On grammar and usage: "Usage is the only test. I prefer a phrase that is easy and unaffected to a phrase that is grammatical." -- W. Somerset Maugham

Edition details

• Publisher: Pantheon
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679443878
• ISBN 13: 9780679443872
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240