Advice to Writers: A Compendium of Quotes, Anecdotes, and Writerly Wisdom from a Dazzling Array of Literary Lights
In Advice to Writers, Jon Winokur, author of the bestselling The Portable Curmudgeon, gathers the counsel of more than four hundred celebrated authors in a treasury on the world of writing. Here are literary lions on everything from the passive voice to promotion and publicity: James Baldwin on the practiced illusion of effortless prose, Isaac Asimov on the despotic tendencies of editors, John Cheever on the perils of drink, Ivan Turgenev on matrimony and the Muse. Here, too, are the secrets...
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In Advice to Writers, Jon Winokur, author of the bestselling The Portable Curmudgeon, gathers the counsel of more than four hundred celebrated authors in a treasury on the world of writing. Here are literary lions on everything from the passive voice to promotion and publicity: James Baldwin on the practiced illusion of effortless prose, Isaac Asimov on the despotic tendencies of editors, John Cheever on the perils of drink, Ivan Turgenev on matrimony and the Muse. Here, too, are the secrets behind the sleight-of-hand practiced by artists from Aristotle to Rita Mae Brown. Sagacious, inspiring, and entertaining, Advice to Writers is an essential volume for the writer in every reader.
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
AcknowledgmentsIntroductionAuthor's NoteAgents3Characters6Colleagues13Critics and Criticism16Dialogue20Discouragement23Drink30Editors and Editing33Encouragement44Genres57Grammar and Usage74Material82Money87Occupational Hazards90Plagiarism94Plot96Prizes99Process102Publicity and Promotion110Publishers and Publishing116Punctuation120Qualifications and Requirements123The Reader133Reading139Rules and Commandments144The Secret149Style156Success and Failure162Technique165Tricks of the Trade168Why You Write176Words179Work Habits186Writer's Block190The Writer's Life199Writing Advice202Selected Bibliography207Permissions Acknowledgments212Index213
