Anne Enright’s Finest 10 Tips for Writing Fiction

In this humble offering before the next longer post, author Anne Enright, who was named the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction, won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction for her novel, The Forgotten Waltz, and won the Man Booker Prize for her novel, The Gathering, shares ten writing tips gleaned from her fiction writing […]

Share

10 Brilliant Tips for Writing Fiction Inspired by Famous Authors

Discover Your Story in the Act of Writing It’s natural to want to know where your story is headed or at the very least, know that you are not wasting your time — especially on something as grand as the first draft of a novel — but it’s not always easy to relinquish control and let the act of writing itself discover your story. Yet often it is in doing […]

Share

15 Ocean-Inspired Storytelling Tools & Tips

Every writer has days where they feel a little deflated, distracted or depleted of wonder — especially when working on a project as grand as a novel. With short fiction too, it’s natural for this ebb and flow. Although each of us must find our own process, if your writing runs a little dry or you’re feeling uninspired, try these […]

Share

John Steinbeck’s 6 Tips for the Aspiring Writer

“A kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there were no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid any more.” ~ John Steinbeck, East of Eden […]

Share

Margaret Atwood’s Ten Tips for Writers

Margaret Atwood is widely known for her award-winning book, The Handmaid’s Tale. While she is mostly known as a novelist, she has also published many volumes of poetry, including poems inspired by myths and fairytales. Here she offers writers some practical [and perhaps not-so-practical] writing  tips: 1. Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the […]

Share

Alan Watts on How to Be a Writer

“Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, […]

Share

Natalie Goldberg on How a Writer Must Say Yes to Life

We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded. This is how writers must think, this is how we must sit down with pen in hand. We were here; we are human beings; this is how we lived. Let it be known, the earth passed before […]

Share

Anaïs Nin on How We Write to Heighten Our Own Awareness of Life

“We write to heighten our own awareness of life. We write to lure and enchant and console others. We write to serenade our lovers. We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write […]

Share