Writers on Writing: Collected Essays from The New York Times

by The New York Times, John Darnton (Introduction)

Now in paperback, today's most celebrated writers explore literature and the literary life in an inspirational collection of original essays.

By turns poignant, hilarious, and practical, Writers on Writing brings together more than forty of contemporary literature's finest voices.

Pieces range from reflections on the daily craft of writing to the intersection of art's and life's consequential moments. Authors discuss what impels them to write: creating a sense of control in a turbulent universe; bearing witness to events that would otherwise be lost in history or within the writer's soul; recapturing a fragment of time. Others praise mentors and lessons, whether from the classroom, daily circumstances, or the pages of a favorite writer. For anyone interested in the art and rewards of writing, Writers on Writing offers an uncommon and revealing view of a writer's world.

Contributors include Russell Banks, Saul Bellow, E. L. Doctorow, Richard Ford, Kent Haruf, Carl Hiaasen, Alice Hoffman, Jamaica Kincaid, Barbara Kingsolver, Sue Miller, Walter Mosley, Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Proulx, Carol Shields, Jane Smiley, Susan Sontag, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Alice Walker, and Elie Wiesel.

Genres: Writing, Essays, Nonfiction, Journalism, Anthologies, Reference, Literary Criticism

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

The New York Times is a daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed internationally. Founded in 1851, the newspaper has won 112 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other news organization. Its website receives 30 million unique visitors per month.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

Taking a break between sessions of writing his next crime thriller, Japanese author Hideo Yokoyama

This is an outstanding collection of essays from over forty established authors speaking on the process of writing and leading a literary life. Highly recommended!

On the topic of writers on writing, I'd like to take this opportunity to share my favorite 10 Rules for Writers set down by one of the contributors to this collection, none other than American author Richard Ford. Here goes.

1 "Marry somebody you love and who thinks you being a writer's a good idea."

Excellent! Just one problem - many women and men decide to embark as writers after they are married. So, the question becomes: does your spouse think that your spending time writing is a good idea? If so, great; if not, you have an issue in need of resolution.

2 "Don't have children."

Fine idea! Again, similar to #1, many of us set out as writers after we are parents. Thus, scoping out the time to write becomes a series issue. I speak from experience since when I began writing at age 38, I had to juggle career and three kids at home. One thing that helped in my case: time watching TV was not an issue since I haven't watched TV since my college years.

3 "Don't read your reviews."

Probably not a bad idea. But each writer is different. Christopher Buckley told me he would love to read the reviews I wrote for all of his books. Nicholson Baker told me he generally shies away from reading reviews of his books. You will have to see for yourself.

4 "Don't write reviews. (Your judgment's always tainted.)"

Again, you will have to see for yourself but I tend to disagree with Richard Ford here. A number of outstanding fiction authors write excellent book reviews, to name four: Martin Amis, John Updike, Cynthia Ozick, Edmund White. I'd even go further: writing book reviews provides a stellar opportunity to sharpen your writer chops. Added to this, if you are an aspiring novelist, writing book reviews might just be as equally effective for you as writing short fiction.

5 "Don't have arguments with your wife in the morning, or late at night."

I'd go even further - try not to argue with people, period. Most especially avoid arguments about such hot potato subjects as politics or religion. Such exchanges will get you nowhere as a writer. Save your energy and passion for writing.


Carson McCullers at her typewriter

6 "Don't drink and write at the same time."

Again, I'd go further - an occasional glass of wine is fine but try to avoid frequently reaching for a drink as a way to relax. And if you are a social drinker, that's easy - cut way back on socializing. I recall Horacio Castellanos Moya telling an interviewer that he has a hard time writing the next day if he spent too much time talking the previous evening. That's my experience as well. If you take your writing seriously, try to spend more time writing and less time talking.

7 "Don't write letters to the editor. (No one cares)."

In our computerized world, this could translate as "don't write comments when others write negative reviews of your books." Probably a good idea since not everybody will enjoy your writing. Let it go. Not advisable to get yourself all worked up in a frenzy over others' opinions of your work. Move on to your next book.

8 "Don't wish ill on your colleagues."

Bull's eye, Richard! As a writer, the last thing you want is to fume with envy over the success of other writers. Let such nonsense go. Much wiser to take others' successes as motivation to spur on your own writing. And besides which, success is so relative - many of the greats of world literature were never recognized in their own lifetimes.


James Baldwin at his writing desk

9 "Try to think of others' good luck as encouragement to yourself."

Similar to #8, think well of others and applaud any good luck that might come their way. Again, it can't be stressed enough - save your powerful emotions for your writing.

10 "Don't take any shit if you can ­possibly help it."

In a way, the most important of Richard Ford's rules: if you find yourself in a toxic work environment, takes steps to extract yourself as quickly as possible. As for other interactions with people, the best way to avoid other people's shit is to avoid as much as possible people inclined to throw shit at you. Much better to spend your time by yourself at your writing desk.


American author Richard Ford, born 1944

[Shane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I felt in good hands reading the lives of these famous writers. I did not feel so alone anymore. It was good to know that these literary personalities also adopt idiosyncratic postures, dress in creative ways, pick unusual settings, collect dozens of notebooks with the most eccentric designs, meditate, and even go running in order to write. Other things I learned were:
1) The neeed to read in order to write
2)The impact of cinema on writing - cinema has claimed a lot of writing's former glory and influenced its style
3) Sex - the least addressed in literature, yet the most celebrated in life (whether in the act or in the contemplation of it!)
4) Real life is stranger than fiction, and becoming stranger as we hurtle towards the end of days - imagine a man sleeping with an alligator for amorous reasons!
5) Yard sales are good places to pick up ideas
6) You must not let go of a story once you start it - you must write every day
7) Crime novels are political
8) The family is the fount of great drama
9) The dangers of putting real people into books - best to wait until they are dead or mix them up totally that they can never recognize themselves
10) The role of writers groups - to aid with revision and to play the role of the reader - don't expect them to be the fount of new ideas.

There - sounds like a writer's ten commandments!

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

The dust jacket synopsis says,”For anyone interested in the art and craft of writing, WRITERS
[ON WRITING] offers an uncommon and revealing view of the writer’s world.”

The book collects 46 essays submitted to The New York Times in the late 90’s for a feature column of the same name by author/staff editor John Darnton. Given a common theme, you have 46 different writers, 46 differing perspectives. Each essay, personal. In common, you have one heartfelt voice prescribing love of craft and hard, some-times thankless,work.

Chapters are 5 to 6 pages long. Poets, storytellers, novelists contributed.
Famous writers as well as now forgotten ones.
But you’re not a writer…..So ? You are still a reader.

[Matt]

“They don’t write good. They have people over there, like Maggie Haberman and others, they don’t — they don’t write good. They don’t know how to write good.”

Well phrased, Mr Trump!

[Utkarsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great Book.
Here are a few quotes I underlined:

So much of life falls between the seams of the sayable. It’s ironic that poets use words to convey what lies beyond words, that poetry becomes most powerful where simple language fails, allowing one to bridge the conscious and unconscious, and even festoon that bridge with sensations and subterranean desires. — Diane Ackerman

But the creative artist can change the world. A true writer opens people’s ears and eyes, not merely playing to the public, but changing minds and lives. This is sacred work. — Allegra Goodman

Some days you plod, some days you soar, but always you churn out copy on demand, whether you feel the muse or not. (Where is the muse, by the way? Does she ever show up? Occasionally you hit it, grinning behind the nominal privacy of your partition like a Mardis Gras mask. — Anna Quindlen speaking of journalism (although I think she could be speaking of teaching, too)

The wonderful thing about writing is that it forces you to confront yourself in a way you don’t usually have to. That is, needless to say, also the terrible thing. — Jonathan Rosen

Music is also in stark contrast to writing. Music is already perfect, sure-footed, whereas I’m struggling to remember a word, frame a description, invent an action. If for me music is the secret sharer, it is a friend who has no needs and encourages me to trust that beauty can be achieved in this life, at least theoretically. — Edmund White

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of 46 essays by well-known authors, including E. L. Doctorow, Alice Hoffman, David Mamet, Sue Miller, John Updike and Kurt Vonnegut. Many aspects of a writing life were covered, such as inspiration, motivation, writing habits, writing inhibitors, writing in long hang with pen and paper, and editing on computer. My least favorite topic on writing - the impending death of books, along with the death of readers, culture and art - was also discussed. One repeated theme was choosing to write over doing anything else.

For me, the most memorable essays were:

Carl Hiaasen's "Real Life, that Bizarre and Brazen Plagiarist" on the insanity of real life impacting fiction;
Alice Hoffman's "Sustained by Fiction While Facing Life's Fact" on enduring illnesses of close family members and her own illness while writing a novel;
Susan Sontag's "Direction: Write, Read, Rewrite. Repeat Steps Two and Three as Needed" covered the same topic as Alice Hoffman's;
Joyce Carol Oates' "To Invigorate Literary Mind, Start Moving Literary Feet" on running to help the writing process (I was most surprised by this one. For some reason, I have a difficult time imagining Joyce Carol Oates running down the street in a jogging suit and a visor.);
Rosellen Brown's "Characters' Weaknesses Build Fiction's Strengths" on writing about characters with flaws and the readers who judge a book based on their reaction to a character's actions (I know I have been guilty of the judging a book based on a character's actions. Nabokov's character HH in Lolita comes to mind.);
Annie Proulx's "Inspiration? Head Down the Back Road, and Stop for Yard Sales" on collecting books, facts, conversations and other things which bring life to fiction;
Roxana Robinson's "If You Invest the Story, You're the First to See How it Ends" on family relationships, even estranged relationships, as the source of all stories; and
Scott Turow's "An Odyssey that Started with Ulysses" on the importance of telling a story as a writer and as a criminal prosecutor.

As with all essay collections, I prefer to take time to enjoy and mull over each essay for its individual merits, especially when the essays are written by such a diverse collection of authors. Unfortunately, I failed to follow my own advice here and some of the essays blended in with each other. I would have preferred to take a break at the end and not rush through. But I did.

I like reading about writers who discuss writing. I can't say all the essays were my favorite, but they were worth reading.

[Ruby · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book seemed like it was going to be a really interesting collection of writings by different authors ABOUT WRITING. Most of the. Just ended up being semi-reflective narratives about short periods in their lives or completely random little essays about their own interests. I wanted to read ABOUT WRITING. Not the writer's life, not the writer's hobbies, and not random writers' back stories. The problem was that a lot of the time, the different authors weren't even talking about the same subject matter. A third thought they were to be writing about how certain things in their lives influenced their writing, a third were reflecting on how writing and their lives are intertwined, and a third thought it was some sort of interview about their lives/habits. If I wanted to read a magazine article talking about what a writer does in her or his pastime, then I will buy myself a book called WRITERS ON THE WRITER'S LIFE. But it don't want to read about them; I want their insight and creativity talking about writing or the creative process. In a book called WRITERS ON WRITING, Is that too much to ask? This book end up doing the thing that some writers are totally okay with: muddling readers about how to view their lives as writers and keeping the trade of WRITING seemingly a mystery that one can't really figure out unless they too write a book. I expected better.

[Paloma Etienne · Rating 3 out of 5]

All right, I hesitated whether to give this book two or three stars. At the end, I'm giving it three, but two would perhaps be a more objective rating. I mean by this that my by then detached head was having a hard time with some of the essays (as other people have pointed out), but eventually (as already said by some reviewers), half way through it got better and wiser, despite the occasional flimsy piece. Some articles on the first half definitely saved the day.

Don't take me wrong; I did expect a more intellectual heavy set, and I couldn't hack some of the articles because, honestly, they weren't that interesting, even well written (sorry, writers). They seemed to be a response to the assignment of "writing on writing" with a lucky charm idea that they suddenly gave excessive importance to. Some other writers spoke so eloquently and vulnerably about themselves that you could feel their warmth, their intensity, their varied personalities and alluring prose flooding the room and charming you with rapture.

Read at your own risk!

[Mmars · Rating 4 out of 5]

Been picking this up off and on for the last couple weeks. Have randomly read about half the entries. Enjoyed most of what I've read so far. 'On writing' is sometimes misleading, in that the topic receives oblique treatment if you are looking for advice on how to write.

Rather, these are personal essays about being writers. They respond to readers reactions, Mary Gordon writers ingeniously about her pens and her notebooks, several write in sort a stream of consciousness in which characters partake in their thoughts, Harry Bech entertains a Q&A session with John Updike, and there's lots of incidents about inspiration and other typical topics. But these are great writers and the essays did appear in the New Yorker, so you can't go too wrong now, can you?

[Jennifer Rockwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

A worthy collection.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a great idea made manifest, but as is almost always the case with collections of essays by all different writers, it's a mixed bag. It took a half-dozen essays before I was hooked by Nicholas Delbanco's about emulating other writers, and another half-dozen before Mary Gordon's delicious piece about her collection of notebooks and their various functions. Then I hit this blue streak in the last third of the collection with Walter Mosley, Joyce Carol Oates (who's essay about running and how it relates to writing might have been my favorite in both content and style), and the lone (but great) essay about fiction AND poetry by Marge Piercy. Susan Sontag was gracefully honest, and therefore beautiful, Vonnegut was funny and evasive, and Scott Turow suprised me with the depth of his feeling (might have to read one of his mystery novels now).

Generally, I liked the essays that were less about artifice and posturing within themselves than the simple accounts of writer's different processes and rituals. Perhaps I am just nosy that way, but it's what really gets to me, things that I can reflect on and experiment with applying to my own writing practice...that, to me, is the best thing about being party to a community of writers, which this collection mimics in a pretty serviceable fashion.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writers in this book encompass a time period of sixty years. Yet, their writing advice (and examples) are more timeless than most professions. This is worth it for anyone, regardless if they write or not.

[Marlene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some really great useable essays for teaching writing.

[Maha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read Annie Proulx’s essay entitled ‘Inspiration? Head down the back road, and stop for the yard sales’ (pp. 185-190). - for uni studies...

Would like to read other essays in this book one day.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m glad I read it. There are some great essays contained within that provide wonderful little nuggets/gems on writing. Many of the other reviewers have covered these points such as where to find ideas, writing every day, not using recognisable people etc. Unfortunately, there are also a few tedious ones who I felt write just to hear themselves. There’s no prosaic aspects and, in fact, I’d also argue they’re not even talking about writing. One author seemed to just write in circles (that one I gave up part way through and there’s not exactly a lot of pages for each essay.) And then there are those you wish had written more. So, yes, I’m glad I read it, but no I’m not making space on the bookshelf for it as I wouldn’t go back and reread as I will Stephen King’s “On Writing” or Ray Bradbury’s “Zen in the Art of Writing.” These two give you opposing viewpoints that are incredibly well thought out and very accessible to read. You can see how they became both prolific and powerhouses. So, save your money and skip this title and buy theirs instead if you want to know about the craft of writing rather than general musings of authors.

[Kelsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5/5 stars. It is a little difficult for me to review this as it is an anthology of essays. In general, I dislike anthologies such as this one - they're just not my cup of tea. However, compared to other similar anthologies I have read, this one is better than many. There were several authors in here whose work I really enjoy, which sparked my interest in specific essays. I found numerous essays in here really interesting or entertaining, however there were also plenty that I did not particularly like. I cannot fault this particular book however, because that is to be expected with a collection of any works. Overall, I think I benefitted from several of the essays, but was left unimpressed/uninterested in (probably) close to the same number.

[danielle; ▵ · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

I enjoyed the essays well enough, but now I am all full of hate toward writing/writers and I can’t really understand why, but I think it is about the search to put into words. Maybe not everything has to be put into words because to put into words is to destroy, and the destruction is always so to the self-satisfaction of the destroyer.

So I am destroying my feelings about this collection by writing about it, but I can’t self-satisfy because I am watching myself attempting to become empty of nothing but the contradiction of a weak sense of disdain for any attempt to empty oneself of, for example, a weak sense of disdain.

[Cassie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some essays were poignant, interesting, or supportive, some were okay (or plain boring), and some were rather vain and supercilious, as tends to happen in a collection of essays. I did like seeing essays by authors I both knew and enjoyed, and I also liked being introduced to authors I did not know but whose works I would now like to read.

[Dayna Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a great collection of essays written by writers about the art of writing. There are essays by Saul Bellow, E.L. Doctorow, Louise Erdrich, Carl Hiaasen, Alice Hoffman, Alice Walker, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Elie Wiesel, and many others. Whether or not you are interested in writing yourself, this collection is a fascinating read.

[Davin H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful collection of essays including an array of varied authors in several types of writing. Some were very opinionated to me, and I felt the organization of the essays could have been improved beyond alphabetical by author. Otherwise, I enjoyed the read and found many useful tips within the book.

[Chandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

This early 2000s NYT compendium of essays on writing is less polished and thoughtful than the Washington Post's version from the same era (Writer's and how they work?). No background is given on the writers or their essays, which feels limiting when reading a few decades later. It's fun, but not very deep or illuminating.

[Connor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like a greatest hits album that buries the standout tracks in the back of the catalogue. There are some exceptional essays here, but there are some duds, too. The back half of the book is stacked against the front half.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

A series of short and easy to read reflections on the process of writing. Several of them were motivating and inspirational. I recommend this for anyone contemplating seriously pursuing writing as a career or as a self-improvement focused hobby.

[Adrienne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably one of my least favorite books on this subject.

[Jack Swanzy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Diverse views on writing, not too heavy and not too light!

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who writes but has a hard time calling herself a writer, this collection of essays was very inspiring to me, and definitely affirming.

[Jerry Dupuy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting writing advice from many well known authors.

[Allen Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent and inspiring book. Of course I liked some of the pieces more than others, but I can’t wait to dive in and study my marginalia.

[Tiff · Rating 2 out of 5]

God so dense

[Zain]

skipable