Joyce Carol Oates Photo by Bella Newman |
10 Writing Tips
Joyce Carol Oates
- Write your heart out.
- The first sentence can be written only after the last sentence has been written. FIRST DRAFTS ARE HELL. FINAL DRAFTS, PARADISE.
- You are writing for your contemporaries not for Posterity. If you are lucky, your contemporaries will become Posterity.
- Keep in mind Oscar Wilde: A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
- When in doubt how to end a chapter, bring in a man with a gun. (This is Raymond Chandler's advice, not mine. I would not try this.)
- Unless you are experimenting with form gnarled, snarled, & obscure be alert for possibilities of paragraphing.
- Be your own editor/critic. Sympathetic but merciless!
- Don't try to anticipate an ideal reader or any reader. He/she might exist but is reading someone else.
- Read, observe, listen intensely! as if your life depended upon it.
- Write your heart out.
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