“I recommend taking advice with a grain of low-sodium salt (better for your heart), and being suspicious of anyone who makes writing seem too easy, too hard, or too sexy. The reality is usually in the boring, nougat middle. Done correctly, writing looks like a person staring at a table.
Many instructors advise to ‘sit in the chair’ each day. Remember the ‘chair’ can be the commuter train or the washing machine as your kid’s clothes dry. Or a doorpost you’re leaning against in the break room, smoking a Marlboro Light while counting tips, which is how I thought of the superheroes in my story ‘Great, Wondrous.’ In hindsight, I guess that was pretty sexy. I recommend rereading a work you think is perfect. I recommend going outside. I recommend going easy on yourself. Everyone worth their (low-sodium) salt has days when they think they’re doing it wrong. Please remember there are as many different ways to be a writer as there are writers.”
—Marie-Helene Bertino, author of 2 A.M. at the Cat’s Pajamas (Crown, 2014)
Photo credit: Ted Dodson
Comments
amcable replied on Permalink
good advice
There are plenty of days I spend staring at my computer screen and have no idea what to write or spend half an hour working on one sentence.
Beorh replied on Permalink
A Forest
Writers look like a great, dark forest to the outsider, until he gets behind the treeline. Then we are oaks, beech, ash, pine, holly, ivy, nettles, grass, dandelions, maples, thorns, wildflowers, and, yes, even poison sumac. Our own danger, though, is seeing ourselves as a forest.