writing habits
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FUNNY WOMEN #157: Habits of Less Successful Writers
So much can be learned from the writing habits of successful writers, but what can we learn from the ones who aren’t doing quite as well?
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The Daily Struggle
Lord knows the world has changed since I wrote this talk, but when the world falls to pieces around us, especially when the world falls to pieces, writers will still sit down to write. As Beckett tells us, even when we…
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The Rumpus Interview with Maryse Meijer
Maryse Meijer discusses her debut collection Heartbreaker, the importance of tension in writing, revision as a shield against criticism, and life as a twin.
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Notes on Craft
Supposedly, the most-common question for a writer is , “Where do you get your ideas?” but in my experience, it is actually, “Do you outline?” I don’t outline, but I do fill notebooks with scribbled thoughts about where the story…
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Are You a Cook or a Baker?
Do you enjoy the culinary results of tossing ingredients together with some heat to create some spontaneous deliciousness? Or do you prefer the structured act of measuring and timing that create cookies and cakes? The methodological divide between cooking and…
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Creation, Not Comfort
At The Millions, Connor Ferguson muses on writing routines, the tortured artist trope, and the role discomfort plays in the create process: Even if they aren’t trying to be explicitly didactic, most writers feel compelled to create stories, novels, plays,…
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A Window to the World
Over at the New York Times Magazine, book critic and author Sam Anderson makes a compelling case for staring out windows: Windows are, in this sense, a powerful existential tool: a patch of the world, arbitrarily framed, from which we are…
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Author in the First Person
There’s humor and advice on the long haul of novel-writing in an interview with Porochista Khakpour over at Prairie Schooner. Khakpour describes “problem-solving a chunk at a time,” and pushing through a “stalling chapter” to get from drafting to publishing.
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Like Thoreau, But Not
Writers for generation have sought out the solitude of the wilderness to get their work done. But sometimes it’s not as romantic as we hope.
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Mary Gaitskill Procrastinates Too
For The Millions, Chelsea Voulgares talks to Mary Gaitskill about her new novel The Mare and how to establish productive writing habits: I’m not consistent like some people seem to be. Sometimes I don’t write at all. If I’m not really working on…
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Title Written Later
Over at the London Review of Books, Robert Hanks meditates on procrastination: Procrastination is the main way I express anxiety and depression, if I can use these medicalised, dignifying terms. It’s franker to say that I put things off because…
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The Perfect Pen(cil)
Over at Lit Hub, Michele Filgate polled a wide range of writers (from Margaret Atwood to Maggie Nelson to Bhanu Kapil) about their favorite writing instruments, asking them to talk about the nostalgia attached to them and the sensations of that…