"Counsel from a Veteran of the Writing Wars"
Irving Wallace
Chicken Soup for the Writer's Soul
I once overheard a professor say to a beginning writer: "Everything has been written about already, and written better than you can do it. If you intend to write about love, tragedy, adventure... forget it, because it has all been done by Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolstoy, Flaubert, and the rest. Unless you have something absolutely new to say, don't try to be a writer. Take up accounting."
That was silly - really stupid. Everything has not been said, and will never be said. Human emotions may have always been the same, but there was never anyone on Earth before you who was exactly like you and who saw love and hate exactly as you see them through your eyes.
And you need not have lived something to see it, to write about it. You were provided with imagination. Use it. Da Vinci did not have to attend the Last Supper to paint it.
Use your imagination daily. Writing is not only an art but also a profession. While inspiration is an enormous factor, the writing of a book is a profession. You have to prepare for this profession by practicing it - write diaries, journals, letters, fragments - and by studying the works of authors you admire, to learn how they create characters, insert conflict, move a story.
And then you have to write not just when the spirit moves you, but every day. If there are bad days, you can discard what yo have done, but write everyday, pretending you're on a salary, pretending you must deliver something or be fired, yet working on and on for yourself and by yourself.
When I was doing short magazine pieces and screenplays, I feared undertaking anything as formidable as a book. One day, while I was collaborating with novelist Jerome Wiedman on a screenplay for a studio, Weidman advised me how to overcome my fear. "Think about writing one page, merely one page, every day. At the end of 365 days, the end of a year, you have 365 pages. And you know what you have? You have a full-length book."
Finally, you must want to write, rather than to be known as a writer. That's why you must treat your actual writing as a career. You must not talk about it - you must do it, love to do it despite the loneliness, feel there is nothing more important on Earth while you are doing it.
Because there is nothing more important. Despite what that professor contended, there are things left to be said. The world around you is different from the world Shakespeare wrote about - your world today has trod on the moon, by God. For every new writer, every year remains unexplored until he or she explores it.
Irving Wallace
Chicken Soup for the Writer's Soul
I once overheard a professor say to a beginning writer: "Everything has been written about already, and written better than you can do it. If you intend to write about love, tragedy, adventure... forget it, because it has all been done by Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolstoy, Flaubert, and the rest. Unless you have something absolutely new to say, don't try to be a writer. Take up accounting."
That was silly - really stupid. Everything has not been said, and will never be said. Human emotions may have always been the same, but there was never anyone on Earth before you who was exactly like you and who saw love and hate exactly as you see them through your eyes.
And you need not have lived something to see it, to write about it. You were provided with imagination. Use it. Da Vinci did not have to attend the Last Supper to paint it.
Use your imagination daily. Writing is not only an art but also a profession. While inspiration is an enormous factor, the writing of a book is a profession. You have to prepare for this profession by practicing it - write diaries, journals, letters, fragments - and by studying the works of authors you admire, to learn how they create characters, insert conflict, move a story.
And then you have to write not just when the spirit moves you, but every day. If there are bad days, you can discard what yo have done, but write everyday, pretending you're on a salary, pretending you must deliver something or be fired, yet working on and on for yourself and by yourself.
When I was doing short magazine pieces and screenplays, I feared undertaking anything as formidable as a book. One day, while I was collaborating with novelist Jerome Wiedman on a screenplay for a studio, Weidman advised me how to overcome my fear. "Think about writing one page, merely one page, every day. At the end of 365 days, the end of a year, you have 365 pages. And you know what you have? You have a full-length book."
Finally, you must want to write, rather than to be known as a writer. That's why you must treat your actual writing as a career. You must not talk about it - you must do it, love to do it despite the loneliness, feel there is nothing more important on Earth while you are doing it.
Because there is nothing more important. Despite what that professor contended, there are things left to be said. The world around you is different from the world Shakespeare wrote about - your world today has trod on the moon, by God. For every new writer, every year remains unexplored until he or she explores it.
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