Signed my first copies of Keep Going (they were galleys, but still!) — at the Winter Institute in Albuquerque this week. I had a blast and met so many terrific booksellers. Can’t wait to get out on tour in April and sign more for y’all… (Stay tuned.)
Do not link to the line steppers.
Do not link to the line steppers.
Do not link to the line steppers. pic.twitter.com/SzQihSKwsx— Jay Smooth (@jsmooth995) May 16, 2018
Some fine advice for ignoring the trolls. Akin to “just don’t look.” I also recommend feeding off of them.
“Every morning, I have woken up knowing that I will never run out of books to read. That has been my life.”
—Kenzaburo Oe
This schedule went viral on Twitter with the caption: “Ursula K. Le Guin’s writing routine is the ideal writing routine.”
It’s a lovely, lovely thing, but it should be pointed out that it was an “ideal” routine for her, too, as she says in the 1988 interview it’s excerpted from. (Left out: “I go to bed at 10:00 p.m. If I’m at the beach there would be one ore two long walks on the beach in that day. This is a perfect day for me.”)
I’m sure that life got in the way a lot for her, just like it does for all of us. In fact, I was just thinking about her take on interruptions the other day when a mother wrote to me about the crush of having young kids and trying to work. I sent her this quote:
“Babies eat books. But they spit out wads of them that can be taped back together; and they are only babies for a couple of years, while writers live for decades…”
I love how her schedule doesn’t exclude mundane ordinary things like housework or dinner. “An artist can go off into the private world they create, and maybe not be so good at finding the way out again,” she said. “This could be one reason I’ve always been grateful for having a family and doing housework, and the stupid ordinary stuff that has to be done that you cannot let go.”
I also love how much time is set aside for reading. (Stephen King says he writes all morning and reads all afternoon.) It’s too easy when you’re writing full time to feel like you should stuff every single minute with writing, even when you know reading is a huge part of your job.
“Don’t feel guilty if you spend the first 90 minutes of your day drinking coffee and reading blogs,” Nate Silver once advised young journalists. “It’s your job. Your ratio of reading to writing should be high.”
Even after you achieve great things, that guilt might still linger. Here’s director Paul Thomas Anderson:
I still have trouble reading a book during the day because it somehow feels indulging… You know, like oh, my – this is so naughty. I’m actually reading at 10 o’clock in the morning. I think it’s just your upbringing – something about like you got to go to work, and you’ve got to – and move on. And still even – this is how I make my living. I still feel guilty. 10 o’clock, I mean – and it’s – but I’ve sunken into the pleasure of it – to think, my God, I’ve got my life in a way where I can read a book in the middle of the day.
I love that last sentence so much. I’ve always thought a great question for sorting out your life is: “What do you want your days to look like?”
It’s been said a million times — it’s one of the main points of my books Steal Like An Artist and Show Your Work! — and yet, it still seems to be controversial or confusing to young people who are starting out: If you want to be a writer, you have to be a reader first.
“You can’t be a good writer without being a devoted reader.”
—J.K. Rowling
“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut… If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.”
—Stephen King
“Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.”
—Annie Proulx
“The ugly fact is books are made out of books.”
—Cormac McCarthy
“Read with the mind-set of a carpenter looking at trees.”
—Terry Pratchett
“Read, read, read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read!”
—William Faulkner
“If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting.”
—Ray Bradbury
“When I’m reading, I’m looking for something to steal. Readers ask me all the time the traditional question ‘Where do you get your ideas from?” I reply: ‘We are all having ideas all the time. But I’m on the lookout for them. You’re not.’”
—Philip Pullman
“Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.”
—Nora Ephron
“I find it weird to meet writers who aren’t also big readers. Met one the other day at a bar and I looked at him queerly. He said he couldn’t find the time. This reminded me that readers are probably my people first, before writers. Writers are more likely to be dicks.”
—Rosecrans Baldwin
“I had never had any desire to be a writer. I wanted to be a reader.”
—Adam Phillips
“I don’t enjoy writing. I enjoy reading.”
—William Giraldi
“If only you’d remember before you ever sit down to write that you’ve been a reader much longer than you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, then sit very still and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world [you] would most want to read…”
—J.D. Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction
“If you feel the urge to write, just lie down and read a book: it will pass.”
—Fran Lebowitz
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