Writing Tips for Beginners

The best writing advice I ever got came in 1974 from Harry Crews, a southern novelist then known in some circles for having written a story about a guy who eats a car. I assumed Crews was only marginally successful because the poor guy apparently was forced by limited finances to teach creative writing to a crowded auditorium of University of Florida freshmen. (Actually, he taught from 1968 to 1997.)

Maybe he just loved to talk about writing. He seemed not to care about money. As I remember it, he wore the same shirt and jeans to every class. Jeans. A washed-out purple button down shirt. His rugged face reminded me of Charles Bronson.

“Tell the truth,” he admonished.

What? I thought. We’re supposed to be writing fiction.

I got a C, which I assume was the lowest grade Harry ever gave anyone.

Decades later, I came to think what Crews probably meant was, Don’t try to bullshit the readers. Readers are smart. They can smell nonsense a mile away. They’ll stop reading. And that’s the last thing you want.

Paradoxically, my favorite Harry Crews book is his terrific autobiography, A Childhood, The Biography of a Place. He dishes up some real truth in that one.

By the way, aside from Tell the Truth, all of the following advice can be freely disregarded, despite the fact that most of it came from writers who actually write instead of writers like me, who mostly worry about how much they’re not writing.

To hammer the point home, I have no business handing out advice. I’ve only written one novel, The Soul Gene, in 2012, and that one burst from me almost supernaturally. Bob Dylan, whose May 24 birthday I coincidentally share, once said he didn’t know how he “got to write” his early songs, that he will never be able to do it again. I know how he feels. (And yet, despite that, Bob keeps writing and performing. Unlike me and Harper Lee.)

So, here goes nothing:

• More periods. Fewer commas.

• Don’t take notes to remember things. Good ideas will stick. Bad ones will fade, as they should. (This one’s from Stephen King.)

• Make an outline of the story from beginning to end. Make sure you have a satisfying ending. There are few things worse for a reader than struggling through a 400-page novel only to have it end with a thud.

• Know that the outline is not fixed, not a straitjacket. It will change. Even the ending may change. Let it.

• Pay attention to your characters, who’ll generally tell you what comes next.

• Honest writing naturally creates echoes of itself. These self-references help scaffold the story and make it seem more real. This is a side-effect of Crews’ advice, by the way.

• Be clear. Pity the reader. Reading is hard work. Don’t make it any harder than it needs to be. (Looking at you, Mr. Pynchon, et al.)

• Give your characters quirks and flaws. All of them.

• Write freely, knowing none of it is in stone. The real magic happens during editing. If you don’t like editing, take up Pickleball.

• Edit ruthlessly, being especially suspicious of passages you love too much.

• Rewrite constantly. Let the story sit for a few months, then go back to it with fresh eyes. Cut. Cut. Cut.

• Do lots of research. If your novel takes you to some foreign land, get to know that land. You don’t have to dump everything you know into your story, but having it will help you avoid mistakes. (See: Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory)

• If you’re not having fun writing, the readers won’t have fun reading your writing. “Fun” includes crying while first imagining a scene or later, while reading it for the hundredth time.

One last thing. It takes real hubris to write. Who are you to expect someone to spend hours reading your silly imaginings? Why should anyone care?

The simple answer is, in all probability precious few will care. Chances are very low that more than a few dozen people, many of them friends and relatives, will find their way to your darling.

Those who do read it may love it, but chances are good it won’t be declared a masterpiece until after you’re long dead, if at all. (See: Kafka, Melville, Thoreau, and John Kennedy Toole, whose A Confederacy of Dunces won the Pulitzer Prize only after his mother relentlessly promoted it after — devastated by the book’s years-long failure to find a publisher — Toole asphyxiated himself with car exhaust.)

Your mother, however much she loves you, will doubtless not be so dedicated to your success as Mrs. Toole. Indeed, your mother may never actually read your work. (It may not be her cup of tea.) So don’t worry what she, or anyone else, will think about what you’ve written. Or think about you for having written it. In the end, it didn’t come from you anyway. You were merely a conduit. Who knows where thoughts come from?

So write courageously, and blame it all on your muse.

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