The Art of Fiction No. 12

Art requires access to the imagination, a notoriously difficult place to visit. The imagination fuels an idea. The artist acts urgently, often impulsively, on that idea but brings conscious rigor to the evaluation of what the imagination has spewed. Ultimately, experience, intellect, insight, and drive enable them to shape the work and then to edit

Marty has one other mantra: “Talent is bullshit.” “I seen a million writers with talent. It means nothing. You need guts, you need stick-to-it-iveness. It’s work, you gotta work, do the fucking work. That’s why you’re gonna make it, son. You work. No one can take that away from you. “And I’ll tell you something else,” Marty says to me now over the

Every true novelist listens for that suprapersonal wisdom, which explains why great novels are always a little more intelligent than their authors. Novelists who are more intelligent than their books should go into another line of work.

Sartre explored this link between writing and freedom again and again in his work. When I first read Nausea, I suspect this was part of its appeal for me. I too wanted to be able to see things fully, to experience them, to write about them — and to gain freedom. That was how I came to stand in a park trying to see the Being of a tree, and how I cam

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoid