“Write a Sentence as Clean as a Bone” And Other Advice from James Baldwin

Those “too good” passages were the ones Samuel Johnson identified during revision, and always removed; if he liked them that much, they were suspect, and probably weren’t doing their job properly. Dr. Johnson knew their job was to serve the whole; so he cut them out. Virginia Woolf took the same approach, practicing similar self-denial. She took ou

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I tell my students to liberate a certain part of their mind that, because they are good, humble people they may have likely suppressed, and that's the part that wants to be known, that wants to be famous or rich or whatever. I say that part is not entirely separate from the part of you that wants to be a great writer. Which is not separate from the... See more

I’m often asked if there is something I think writers ought to do, and recently in an interview I heard myself say: “Several things. Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world.”

The difference between a sentence that is pleasing (that feels vivid and truthful and undeniable) and compels the reader to read the next, and one that displeases her and shoots her out of the story is—well, I find I can’t complete that sentence, not in any general way. And I don’t need to. To be a writer, I only need to read a specific sentence of

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the primary concern of the writer should revolve around the aesthetic elements of the work which are ultimately a way of containing / directing what emerges from the darkness of the writers interior.

lately I’ve been thinking of great writing as work that emerges from a very distinctive, very deep subjectivity; and “craft” is about finding the ideal... See more