Write Time: Guide to the Creative Process, from Vision through Revision—and Beyond

Richard Lanham’s Revising Prose and Bruce Ross-Larson’s Edit Yourself are the best books I know of that actually take you through the steps of self-editing until you can master the skill yourself.

A story, clarified, will cause the words needed for its telling. In the same fashion, myth is the source of story. The same myth causes—inspires and shapes—countless stories. Films like Gone with the Wind and The Help may even “improve” on the story told by the successful novels they were “based on.” When this happens it’s because the filmmakers re

Always head for drama at this point in the process: Choose the more dramatic alternative at every crossroads. Writing yourself “into a corner” guarantees drama as much as it does anxiety: The reader will relish watching you write yourself out of the corner.

In a productive, well-ordered life two elements must be managed: time and work. Poor time managers fail to recognize the difference between the two elements: Work is infinite; time is finite. Therefore you must manage your time, not your work. Work expands to fill whatever time is allotted to it. If your work is successful, it generates more work;

The islands and the Continent work together through the stages of creation, vying with one another for voice and articulation. Writing is the conscious ordering of unconscious material, with the Continent of Reason applying its logic to the intuitive logic of the islands so that their alternative visions of the world can be expressed in a language

Remember that there’s a distinction between “public” and “private” voice. You may be interested in your private voices (as Joan of Arc was); but unless you find a way of allowing us to hear them, you’re probably too caught up in the voices from your “islands” and you’re in for trouble as a writer. Your Continent controls the medium of communication

When you try to develop style, you end up being artificial, and the artifice is obvious to anyone who reads the results. The purpose of writing is not to impress, but to be useful. Useful writing gets its subject or story across without drawing undue attention to itself. Style is not content but form, not what’s in the channel but the channel itsel

Once the late Sinclair Lewis arrived in Harvard, drunk as usual (alcoholism is our main occupational disease), to talk about writing. “Hands up, all those who want to be writers!” he yelled. Everyone’s hand went up. “Then why the hell aren’t you at home writing?” he asked, and staggered off the platform. —John Braine

When the islands start shouting, if you write down their first suggestions you’ll have a wide selection of, at worst, nonsensical gibberish; at best, you’ll have a supply of relatively weak suggestions. And you’ll be left making your final selection solely on the basis of the Continent of Reason. But by initially denying the islands, you end up ext