Ten Tips from Best-Selling Authors and One to Avoid at All Costs

Here are some tips from our favourite authors!

“I try to leave out the parts that people skip.” – Elmore Leonard
“Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.” — Zadie Smith
“In the planning stage of a book, don't plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it.” — Rose Tremain
“Fiction that isn't an author's personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn't worth writing for anything but money.” — Jonathan Franzen
"Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very'; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. — Mark Twain
"Don't panic. Midway through writing a novel, I have regularly experienced moments of bowel-curdling terror, as I contemplate the drivel on the screen before me and see beyond it, in quick succession, the derisive reviews, the friends' embarrassment, the failing career, the dwindling income, the repossessed house, the divorce . . . Working doggedly on through crises like these, however, has always got me there in the end. Leaving the desk for a while can help. Talking the problem through can help me recall what I was trying to achieve before I got stuck. Going for a long walk almost always gets me thinking about my manuscript in a slightly new way." — Sarah Waters
“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” – Toni Morrison
“To write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write” – Gertrude Stein
“Read, 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! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.” – William Faulkner
"Always be a poet, even in prose." – Charles Baudelaire