Wednesday Writing Tips: Joyce Carol Oates

Die Wednesday Writing Tips sind eine Reihe von wöchentlich erscheinenden Schreib-Tipps erfolgreicher AutorInnen und Stoffentwicklungsmethoden.

Aus der Reihe WRITER´S TOOLBOX: TIPS FROM THE MASTERS der Gotham Writers

Joyce Carol Oates: 10 Writing Tips

1. Write your heart out.

2. The first sentence can be written only after the last sentence has been written. FIRST DRAFTS ARE HELL. FINAL DRAFTS, PARADISE.

3. You are writing for your contemporaries not for Posterity. If you are lucky, your contemporaries will become Posterity.

4. Keep in mind Oscar Wilde: A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

5. When in doubt how to end a chapter, bring in a man with a gun. (This is Raymond Chandler’s advice, not mine. I would not try this.)

6. Unless you are experimenting with form gnarled, snarled, & obscure be alert for possibilities of paragraphing.

7. Be your own editor/critic. Sympathetic but merciless!

8. Don’t try to anticipate an ideal reader or any reader. He/she might exist but is reading someone else.

9. Read, observe, listen intensely! as if your life depended upon it.

10. Write your heart out.

Originally tweeted by Joyce Carol Oates and compiled by Brain Pickings.