Writing Rules

Elif Shafak:

Novelist Elif Shafak urges authors to write the book they want to read and to cut their work mercilessly.

1. Writing is a tribute to solitude. It is choosing introversion over extroversion, lonely hours/days/weeks/years over fun and sociability. Writers might enjoy a good gossip or a crazy party once in a while, but the act of writing and the nexus of our lives is pure solitude.

2. The only way to learn writing is by writing. Talent, as charming as it sounds, amounts to no more than 12 per cent of the process. Work is 80 per cent. The remaining 8 per cent is "luck" or "zeitgeist" - in short, things that are not in our hands.

Much more on Elif Shafak, here.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at May 31, 2013 2:29 AM
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