Best-Selling Advice: Getting Started

“Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good.”

—William Faulkner

“Know your literary tradition, savor it, steal from it, but when you sit down to write, forget about worshiping greatness and fetishizing masterpieces.”

—Allegra Goodman

“Two questions form the foundation of all novels: ‘What if?’ and ‘What next?’ (A third question, ‘What now?’, is one the author asks himself every ten minutes or so; but it’s more a cry than a question.) Every novel begins with the speculative question, What if X happened? That’s how you start.”

—Tom Clancy

“I think my stuff succeeds, in part, because of what it’s about—a diagnosis by attempting the adventures oneself of universal American daydreams. Now, I’m not saying that any writer who decided to select that device or notion could have written a bestseller; you have to add ingredients that are very special, I agree, but I think I started out with a good pot to make the stew in.”

—George Plimpton

“When I start on a book, I have been thinking about it and making occasional notes for some time—twenty years in the case of Imperial Earth, and ten years in the case of the novel I’m presently working on. So I have lots of theme, locale, subjects, and technical ideas. It’s amazing how the subconscious self works on these things. I don’t worry about long periods of not doing anything. I know my subconscious is busy.”

—Arthur C. Clarke

“Beginning a novel is always hard. It feels like going nowhere. I always have to write at least one hundred pages that go into the trashcan before it finally begins to work. It’s discouraging, but necessary to write those pages. I try to consider them pages -100 to zero of the novel.”

—Barbara Kingsolver

“An outline is crucial. It saves so much time. When you write suspense, you have to know where you’re going because you have to drop little hints along the way. With the outline, I always know where the story is going. So before I ever write, I prepare an outline of forty or fifty pages.”

—John Grisham

“I do a great deal of research. I don’t want anyone to say, ‘That could not have happened.’ It may be fiction, but it has to be true.”

—Jacquelyn Mitchard

“Being goal-oriented instead of self-oriented is crucial. I know so many people who want to be writers. But let me tell you, they really don’t want to be writers. They want to have been writers. They wish they had a book in print. They don’t want to go through the work of getting the damn book out. There is a huge difference.”

—James Michener

“I have a self-starter—published twenty million words—and have never received, needed or wanted a kick in the pants.”

—Isaac Asimov

“Don’t quit. It’s very easy to quit during the first ten years. Nobody cares whether you write or not, and it’s very hard to write when nobody cares one way or the other. You can’t get fired if you don’t write, and most of the time you don’t get rewarded if you do. But don’t quit.”

—Andre Dubus III