Advice to Writers A Compendium of Quotes, Anecdotes, and Writerly Wisdom from a Dazzling Array of Literary Lights

by WINOKUR, JON

• ISBN13: 9780679763413
• ISBN10: 0679763414
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-05-09
• Publisher: Vintage

Summary

InAdvice to Writers, Jon Winokur, author of the bestsellingThe Portable Curmudgeon, gathers the counsel of more than four hundred celebrated authors in a treasury on the world of writing. Here are literary lions on everything from the passive voice to promotion and publicity: James Baldwin on the practiced illusion of effortless prose, Isaac Asimov on the despotic tendencies of editors, John Cheever on the perils of drink, Ivan Turgenev on matrimony and the Muse. Here, too, are the secrets behind the sleight-of-hand practiced by artists from Aristotle to Rita Mae Brown. Sagacious, inspiring, and entertaining,Advice to Writersis an essential volume for the writer in every reader.

Author Biography

Jon Winokur is the author of a dozen books, including <b>The Portable Curmudgeon</b> and <b>The Rich Are Different</b>.  He lives in Pacific Palisades, California.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction	ix
Author's Note	xi
Agents	3	(3)
Characters	6	(7)
Colleagues	13	(3)
Critics and Criticism	16	(4)
Dialogue	20	(3)
Discouragement	23	(7)
Drink	30	(3)
Editors and Editing	33	(11)
Encouragement	44	(13)
Genres	57	(17)
Grammar and Usage	74	(8)
Material	82	(5)
Money	87	(3)
Occupational Hazards	90	(4)
Plagiarism	94	(2)
Plot	96	(3)
Prizes	99	(3)
Process	102	(8)
Publicity and Promotion	110	(6)
Publishers and Publishing	116	(4)
Punctuation	120	(3)
Qualifications and Requirements	123	(10)
The Reader	133	(6)
Reading	139	(5)
Rules and Commandments	144	(5)
The Secret	149	(7)
Style	156	(6)
Success and Failure	162	(3)
Technique	165	(3)
Tricks of the Trade	168	(8)
Why You Write	176	(3)
Words	179	(7)
Work Habits	186	(4)
Writer's Block	190	(9)
The Writer's Life	199	(3)
Writing Advice	202	(5)
Selected Bibliography	207	(5)
Permissions Acknowledgments	212	(1)
Index	213

Excerpts

On agents: "Choose your agent as carefully as you would choose your accountant or lawyer. Or dentist." -- Russell Banks

On characters: "The characters have their own lives and their own logic, and you have to act accordingly." -- Isaac Bashevis Singer

On colleagues: "Artists never thrive in colonies. Ants do. What the budding artist needs is the privilege of wrestling with his problems in solitude -- and now and the a piece of red meat." -- Henry Miller

On critics and criticism: "It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at only one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends." -- Samuel Johnson

On dialogue: "Dialogue in fiction should be reserved for the culminating moments and regarded as the spray into which the great wave of narrative breaks in curving toward the watcher on the shore." -- Edith Wharton

On discouragement: "Writing is easy. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein." -- Red Smith

On drink: "First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald

On editors and editing: "Bow down before them. They know what they are doing." -- Quentin Crisp

On grammar and usage: "Usage is the only test. I prefer a phrase that is easy and unaffected to a phrase that is grammatical." -- W. Somerset Maugham

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Excerpted from Advice to Writers: A Compendium of Quotes, Anecdotes, and Writerly Wisdom from a Dazzling Array of Literary Lights by Jon Winokur
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