10 Tips on Writing from Joyce Carol Oates

10 Tips on Writing from Joyce Carol Oates

by Maria Popova

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

In a recent tweeting spree, the inimitable Joyce Carol Oates offered ten tips on writing — a fine addition to this master-list of famous authors’ wisdom on the craft.

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.