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orionsangel86 · 2 years ago

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So, if you don't mind, I was thinking about that asshole who was rude on your Thessaly post by insisting that Morpheus is meant to be a bad person. I'm curious if you could expand on why you think he's not. I keep going back and forth on my own rereads, especially since the Thessaly relationship and The Kindly Ones writing seem to try and push in a "he IS a bad person" direction. I can't tell if my arguments that "he's just flawed and mentally ill" are fangirl goggles or legit interpretation.

Hey! I don't mind. So when I first got that comment, initially I thought the response was genuine, because it's been a while since anyone has responded to one of my posts in a bad faith way. I frantically tried to wrap my brain around the idea that I had missed something somewhere and that I was supposed to view Morpheus as a "bad person" because even after The Kindly Ones that has never been my interpretation. I then realised the response was just a bad faith troll from an asshole and felt relief that I wasn't wrong.

But I suppose it's all up to interpretation.

The issue is really with what you consider makes a person inherently good or inherently bad. It reminds me of that line in Good Omens:

“It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.”

Because I genuinely think this line has inspired a LOT of Neil Gaiman's characters, whether human or not.

I also get a bit wary nowadays when certain sections of fandoms start labelling characters, especially protagonists as "bad" because that causes a slipperly slope into accusations of "if you like this character YOU PERSONALLY are a BAD PERSON" (Example: OFMD fandom and the forever bizarre reaction to the character of Izzy Hands).

Dream is not bad. He is not good either. He is entirely neutral. He may occassionally do things that may be considered bad, depending on your perspective, but he also does a lot of good things as well. How do we weigh him on a scale of judgement? Are we to act as his judge and jury for every decision he makes in the comics? I suppose we could do, if we wished to, such is the fun of analysis, but I think the end result would again depend on the perspective and morals of the individual reader.

But I will at least give my own interpretation. I'm putting on my Anubis hat and weighing Dream's heart against my trusty feather. Let's see how he does. Under a cut as its long.

I personally think that for a character to be labelled as "bad" their actions and motivations must cause harm, whether to individuals or larger groups, without them showing any care or concern for those they hurt, in their pursuit to achieve their goals.

For example, Lucifer in The Sandman is still a "bad" character even though there is a LOT of "Sympathy for the Devil" type of perspective in The Sandman. Ultimately Lucifer is still selfishly motivated. He doesn't care about the souls or creatures that reside in Hell, and he certainly doesn't care about humanity. When he kicks everyone out of Hell in Season of Mists it causes havoc on Earth, and leads to the death of at least one child that we know of. It is implied that he does far more damage than is explicitly shown.

Thessaly, as previously mentioned, is definitely a bad character. She is entirely motivated by her own selfishness. She doesn't give a shit who she hurts, or the damage she causes in her persuit for revenge in Game of You. She is cruel and malicious and yes, also a TERF. She does not show any empathy or consideration for any character at any point, and honestly, even her little speech in The Wake comes across as crocodile tears.

Desire is a more complex character but still falls on the "bad" side of the scale because Desire also shows very little regard for others when playing their games or implementing their schemes. Desire is going to do whatever they want regardless of who might get hurt because like Thessaly, Desire doesn't give a fuck about your feelings. Desire is cruel. This is stated textually. Desire's motivations are also usually selfish. The only time I found Desire remotely redeemable was in Overture. Desire saved the universe. Though it is made clear that the only reason they saved the universe was because they wanted to keep living in it. It's worth noting that even though Desire is very much "bad" I absolutely adore them and consider them one of my favourite Sandman characters.

Now to Dream. Unlike the above mentioned characters, Dream's motivations are rarely selfish. Even in The Kindly Ones, I believe even if you interpret the whole thing as Dream's own elaborate suicide plan (which is only one limited interpretation) I don't believe he ever meant for as many people to get hurt as they did, it's just that he found himself in an impossible situation where things escalated to a point of no return. Also, since most casualties were Dream's creations, arguably he probably assumed that either he, or his successor, would simply recreate them once the situation was back under control.

Dream is a lawful neutral character. He has his rules and he must abide by them because "I contain the entire collective unconscious, without my rules it would consume me. Humanity would be consumed." (I know this is Netflix!Dream talking but I'm still gonna use it cos its such a good line).

The big difference between Dream and the above characters, is simple. Dream cares. He cares about everyone. He cares about literally everyone - the entire collective unconscious of the universe and he is so bursting to the brim with care and love for them that he is buckling under the weight of all that care. It is what is destroying him and it is WHY he is so depressed and so susceptable to making bad decisions on a small scale.

Every motivation of Dream's is for the greater good. When he sees what John Dee did with his ruby, he is almost crippled by the guilt of it. He blames himself for giving the ruby so much power that it could corrupt a mortal that much. He is easily swayed by Constantine to give Rachel a peaceful death, even though at first he doesn't think about it, it's not like he laughs it off and walks away - like any of the above mentioned characters would do. He listens to Constantine and agrees to show that compassion.

When he realises he once again has to kill a Vortex - something that is part of his duty as Dream of the Endless, something that is very much carved in stone as one of his rules, he still hesitates, even though he knew what happened last time and all the pain he suffered because of it. A fundamentally bad character who does not care would not have hesitated in killing Rose Walker.

In Brief Lives, whilst his initial motivations were selfish, he realised that his trip with Delirium to find Destruction was causing harm to others. When he realised that people were dying because of their quest, he put an end to it. He hurt Delirium in doing so, unintentionally, but his reasons for stopping weren't because he was bored, or because he had given up on finding Thessaly, it was because people were getting hurt and he didn't want to be responsible for that anymore.

When you look at Dream's actions on a wider scale, he is a good character. It is only on a more personal level that his flaws start to show through.

Where Dream's behaviour gets bad, it is usually because he has been hurt, and when he is hurt, he acts like a petty child throwing a tantrum. It is when his cruel side comes out, and its when he is most like Desire.

Nada is the most obvious casualty of this side of Dream. She rejected him, he threw a tantrum, and condemned her to Hell for hurting him.

Calliope tells Dream that she believed the "old you would have left me here to rot." We don't know how true this is, even in the comics, but the idea that there once was a version of Dream who might have discovered his ex wife was being frequently raped and abused whilst imprisoned and bound to evil mortal men and refused to help her simply because she left him is horrifying, but as I said, we don't know if it is or ever was true.

Ultimately, on the small scale, all it takes is for someone to tell Dream that he is in the wrong for him to relent and accept his misgivings. Constantine called him out on Rachel, so he did what he was asked to do. Calliope didn't even HAVE to ask for him to free her in the comics, he just showed up and saved her without question. When Death told him what he did to Nada was "shitty", he immediately put plans in place to make it right, even though doing so was risky and put him and the Dreaming in danger.

Even the situation with Orpheus, whilst seemingly harsh on Dream's side, his son told him to his face "you are no longer my father" and so Dream, hurt and with wounded pride, walked away from his son and refused to look back - but he still arranged for the priests to take care of him.

His choice of Thessaly as a lover is messed up, but he was messed up at the time. My view as mentioned in my previous post is that she was a rebound. They make it clear in the comic that he never approved of her murderous ways (and I have no doubt that he would also dissaprove of her transphobia, even if not mentioned explicitly).

In The Kindly Ones I don't view the situation as Dream being a bad person. I view it as everyone else being bad. Dream is caught in a huge cloud of depression and shitty circumstance and he is unable to free himself from that situation, and even when others can sense his desperation and pain, no one actually helps him. Dream's biggest flaw in The Kindly Ones, in my opinion, is not asking for help.

Because he is prideful, because even after all he has been through, he could not shake off that pride. It went full circle, he was back in his glass cage refusing to ask for help. Only this time, the glass cage was his realm, his subjects, his role as Dream of the Endless, and he could not change himself enough to free himself without making the drastic worst case decision.

My hatred of The Kindly Ones as a story, is not because I think it does a disservice to Dream, but because it does a disservice to every other character involved. By the end of that particular story, I hated every character who WASN'T Dream. Because I desperately wanted one of them, ANY of them, to actually help him. To see past his stubborn pride and hold him in their arms and shake him until he saw sense. Because the message in that story seemed to me to be that people are inherently selfish and so wrapped up in their own lives that they won't help you when you need it most. That there isn't even a point in asking for help. So what's the point?

But then I am fully aware that my feelings are complicated and partly projecting onto the characters and the story and well, that's all not really relevant to the point of this post except to ask you all to take my opinion with a grain of salt.

So back to your original question. I don't think Dream is a bad person. He is flawed, he is a character who when pushed to the limit will do drastic stupid things, but then wouldn't we all if pushed to our absolute limit? He is extremely depressed and buckling under the weight of the collective unconscious. All that unchecked emotion carried within him, and it is literally killing him.

So when weighing his heart against the feather of judgement, I think I can forgive him some bad behaviour towards some ex lovers in the grand scheme of all he has done. As flawed characters go, he's hardly the worst, and the feather is still heavier than his heart.

#The Sandman #Dream of the endless #sandman meta #sandman comic spoilers #morpheus #The Kindly Ones #sandman analysis #asks

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toaarcan · 5 years ago

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I think you're putting too much on Fiona's "purpose" being in relation to other characters. A big complaint was that she wasn't really ANYTHING. She was resentful about Sonic and Mighty, and then next time we see her she's part of the FFs with no explanation or role. She was sometimes a medic, and then part of the Brain Trust for no reason (never really showing those skills), and then she was suddenly Sonic's gf...while he was still saying he and Sally were meant to be. Villain = direction.

I mean, there was an explanation for her, but it came almost two years after the fact: Her belief that Sonic was a selfish glory-hound was rattled by his selfless sacrifice to save the world, something that she personally witnessed, and therefore, she tried to make amends. Not only that, but it was a quick moment too, with her even attending Sonic’s “funeral” in Issue 125.

The problem with the story is that it was written by Bollers, and unfortunately that means that Penders completely ignored what happened in it no more than two issues later.

Bollers’ Fiona: Not interested in Sonic, but trusts him and respects him, though she acknowledges that he isn’t perfect and does have a selfish streak. Made aware of Tails’ feelings for her, and chastises “Sonic” for hitting on her despite that knowledge.

Penders’ Fiona: Very much interested in Sonic, completely unaware of Tails’ feelings, completely uncaring about the whole debacle.

Her position as a medic is likewise something that was there with Bollers, and then absent once Penders took over. Admittedly, a medic is a somewhat difficult character type to use in a book where characters don’t regularly get injured, so I can see why it could fall by the wayside, but one must keep Penders’ inability to keep anyone consistent in mind. When it comes to Fiona, Penders couldn’t even keep consistent with himself. Look at the very-obviously-preteen Fiona from the Knuckles book vs. the sixteen year old he portrays her as in the main title.

Believe me, I’ve done this song and dance many a time. There’s this perception that the villainous version of Fiona is automatically a better character because Ian did something with major with her, but the fact of the matter is that it’s entirely possible to do something major with her without taking a torch to everything except that one single issue of the Knuckles comic where she was kind of a jerk to Mighty for mostly understandable reasons.

It’s been a long while since I’ve reread any of the comic, and I’ve been immersed in the fandom’s perception of things a whole lot more than that, so I legitimately forgot a lot of what was there, but one thing that sticks out from seeing the old stuff again on Thanks Ken Penders is how compassionate Fiona is, she’s portrayed as very frequently being the one to voice concern for her comrades’ safety (A fitting trait for a medic character), and it jars so heavily with Ian’s decision that she should be a self-centred, “Survival of the best” character who cares about nobody except herself and her abusive boyfriend.

As I said in my post “Fiona Fox: Depth vs. Prominence”, summing up Fiona’s personality before she was sacrificed on the altar of Sleazy the Recolour takes a whole lot more than summing up her personality afterwards, and even then that relates more to her relationship with Scourge than it does to herself.

Now that’s not to say that Fiona as a villain couldn’t work. In my most recent post on this topic, I even said directly that she could’ve been a really darn good villain, if her status as a traitor actually mattered. A traitor should be an intensely personal antagonist, someone who can get inside the heads of the heroes and damage them emotionally just as much as they can physically. The interactions between her and her former friends should be brutal, knife-twisting, and send them reeling. The fact that Fiona’s villainy is arguably something that Sonic created can only add to that, as she is living proof that sometimes the hero can fail.

Buuut she’s none of that. Sonic is more bothered about her harming Tails than anything she does to him directly, and the second (and final) time they interact, Sonic dismantles her arguments without flinching and leaves her to run off crying.

Tails’ faith isn’t shaken at all by her, he finishes 172 stating unflinchingly that she’s wrong (And her philosophy never made sense anyway, so Tails is correct there), and within six issues he’s physically attacking Sonic primarily out of envy over the Fiona situation, and outright states that he doesn’t care that she went with Scourge.

Sally... never liked her in the first place, but gets no vindication from it. She neither gets a moment where she feels explicitly proven right, nor is frustrated that the others went to bat for Fiona and had that trust rejected. Like with Sonic, it seems to be way more about how Fiona treated Tails than it is about how Sally herself was affected.

Amy actually gets the most out of it, with Fiona’s mockery of her at the start of Issue 172 being used as motivation for her to train to be a better fighter... but... it’s all positive. The idea that the other FF don’t take Amy seriously is barely relevant, and it’s used as motivation for her to improve herself, and then that’s it.

None of the other characters get any word on it, save for Antoine using it as a prompt to skip over all that emotional development and reconciliation after a year apart and immediately propose to Bunnie, because Ian’s got to cram something happy into this set of issues before he blows up Knothole, plays the “Villain could win whenever he wants, he just doesn’t want to” stupidity card, and gives Charmy brain damage to make him more like SEGA’s version.

And that’s it. Fiona exists primarily to be Scourge’s girlfriend. In a way, it’s fitting that Amy is the only character that gets an appropriate “Hero vs. traitor” scene, because like the then-current official depiction of Amy, Fiona’s life is defined entirely by her relationship to her respective Sonic.

Ian’s Fiona is, in every sense of the word, a satellite love interest for Scourge. Even the sole arc she has apart from him is spent building a team to get him back.

She’s just Scourge’s girlfriend, despite him yelling at her, screaming at her, resoundingly failing to live up to his own promises, undermining her, and, if her reaction to his threats in Issue 190 is anything to go by, physically attacking her as well.

I won’t deny that Fiona, as a character, had become listless, and needed a strong new direction. She had a lot of substance to her, and a surprisingly uplifting story when stripped down to the basic structure, but she was being painfully underutilised.

I will, however, strongly oppose the idea that Ian’s decision on that front was the correct one. It was a lateral move at best, a step backwards at worst. He didn’t really fix her as much as make her a different brand of underdone, and that uplifting story was gone. Now all it said was “If you did bad in the past, you’ll always lapse back to it and nobody should trust you”, combined with none-too-subtle abuse (In a ship that Ian made popular with thousands of teenagers, very smooth) and a new design that sexed her up for no good reason.

Good Fiona had all the ingredients and not enough time in the oven, but villain Fiona was missing half the recipe.

#Sonic #sonic the hedgehog #Fiona Fox #Scourge the Hedgehog #CW: Abuse #Archie Sonic #Archie Sonic Critical

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writingguide003-blog · 6 years ago

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27 Writing Lessons & Hacks From Some of the Best Writers on the Planet

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27 Writing Lessons & Hacks From Some of the Best Writers on the Planet

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The amount of bad writing advice out there is astounding. People who have never published anything selling courses on how to make a career as a writer. Terribly written Medium articles telling you how to improve your prose. Marketing books from writers who not only haven’t sold many books—but their own marketing books don’t sell. All this bad advice adds up and makes a harder thing—an already difficult industry to navigate—even harder.

Over the last year, I’ve been lucky enough to interview some of the best writers on the planet for WritingRoutines.com. It was the opportunity of a lifetime to be able to ask Pulitzer Prize winners, #1 New York Times best-selling authors, brilliant novelists, talented journalists and expert communicators about how they practice their craft. I got valuable lessons from each one. I’ve collected a few of the best below, alongside some of the insights—or hacks as we call them today to get more people to click—from writers I wish were still alive to interview or ones I wish to interview someday if the opportunity presents itself.

I hope you learn as much from them as I did. Enjoy!

***

Devote Yourself to Someone Greater First

“If I am asked today to advise a young writer who has not yet made up his mind what way to go, I would try to persuade him to devote himself first to the work of someone greater, interpreting or translating him. If you are a beginner there is more security in such self-sacrifice than in your own creativity and nothing you ever do with all your heart is done in vain.”

— Stefan Zweig, author of The World of Yesterday and in the 1920’s and 1930’s was one of the most popular authors in the world

Wake Up Early And Read, Read, Read

“I wake up around 5am. I have 2-3 cups of coffee. I read and read and read for two hours. I read high quality literary fiction to be inspired, high quality non-fiction about a topic I am fascinated by in order to learn, I read inspirational or spiritual writing to feel that special something inside, and often I will spend some time studying a game. Then I might read the literary fiction some more. At some point, I get the urge or the itch to put the books away. I go to my computer and start to write.”

— James Altucher, author of Choose Yourself!, which the USA Today’s called one of “Best Business Books of All Time.”

Do Not Chase Exotic Locations to Write

“It was a time everyone was pressing wonderful houses on us. ‘I have a perfectly marvellous house for you to write in,’ they’d say. Of course no one needs marvellous houses to write in. I still knew that much. All you needed was one room. But somehow the next house always beckoned.”

— Budd Schulberg, author of What Makes Sammy Run? and the Academy Award-winning screenplay for On the Waterfront

Edit Ten Times

“I repeatedly edit it many times, at least ten. I just keep on doing it, until I can’t think of further improvements. I can’t say that is a process in any formal sense, simply a recognition that the “process” to date hasn’t worked very well and so it must continue. I don’t pretend this is efficient.”

— Tyler Cowen, economics professor, author of Average Is Over and contributor to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and many other publications

Nobody Gets Talker’s Block

“No one ever gets talker’s block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he has nothing to say and sits quietly, for days or weeks, until the muse hits, until the moment is right, until all the craziness in his life has died down.”

— Seth Godin, New York Times bestselling author of Purple Cow and more than 20 other books

Do the Three Passes of Editing

“[My editing] rests on three passes. The first pass is when you write the best chapter you can. The second pass comes later once the whole book (or whole part of the book containing the chapter) is done. During this pass, I come back to the chapter on my computer and cut and tighten. The final pass is when I read through a printed version of the chapter on paper. Reading on paper is necessary if you’re going to root out odd constructions or minor errors.”

— Cal Newport, author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Deep Work

The Only Way Out is Through

“The way out of this mess is through. A friend of mine who used to do long-distance running gave me some advice on dealing with pain as a writer. “What do you do about the cramps?” I asked. I was noticing they hit my in the gut usually at the three or four mile mark. I thought he’d have some great advice on how to avoid them altogether. In fact, I assumed this was the case. His answer surprised me, though. ‘Cramps? What do I do? I keep running, and eventually they go away. I run through the cramps.’ What do I do when I feel blocked? I write through the block.”

— Jeff Goins, author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Real Artists Don’t Starve

Sometimes You Just Need Some Good Earmuffs

“I’m an “absolute quiet” kind of person. If I’m writing at home, and there’s any noise at all, such as my wonderful hubby puttering around and coincidentally clearing his throat, I wear my Peltor Sport Ultimate 10 Hearing Protector Earmuffs. I’m so used to them that when I need to concentrate, I put them on even when there isn’t any noise. Earmuffs are like a signal to my brain—Okay, focus! On planes, I often wear noise canceling headphones.”

— Dr. Barbara Oakley, bestselling author of A Mind for Numbers and former Army Captain

Be So Good They Can’t Ignore You

“What they want to hear is, ‘Here’s how you get an agent, here’s how you write a script’…but I always say, ‘Be so good they can’t ignore you.’”

— Steve Martin, author of Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life and award-winning actor and banjo player

Keep the Best in Mind

“It really depends on the genre of work I’m doing–I always try to keep models in mind, though the model will change depending on what I’m working on. For the book on Cato the Younger, Jimmy Soni and I were constantly referring to Tom Holland’s book on the Roman Republic, Rubicon; for our book on Claude Shannon, to James Gleick’s The Information and Sylvia Nasar’s A Beautiful Mind. For my academic work, people like Danielle Allen are great models.”

— Rob Goodman, congressional speechwriter and co-author of A Mind at Play and Rome’s Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar

Quit Your Bitching

“Don’t lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don’t know what it is yet.”

― Cheryl Strayed, author of the number #1 New York Times bestseller Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things

Fix The Important Things

“Writer’s block is miserable and part of it can be just being in a really bad place. Sometimes if you’re just in a bad mental place, it doesn’t matter what work you put in. You have to fix bigger things than your writing.”

— Hari Kondabolu, the comic who the New York Times called “one of the most necessary political comedians working today.”

Get a Giant Sketchpad

“Notebooks have always been big for me, both in the early stages of a new project and as a way to get myself unstuck if I’m struggling. But I have giant, chicken-scratch handwriting, and would always end up jotting down thoughts over half a dozen pages and then never really looking at them again. I have probably fifty illegible notebooks sitting in desk drawers, and I would easily have filled fifty more had I not been introduced to the most elegant solution by a friend, the author Ashley Cardiff: A sketchpad. A 9-by-12-inch artist’s sketchpad. This has been my great revelation. It’s unlined so I can read my bad handwriting and large enough that I can group several ideas together on the same page. Plus, it gives me an excuse to buy fancy mechanical pencils.”

— Liana Maeby, author of South on Highland, which actor/writer BJ Novak called “the kind of book kids will steal from each other.”

It’s All Material

“I’m never not working on material. Every second of my existence, I am thinking, ‘Can I do something with that?’” [By the way, this advice echoes a phrase I’ve learned from author Robert Greene, “It’s all material.” Meaning everything bad that happens, everything frustrating or delayed or disappointing—all of it can be fuel for a book. It can teach you something that helps you improve your business, it can become a story you pass along to a friend.]

— Jerry Seinfeld, creator of Seinfeld and named by Comedy Central the “12th Greatest Stand-up Comedian of All Time.”

Understand How the Pieces Fit Together

“To write a clean and fluent piece of any kind, you have to understand how its various parts fit together—how a change here will affect something over there. With a short piece, you never lose sight of the whole because you can read and reread it many times as you work. That’s what I do. I make a change and then I read the whole piece to see how it works. But I can’t do that with a book, so I have to find other ways to stay oriented. I reread or skim sections of the book that I know relate to the part I’m working on, I keep notes about the larger structure, and I use Word’s phrase-search function to move around and check up on things. I also make a huge effort to commit as much of the book as I can to memory. It’s exhausting and it seems psychologically damaging in some way, but it helps me to understand when jokes need to be repeated, how much space needs to intervene between similar kinds of scenes, how ideas should be patterned, etc.”

— Aaron Thier, author of Mr. Eternity and recipient of a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts

Run to Keep Yourself Sane

“The twin activities of running and writing keep the writer reasonably sane and with the hope, however illusory and temporary, of control.” [This is not unlike many other writers—including Murakami and Malcolm Gladwell—who use running as a coping mechanism.]

— Joyce Carol Oates, author of over 40 novels, including Them, winner of the National Book Award

Before You Write, Crystallize Your Thinking

“If I’m just starting, I never consider the page blank. I’ve been writing in my head long before I sit down at the keyboard. In fact, I sometimes start inadvertently, by describing to someone what I’m doing. Conversation often crystallizes my own thinking far more effectively than solitary reflection. When I put the first words down, I know they’re likely to change, which I find liberating—no need to get it perfect the first time. But I want the first sentence to set a tone or indicate a theme for that chapter, so I have to start with a clear sense of the meaning of the events that follow, and how I want the reader to feel.”

— Pulitzer Prize winner T.J. Stiles, author of Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America

Let the Play Accumulate

“Don’t start writing the play at once, but get a little notebook and put down everything you think about your play in the notebook, just as the ideas come to you without rhyme or reason especially. Let the play accumulate, as I call it; let it percolate and stew in your mind; and write down any ideas, bits of dialogue, descriptions, words—anything you think you might be able to use. Many of these things will come to you unconsciously while you are walking home from school, bathing, mowing the lawn; be sure to get them all into your notebook.”

— E.P. Conkle, professor emeritus of drama whose plays have been produced on Broadway

Take the Necessary Medicine

“I tend to edit heavily and repeatedly as I go along, so I don’t make the distinction, at least by myself. For the books that I’ve written for a larger public, however, I’ve had the help of an immensely gifted editor (Alane Mason, at Norton), so there I do separate out the tasks: in effect my own writing/editing; and then a further editing after receiving her suggestions. I tend to hate the latter experience, though I recognize that it is almost invariably good—a bit like swallowing disagreeable but essential medicine.”

— Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve, a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award winner

To Beat Writer’s Block, Double Down on Research

“When I have writer’s block it is because I have not done enough research or I have not thought hard enough about the subject about which I’m writing. That’s a signal for me to go back to the archives or to go back into my thoughts and think through what it is I am supposed to be doing.”

— MacArthur “Genius” and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

Always Ask These Questions

“What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?” Then finish with these final two questions: ‘Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?’”

— George Orwell, famous author of 1984 and Animal Farm

You Don’t Need a Vomit Draft

“Writers are usually encouraged to write a “vomit draft” and just get something out, however terrible it is, in order to overcome The Fear, get some momentum, and move to more of an editing mindset, where’s it’s less scary to make progress. I don’t do that. I think that’s just a trick to try and lower the stakes so you can overcome procrastination and The Fear. And while it’s good for that, I think it’s bad in the long haul because you’re producing a lot of junk and that’s going to be hard to fully clean up. I treat writing a lot more like architecture. You wouldn’t work without a blueprint, construct a crappy building, then knock it down and build a better one. That would be ridiculous. You’d put together a really tight blueprint, then construct the building once, the right way, and if it needs tweaks, they’re relatively small. As the old saying goes: ‘Measure twice, cut once.’”

— Eric Barker, author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Barking Up The Wrong Tree and creator of the popular blog of the same name

Keep the Momentum

“Never stop when you are stuck. You may not be able to solve the problem, but turn aside and write something else. Do not stop altogether.”

—Jeanette Winterson, a two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award and author best known for Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, which was adapted into a BBC drama

You Don’t Need to be Kissed by a Muse

When asked if writing comes easy: “Haha, no, I’ve not been kissed by a muse. For me, writing is a craft that needs constant honing.”

— Andrea Wulf, author of The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World, which won the Royal Society Science Book Award 2016 and the LA Times Book Prize 2016.

Write for the Ear

“I’ve got a theory that most writers are either frustrated musicians or painters – and which of them you are depends on whether you write for the ear or the eye. As a former musician and former speechwriter, I definitely write for the ear. I listen to music all the time for inspiration and energy. I tend to make playlists as the sound track for writing different books. They serve as snapshots in time. So, I’ve got one for Wingnuts – lots of The National, Drive-By-Truckers, Radiohead and Randy Newman – and one for Washington’s Farewell that’s more classical, jazz, the Americana series by Chris Thile, Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer and the soundtrack to Hamilton.”

— John Avlon, author of Washington’s Farewell and editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast

Learn How to Take Brutally Frank Criticism

“I try to imagine comments, questions, and criticisms that the book will generate. Then I try to rehearse the reply or answer. My friends are great critics of my writing and I always make sure they have read the drafts and galleys and been brutally frank with me about their reactions. They know I can take it.”

— Richard Clarke, former Assistant Secretary of State who has served under three different Presidents in different roles and author of Warnings: Finding Cassandras To Stop Catastrophes

Wake Up and Get After It

“I remember Salman Rushdie telling me how he gives it the first energy of the day. As soon as he gets up, he goes to his office and starts writing. He’s still in his pajamas. He believes there is a “little package of creative energy that was nourished by sleep,” and he doesn’t want to waste it. He works for an hour or two and then goes to brush his teeth. I have a very similar approach. Only I brush my teeth before I start. I guess that’s my pre-writing ritual.”

— Cal Fussman, best known for the “What I’ve Learned” Esquire column and a master interviewer who has talked to the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev, Muhammad Ali, John Wooden, Richard Branson

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