Literature and Words

The terror of the white page in the typewriter.

Sir, no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

There is no doubt about it, in the twentieth century if you are to come to be writing really writing you cannot make a living at it no not by writing.

If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that’s read by persons who move their lips when they’re reading to themselves.

Write without pay until somebody offers pay; if nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for.

Write out of love; write out of instinct; write out of reason. But always for money.

The effable is preferable to the ineffable.

Poke around.

A poet ought not to pick nature’s pocket: let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to your imagination than to your memory.

Writing fails because the writer does not know enough about his material. If he knows enough he will feel enough.

Very much of a novelist’s work must appertain to the intercourse between young men and young women.

Study yr keeds. Kids. There are a lot of poems there. But don’t write about yr kids. Write about the human, what’s left of him, where he’s going, what he dropped on the floor .

A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all.

Yvetot [a small town in the north of France] is as good as Constantinople.

Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.

Prose alliteration should be used only for a special reason; when used by accident it falls upon the ear very disagreeably.

Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. Never use the passive where you can use the active. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday British equivalent. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbaric.

Usage is the only test. I prefer a phrase that is easy and unaffected to a phrase that is grammatical.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

Expressions such as “the former, the latter, the first, the second” should be used as seldom as possible: they are invitations to the reader’s eye to travel back—and it should be encouraged always to read straight on at an even pace.

Forward motion in any piece of writing is carried by verbs. Verbs are the action words of the language and the most important. Turn to any passage on any page of a successful novel and notice the high percentage of verbs. Beginning writers always use too many adjectives and adverbs and generally use too many dependent clauses. Count your words and words of verbal force (like that word “force” I just used).

The adjective is the enemy of the noun.

U SE SHORT SENTENCES . Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English, Be positive, not negative. Eliminate every superfluous word. Avoid the use of adjectives, especially such extravagant ones as splendid, gorgeous, grand, magnificent, etc.

When you catch an adjective, kill it.