If you write every day, eventually you’ll have a book.
I can’t explain the fact that there have been a series of books coming rather regularly out of me. I work most days and if you work most days and you get at least a page done a day, then at the end of the year you have 365.
-from a 2009 interview with Tina Brown for The Daily Beast
Learn to edit yourself.
Part of being a writer is being able to read what you’ve written and see what’s missing, see what needs development, see what’s suggested by what you wrote. It’s like a trampoline. You know, you’re jumping up and down on this draft, and each jump is an idea.
-from an interview with Robert Siegel at NPR
Write towards what works for the story (or for you).
You go with what’s alive. Two thousand pages of narrative and six lines of dialogue may be just the ticket for one writer, and two thousand pages of dialogue and six lines of narrative the solution for another.
-in a 1984 interview with The Paris Review
Work sentence by sentence.
Solving the problem of the book you’re writing always remains hard work, and your progress is snail-like. Even if you write a book in two years, sometimes you get a page a day, sometimes you get no pages … every sentence raises a problem, and essentially what you’re doing is connecting one sentence to the next. And you write a sentence and you have to figure out what comes next or what doesn’t come next.
-from a 2013 interview with NPR
Note the sentence advice echoes Zadie Smith. In her Q&A here and her writing tips here.
Hear about the chat with legendary agent, Mel Kenyon.
Some notes from listening to the literary manager of the Royal Court, Chris Campbell. (soon to be at Oberon Books)
Be inspired by Artistic Director, Kate Wasserberg’s Dauntless Theatre.