Some Advice from Peter Carey
JA
December 11
At the end of NaNoWriMo (the weirdly camel-cased acronym for National Novel Writing Month, where writers around the world aim to get the first draft of a book out in a mere matter of weeks), Peter Carey sent out a post-event pep talk to all who took part. In it, he had a few paragraphs of pertinent advice for aspiring writers – here’s a few choice snippets, make of it what you will.
First, Carey likened writing to any other sport that one can do recreationally or professionally. If you write just once or twice every odd week, for pleasure and as a hobby, then you can treat it as such. However, if you dream ‘quietly, secretly’ of success, and want to see your book reviewed, bought and displayed on shop windows, then this requires just as much training and dedication as a professional athlete, in other words the establishment of ‘good writing habits’.
If you know what these good writing habits are, there's nothing more I can give you. Perhaps you know what I'm going to tell you—you have to write regularly, every day. You have to treat this as the single most important part of your life. You do not need anything as fancy as inspiration, just this steady habit of writing regularly even when you're sick or sad or dull. Nothing must stop you, not even your beloved children. If you have kids you do what Toni Morrison did—write in the hours before they wake. If you wish to be a like the champion who swims for four hours every day of the year, you will need extraordinary will. You either have this or you don't, but you won't know unless you try.
Another thing of utmost importance was the need to be ‘self-critical’. ‘Your own uncertain opinions are worth one hundred times more than the judgments of your friends,’ Carey wrote.
If you feel at all unhappy with your work, there is a good reason for it. Trust your judgment. Write the draft again, and again. This is the strength you must build—to work alone, in solitude, and write and rewrite and rewrite. Even when you finally succeed in making the original work you wished, you will still live with doubt and uncertainty. All writers learn to live with this. In this way you and I feel exactly the same about our work today.
The next thing – turn off your television (or in my case, substitute ‘television’ for ‘internet’) – according to Carey, ‘the television is your enemy’. Instead, he argued, you must read.
[Y]ou can not play the top game without reading every day. There are so many extraordinary books waiting for you, some writing by living writers, the majority by those a long time dead. This is not because writers used to be better than they are now, but because a lot of generations have come before us and we would be crazy not to know what miracles they achieved.
Some of the great books are about people with lives just like you. Some will have characters you can 'identify' with, but some of the very greatest will tell stories you could never have imagined, were written in languages you cannot speak, and tell the stories of people like none we have ever known.
Finally, if reading about writing is your thing, then Carey heartily recommends Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose, and a copy of a good dictionary.
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Comments
11 Dec 09 at 1:47
Yes, well. I write every day but not very well.
...11 Dec 09 at 9:26
A friend of mine bought me a copy of Francine Prose's book - It really does break down why certain bodies of work really sing.
...11 Dec 09 at 16:04
All this explains why Peter Carey can write such big, long books so regularly.
It doesn't really explain why they're so bad.
...11 Dec 09 at 20:33
I love Peter Carey's books and I think he's right in everything he's outlined here. You have to write every day, like an obsession really. The internet and television are my worst enemy. I should be writing my novel right now but instead look at what I'm doing?
...13 Dec 09 at 9:43
It is plain to see why television is your worst enemy; a truly
futile pursuit. However, the internet is a useful tool in the
writing life. My day will nearly always begin with a quick scan of
world news, a fleeting glance at my RSS feeds, a brief look at
upcoming events and less pertinently a once-over of my e-bay watch
list. If your time on the internet is spent 'rating hotties' on
Facebook, then perhaps you are flirting with the enemy, but for the
most part the internet is incredibly informative, inspirational and
useful. You will know what I mean if you've ever come away from
reading a writers biography on Wikipedia with twenty new entries on
your reading list and a renewed desire to sit down and get working.
Writing daily is the linchpin of eventually finishing the book or
story or whatever you are working on. But for it to be good, as
well as finished, you need to learn as much as you can about
whatever you can. And the internet is for certain the best tool we
have to do that today. So turn off your TV! But leave the internet
running; just don't let it get in the way of writing each
day.
14 Dec 09 at 14:33
Peter Carey's whole "turn the TV off" line really irritated me. He is forgetting that television is written too. By writers. Some of them very good. Watching brilliantly-written television is just as inspiring as reading brilliantly-written literature. Both are storytelling tools, and just because one is printed on paper doesn't inherently make it "better" than any other form. We should read every day. And write. And watch TV, or see a film, or listen to music or play a computer game. Writers should draw inspiration from ALL forms of storytelling, not just the ones that Peter Carey thinks are good for you.
...14 Dec 09 at 22:13
Does tweeting count?
...15 Dec 09 at 6:59
Carey's a genius but his advice is redundant, being common knowledge to anyone who's made the flimsiest attempt to write.
His detractors are merely jealous and/or ignorant.
...17 Dec 09 at 14:20
"Carey's a genius but his advice is redundant." "His detractors are merely jealous and/or ignorant." Which one are you waldo?
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