10 Rules for Writers from Jeanette Winterson
Advice for fiction writers, but for nonfiction writers too!
There are stories that you can and can’t write
In 2010, the Guardian published a series of articles on ‘Rules for Writing Fiction’ from some of the most famous writers out there. Contributors included science fiction writers such as Michael Moorcock, poets like Andrew Motion, playwrights/novelists like Joyce Carol Oates, and, in my humble opinion, all-around masters of wordcraft like Zadie Smith.
Reading through the list, one writer’s ‘top ten tips’ struck a chord with me. That writer is Jeanette Winterson.
I know of Winterson’s work primarily through her memoir, Why be happy when you could be normal?
Among many memorable, and to be honest, unsettling passages in the book, one that sticks with me is her thoughts on stories, the ones you can write, and the ones you can’t:
“There are stories that you can write, and there are stories that you can’t write. And, in the end, you write the ones that you can, and that allows you to bear the ones that you can’t. There’s nothing, I think, particularly upsetting about that — it’s simply a strategy of survival. And it’s also how we allow ourselves agency in the world, instead of being completely overwhelmed by the things that happen to us. We are, by the writing of that story, by the way that we tell what’s happened to us, giving it back to ourselves instead of being powerless within it.”
Oof. “A strategy of survival.” I had never heard of this kind of feeling put that way: a feeling of knowing there are stories inside of you to which putting words is beyond you.
I wonder sometimes if there is a word for this feeling –– of knowing there is a story in you beyond your capacity to write –– in another language besides English.
You know, like Portuguese speakers have Saudade, Japanese speakers 積ん読 (tsundoku) (leaving a book unread after buying it, typically piling it up with other unread books), or French speakers l’esprit d’escalier, meaning “a retort or remark that occurs to a person after the opportunity to make it has passed.”
Yup, I know that feeling, but it’s great to know there’s a specific word to describe the habits you don’t have a name for, or, for some reason, those habits we don’t want to name.
Here are Winterson’s tips. Some are deceptively simple. Others more vexing to grapple with. But all are worth integrating into your daily writing life:
- Turn up for work. Discipline allows creative freedom. No discipline equals no freedom.
- 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.
- Love what you do.
- Be honest with yourself. If you are no good, accept it. If the work you are doing is no good, accept it.
- Don’t hold on to poor work. If it was bad when it went in the drawer it will be just as bad when it comes out.
- Take no notice of anyone you don’t respect.
- Take no notice of anyone with a gender agenda. A lot of men still think that women lack imagination of the fiery kind.
- Be ambitious for the work and not for the reward.
- Trust your creativity.
- Enjoy this work!
Deep-Diving
When I read Winterson, there are passages of hers I want to quote, but then I find it’s difficult to decide when to stop quoting, simply because she flows into the next idea with such gravitational force I can’t help but be pulled in:
“Language fails us … in times of great grief, in times of extremity, in times of stress. What can we say, where can we find the words that will somehow make bearable the pain that we’re in at the time?
That’s why I always go back to the poets, or I turn to some of my favorite passage — because there are the words. Somebody has deep-dived them for me and brought them back to the surface, and deep-dived them in the place where there are no words, that awful place where language doesn’t take us, where we cannot say, where we cannot speak. And the reason why we can trust our writers, our poets, our artists is that they are able to deep-dive those place and bring it back up, so that you can find it, so that you are not without language, so that you are not in that terrible place where there’s nothing that can be said.”
