I never know how to give advice to a writer because there's so much you could say, and it's hard to translate your own experience. But of course, I always try. The main thing that I usually end up saying is to read a lot. To read a great deal and to learn from that.
The only way to write a book, I’m fond of telling people, is to actually write a book. That’s how you write a book.
Bad books on writing tell you to "WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW", a solemn and totally false adage that is the reason there exist so many mediocre novels about English professors contemplating adultery.
But it is not at all unthinkable for anyone to tell a writer how to write. It comes with the territory.
In every case the storyteller is a man who has counsel for his readers.
If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they're happy.
I never really had novel-writing instruction like people do in MFA programs.
