Advice from Writers about Writing

I keep coming across different articles on the web with advice from writers, for writers - here I aggregate them for your viewing pleasure. Click the author's name to see the original article.

1. Elmore Leonard
   
   My favorites: "Don't worry about what your mother thinks of your language" and "Leave out the parts readers tend to skip."
   
2. Kurt Vonnegut
   
   My favorite: "Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water."
   
3. John Steinbeck
   
   My favorite: "Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on."
   
4. Neil Gaiman
   
   My favorite: "Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong."
   
5. Margaret Atwood (The Guardian asked a bunch of authors to give their "dos and don'ts -- the entire article is full of useful stuff)
   
   My favorite: "You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You've been backstage. You've seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a ­romantic relationship, unless you want to break up."
   
6. Zadie Smith
   
   My favorite: "Don't romanticise your "vocation". You can either write good sentences or you can't. There is no "writer's lifestyle." All that matters is what you leave on the page."
   
7. The Oatmeal (Matthew Inman)
   
   My favorites: "I'm a firm believer that if you don't have anything to say, you shouldn't be talking. And if you don't have anything to write about, don't write" and "...sometimes it's okay for your work to be a rhetorical performance."
   
8. Max Sebald 
   
   My favorite: "Lots of things resolve themselves just by being in the drawer a while."
   
9. Chuck Klosterman
   
   My favorite: "The only three things about writing that are really important are (a.) being interesting, (b.) being entertaining, and (c.) being clear. If you fulfill those three criteria, you are writing well. That's the whole equation. Everything else is just a detail."