“There’s nothing mysterious about your prose style,” says the author Kevin Barry, “it’s a direct projection of your personality”. Many writers – myself included – find this out the hard way. Good writing is true and authentic, it reflects who you are.
For a long time, I subconsciously tried to be someone else on the page. I anglicised my Northern Irish accent; I feigned a kind of seriousness, perhaps in the hope I’d be taken seriously. But the more I attended writing workshops and read books on the craft, the more I realised my work paled beside my personality.
I am a friendly Northern Irish woman. I do a good line in anxiety but I’m not overly serious. I’m passionate about art and books. I’m not shy with strangers. Why, then, was I shy about expressing myself in my writing? There’s no easy answer to this question but I find it interesting to think about. For Guardian Masterclasses’s online summer writers’ retreat, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on style and encouraging other writers to embrace their individuality.
This blog post brings together some brilliant books on creative writing, including The Agony and the Ego, a 1993 anthology edited by Clare Boylan. In her introduction, Boylan makes an interesting observation about writing fiction. “Writing is a paradox because all of it comes out of ourselves. There is nowhere else for it to come from. Yet when the characters of a novel have been established the fiction writer’s task is to remove himself and his influence, and let the characters get on with their lives.”
At the online retreat, I’ll invite writers to think about the fruitful tension between expressing their personality in their work and being true to their characters. There are many other tutors taking part in the retreat, which runs from Monday 25 July over the course of three weeks.
From Ross Raisin to Huma Qureshi, acclaimed authors will help you fine-tune your craft and encourage you to dedicate time to writing. By the end of the three weeks, perhaps you’ll be a bit closer to what the great John McGahern described as “that clear mirror that is called style – the reflection of personality in language”.
Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury
If you’re looking for motivation to write, this zesty book by Ray Bradbury is the perfect prescription.
In the opening essay, The Joy of Writing, the acclaimed author of Fahrenheit 451 urges us to write with zest and gusto. “If you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer. It means you are so busy keeping one eye on the commercial market, or one ear peeled for the avant-garde coterie, that you are not being yourself. You don’t even know yourself. For the first thing a writer should be is – excited.”
When I first read Zen in the Art of Writing, I felt energised to write. With essays ranging from How to Keep and Feed a Muse to Drunk, And in Charge of a Bicycle, Bradbury’s unforgettable book is a gift to anyone who loves writing. Actually, scratch that: Zen in the Art of Writing is for anyone who loves life.
Six Memos for the Next Millennium by Italo Calvino
Due to be delivered as lectures at Harvard, Italo Calvino’s delightful “memos” on writing were left unfinished at the time of his death.
The drafts explore the concepts of Lightness, Quickness, Multiplicity, Exactitude and Visibility (Constancy was to be the sixth), with Calvino beginning work on them in 1984.
In each of his lectures, Calvino recommends to the next millennium a particular value, quality or peculiarity of literature that is close to his heart. “From my youth on, my personal motto has been the old Latin tag, Festina lente, hurry slowly,” writes Calvino in his second essay, Quickness. “Just as for the poet writing verse, so it is for the prose writer: success consists in felicity of verbal expression, which every so often may result from a quick flash of inspiration but as a rule involves a patient search for the mot juste, for the sentence in which every word is unalterable”.
Calvino believes that writing prose shouldn’t be any different to writing poetry. In both cases, he argues, it’s about looking for “the unique expression”, one that is “concise, concentrated, and memorable” – three words that encapsulate the tone of this wonderful book.
The Agony and the Ego edited by Clare Boylan
In this illuminating anthology of essays, some of the finest writers of all time – from John McGahern to Hilary Mantel – reflect on the process of creating fiction.
According to editor Clare Boylan, Mantel’s reassuring essay Growing a Tale “argues that ideas coaxed rather than bullied will grow naturally into a novel”. I loved Mantel’s essay when I first read it as part of Ross Raisin’s six-week creative writing programme. “If you make your characters properly they will simply do what is within them,” writes Mantel, “they’ll act out the nature you have given them, and there – you’ll find – you have your plot.”
Now out of print, The Agony and the Ego is worth tracking down secondhand or in a library. In addition to insightful essays by John Banville, Rose Tremain and Nadine Gordimer, it features a short selection of interviews from the series Writers at Work, which Boylan wrote for the Guardian.
Many of these essays highlight “the mystery” of writing, and perhaps this is why I return to The Agony and the Ego. This warm-hearted book encourages writers to grow naturally into themselves.
Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande
Mantel’s rules for writers include this recommendation: “Read Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande. Then do what it says, including the tasks you think are impossible.”
Full of practical advice for time-poor writers, Brande’s book was first published in 1934 and remains a go-to classic. Schedule time to write each day, suggests Brande. “It need not be a very long time; fifteen minutes will do nicely”.
I enjoyed Brande’s simple but powerful advice to take a rough draft of a story “out for a walk” and think about it. After the walk, you’re invited to go to a dim room and lie down. “Quiet your mind,” says Brande. Lie there, not quite asleep, not quite awake.” After a while, she says, you’ll feel “a definite impulse to rise, a kind of surge of energy. Obey it at once … Get up and go to your paper or typewriter, and begin to write. The state you are in at that moment is the state an artist works in.”
On Editing by Helen Corner-Bryant and Kathryn Price
Writing is re-writing. Learning how to self-edit your work is perhaps the most vital skill any writer can learn and this book, by editors Helen Corner-Bryant and Kathryn Price, is something of a godsend.
One of the chapters in On Editing demystifies ‘show don’t tell’, a phrase “often misunderstood” by new writers. “At its simplest, the aim of showing is to bring the reader as close as possible to the action,” write the authors. “By feeling your writing intensely yourself you’ll transmit that emotion to the reader … and when you can make the reader feel, you’ve got them in the palm of your hand”.
Other useful chapters cover structure, description, pacing and much more. The book also includes advice on submitting your novel – from writing synopses to pitching to agents – making it an indispensable guide for writers who take their work seriously.
Writing a Novel by Richard Skinner
“When we talk about a writer’s style, what we are really talking about is their ‘voice’,” writes Richard Skinner in Writing a Novel. “As a tutor, I can do nothing about the tone of your voice as you speak, but what I can engage with is what you say, i.e. your ‘story’”.
Skinner’s book is a thought-provoking and practical guide to the craft of writing. Divided into bite-sized sections – from point of view to story and plot – it encourages writers to bring their whole selves to the page. As Skinner writes in a piece for the Observer, “Writing is about claiming ownership of yourself in order to become the person you know you can be”.
Throughout Writing a Novel, there are thoughtfully selected quotes from authors, such as Gertrude Stein’s, “Sentences are factual, but paragraphs are emotional”. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed going back to this generous, kind-spirited book. It feels fresh each time – and will no doubt inspire many writers to follow their passion.
Being a Writer by Travis Elborough and Helen Gordon
I treated myself to this beautiful gift book when I was low on confidence as a writer.
Lockdown had taken away my beloved book events and writing workshops, and while I attended many online, I was Zoom fatigued and starved of new experiences. That awful winter lockdown had been announced and I was living alone. Being a Writer was brilliant company then, and continues to be a source of insight and wisdom on the art of writing.
From Alice Munro to Gabriel García Márquez, the book features quotations and essays from some of the world’s greatest authors. Márquez reveals how the opening line of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis inspired him to start writing short stories. Australian author Tim Winton says writing a book is a bit like surfing, “Most of the time you’re waiting.”
Being a Writer is a lovely anthology to dip in and out of, to savour in small bursts. This comforting book reminds us that each writer’s approach is unique. Trust in the process that works for you. Read widely, and write what makes you feel most alive. In the words of Anaïs Nin, “We write to taste life twice”.
Find out more about Guardian Masterclasses’s summer writer’s retreat and enrol now.
