Black Ink: Literary Legends on the Peril, Power, and Pleasure of Reading and Writing

Rule No. 1: Show and Tell. Most people say, “Show, don’t tell,” but I stand by Show and Tell, because when writers put their work out into the world, they’re like kids bringing their broken unicorns and chewed-up teddy bears into class in the sad hope that someone else will love them as much as they do.

Rule No. 3: Write what you know. Bellow once said, “Fiction is the higher autobiography.”

Rule No. 5: Keep a dream diary.

Rule No. 10: Revise, revise, revise. I cannot stress this enough. Revision is when you do what you should have done the first time, but didn’t.

Rule No. 6: What isn’t said is as important as what is said.

Nostalgia is powerful. It is natural, human, to long for the past, particularly when we can remember our histories as better than they were.

The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.

Rule No. 9: Have adventures.

Rule No. 7: Writer’s block is a tool—use it.