The Write Advice 227: ANTHONY BURGESS

 

Writers have to be guilty.  We've got to feel guilty about everything and this guilt provides a dynamo.  And this dynamo charges the creative act so that every time you sit down and write a book you're shedding your guilt about people, about the world or whatever it is.  Once you get rid of this guilt and become a happy person you're no longer an artist.

 

The Dick Cavett Show [2 April 1971]

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to visit the website of THE INTERNATIONAL ANTHONY BURGESS FOUNDATION, an English-based organisation which 'encourages and supports public and scholarly interest in all aspects of the life and work of Anthony Burgess.'  It also operates an archive/performance space in his home town of Manchester.



https://www.anthonyburgess.org/

 

 

 

 

 

You might also enjoy:

 

 

The Write Advice 120: ANTHONY BURGESS

 

 

The Write Advice 110: ANTHONY BURGESS

 

 

The Write Advice 220: ANTHONY BURGESS

 

 

The Write Advice 226: DOROTHY ALLISON

 

There is a difference between fiction and nonfiction deeper than technique or intention.  I value both but genuinely believe that fiction can tell a larger truth.  I have built my life on what I learned in books that took me inside characters whose struggles and dilemmas revealed intricate and astonishing things about human character.  I have no doubt that some of those novels were based in part on the authors' experiences or real lives — but by moving the narrative over to fiction the author took on the responsibility of fully imagining a world separate from the perspective of one person's experience.  Asking 'what if' and answering that question is the bedrock of what the novel can achieve.  The story becomes something more than one person's perspective — it reaches as far as the novelist can imagine.

 

Afterword to the 2012 edition of Bastard Out of Carolina [1992]

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read about the life and work of North American poet and novelist DOROTHY ALLISON:

 

 

https://lithub.com/dorothy-allison-author-and-force-of-nature-has-died/ 

 

 

 

 

 

You might also enjoy: 

 

 

The Write Advice 132: JOAN DIDION

 

 

The Write Advice 117: JENNIFER EGAN

 

 

The Write Advice 095: BARBARA KINGSOLVER 

 

 

The Write Advice 225: MADELEINE STRATFORD

 

I like when authors mix different registers, not only in dialogues, but in the narrative itself: when this is well done, it shows true artistry.  I also love when different narrators are involved or when there’s an unforeseen switch of point of view.  But mainly, I like to be told a good story, one that makes me want to devour the book in one sitting… And I’m not excluding poetry, here: poems also tell stories.  But I guess with poetry, it’s not so much about wanting to read the whole book in one sitting as about wanting to read some specific poems again, and again, and again. Out loud and inside my head.

 

 

Interview [Québec Reads, date unspecified]

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read about the work of Canadian poet, translator and academic MADELEINE STRATFORD:

 

 

https://vehiculepress.com/author-bios/madeleine-stratford/ 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You might also enjoy:

 

 

The Write Advice 205: DUNA GHALI

 

 

The Write Advice 125: FRANÇOISE SAGAN

 

 

The Write Advice 025: SALWA BAKR

    

The Write Advice 224: CRAIG B BARKACS

 

Far more than a source of entertainment, fiction immerses readers in narratives that sharpen empathy, heighten self-awareness, and bolster adaptability. By stepping into the lives of richly drawn characters, readers not only enrich their minds but also develop the social, emotional, and cognitive skills essential for succeeding in today’s complex professional landscape…Engaging with a fictional narrative offers an unparalleled opportunity to inhabit the minds of others. Fiction provides a safe space to analyze interpersonal dynamics without personal risk, fostering emotional awareness in an unpressured environment. Through the lens of diverse characters, readers experience triumphs, failures, and complexities that enhance their capacity for empathy. The emotional resonance with characters, be it a hero’s victory or a villain’s descent, deepens the reader’s understanding of varied human experiences…Stories allow readers to confront their desires, fears, and aspirations through the experiences of fictional characters, often revealing truths about their own lives. For instance, a story featuring a character overcoming mental health challenges can inspire readers to acknowledge and address their own struggles. Fiction creates a transformative and non-threatening space for deeper self-understanding.

 

'Ignite the Transformative Power of Reading Fiction' [Psychology Today, 6 March 2025]

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read the full article by North American psychologist CRAIG B BARKACS:

 

 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/power-and-influence/202503/ignite-the-transformative-power-of-reading-fiction 

 

 

 

 

 

You might also enjoy: 

 

 

The Write Advice 188: JUDY BLUME

 

 

The Write Advice 124: JENNIFER DUMMER

 

 

The Write Advice 024: JERZY KOSINSKI

 

The Write Advice 223: MARY GORDON

 

It's a bad business, this writing.  No marks on paper can ever measure up to the word's music in the mind, to the purity of the image before its ambush by language.  Most of us awake paraphrasing words from the Book of Common Prayer, horrified by what we have done, what we have left undone, convinced that there is no health in us.  We accomplish what we do, creating a series of stratagems to explode the horror.  Mine involve notebooks and pens.  I write by hand. 

 

'Writers on Writing' [The New York Times, July 1999]

 

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read about the life and work of North American novelist, memoirist and literary critic MARY GORDON:

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Gordon_(writer)

 

 

 

 

 

 

You might also enjoy:

 

 

The Write Advice 122: ALICE HOFFMAN

 

 

The Write Advice 132: JOAN DIDION

 

 

The Write Advice 164: CATHERINE JINKS

    

The Write Advice 222: BRANDON TAYLOR

 

Right before I wrote my first novel, when I was living in Madison, still working in a lab, I had really bad writer's block.  My roommate at the time said to me, 'What are you afraid of?  It's just a draft.  Just write it; you know how to write.  It's a draft, you can fix anything.'  That was really revelatory for me; I went from a person who did not finish anything to a person who suddenly had the capacity to finish something.  I suddenly had confidence in my ability to fix it later.  So yeah: it's just a draft.  It's so powerful.

 

Interview [Penguin Books UK, June 2023]

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read the full interview with North American novelist BRANDON TAYLOR:

 

 

https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2023/06/brandon-taylor-interview-lateamericans 

 

 

 

 

 

You might also enjoy:

 

 

The Write Advice 122: ALICE HOFFMAN

 

 

The Write Advice 112: ANNIE DILLARD

 

 

The Write Advice 042: ANNE FINE  
 

The Write Advice 221: OTTESSA MOSHFEGH

 

I don't like literature that moralizes anything.  I mean, I think it's the most boring way to direct a reader's experience.  I like books that tell stories that I can experience and have different feelings about, and change my mind about it and it can stick with me and I can live with that story and reflect back on it in different ways, instead of it being one message.

 

Interview [Entertainment Weekly, 13 June 2022]

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read the full 2022 interview with North American novelist OTTESSA MOSHFEGH:

 

 

https://ew.com/books/ottessa-moshfegh-interview-lapvona-trailer/

 

 

 

You might also enjoy:

 

 

The Write Advice 161: JENNIFER EGAN

 

 

The Write Advice 141: ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER

 

 

The Write Advice 121: SE HINTON

    

The Write Advice 220: ANTHONY BURGESS

 

I am by trade a novelist.  It is, I think, a harmless trade, though it is not everywhere considered a respectable one.  Novelists put dirty language into the mouths of their characters, and they show these characters fornicating or going to the toilet.  Moreover, it is not a useful trade, as is that of the carpenter or pastrycook.  The novelist passes the time for you between one useful action and another, he helps to fill the gaps that come in the serious fabric of living.  He is a mere entertainer, a sort of clown.  He mimes, he makes grotesque gestures, he is pathetic or comic and sometimes both, he sends words spinning through the air like coloured balls.

      His use of words is not to be taken too seriously.  The President of the United States uses words, the physician or garage mechanic or army general or philosopher uses words, and these words seem to relate the real world, a world in which taxes have to be levied and then avoided, cars have to run, sicknesses to be made well, great thoughts thought and decisive battles engaged.  No creator of plots and personages, however great, is to be thought of as a serious thinker — not even Shakespeare.  Indeed, it is hard to know what the imaginative writer really does think, since he is hidden behind his scenes and his characters.  And when the characters start to think, and express their thoughts, these are not necessarily to be thought of as the writer's own… Even the tragic dramatist remains a clown, blowing a sad tune on a battered trombone.  And then his tragic mood is over and he becomes a buffoon, tumbling about and walking on his hands.  Not to be taken seriously.

 

'The Clockwork Condition' (1973, unpublished until 2012)

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to visit the website of THE INTERNATIONAL ANTHONY BURGESS FOUNDATION, an English-based organisation which 'encourages and supports public and scholarly interest in all aspects of the life and work of Anthony Burgess.'  It also operates an archive/performance space in his home town of Manchester.



https://www.anthonyburgess.org/

 

 

 

 

 

You might also enjoy:

 

 

The Write Advice 120: ANTHONY BURGESS

 

 

The Write Advice 110: ANTHONY BURGESS

 

 

The Write Advice 100: FORD MADOX FORD

 

The Write Advice 219: LISA APPIGNANESI

 

Writing a memoir means that you've probably reached a certain age, an age where mortality seems close to you, either because your parents have died or are dying, or because your children are growing up and abandoning you in one sense or another.  And I think that's the age at which people begin to think about the past.  It will lead you to consider all kinds of questions about truth and the workings of memory… I think the first thing to do is to select out.  Otherwise you'll have no time to live as you recollect the past — there is a great deal of it!  So select out for the moments that have a particular resonance for you.  Play with those and see where they take you.  They may take you into interesting places and not necessarily the places where you thought you might visit… For me, the memoir is not autobiography.  It's very, very distant from that.  There's no attempt to give a chronological rendition of one's life.  I was looking at the traces of the legacies.  I used the novelist's skills of going into the minds of the people you know least — namely my parents before I was born!  These are totally mysterious others.  You also need to be able to set scenes and to be able create movement in the text and create characters the way a novelist would. 

'How To Write Memoirs' [BBC World Service]

 

 

 

Use the link below to read a recent article by Polish-British-Canadian novelist, writer and social advocate LISA APPIGNANESI:

 

 

https://www.freud.org.uk/2025/01/05/24042/

 

 

 

 

 

You might also enjoy:

 

 

The Write Advice 209: JOYCE BUTLER

 

 

The Write Advice 159: DORIS LESSING

 

 

The Write Advice 119: ALLEGRA GOODMAN

 

The Write Advice 218: DORIS GRUMBACH

 

Talk uses up idea, although others have told me that they find it profitable to talk out their ideas and plans for a story because it clarifies their intentions.  Not I.  Once I have spoken them aloud, they are lost to me, dissipated into the noisy air like smoke.  Only if I bury them, like bulbs, in the rich soil of silence do they grow.  Sometimes I am lucky.  In the internment process, they often multiply and become more complex.

 

Fifty Days of Solitude: A Memoir (1994) 

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read The View from 90, a 2011 essay about solitude and the aging process by DORIS GRUMBACH:

 

 

http://theamericanscholar.org/the-view-from-90/

 

 

 

 

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The Write Advice 067: DORIS GRUMBACH

 

 

The Write Advice 076: DORIS GRUMBACH

 

 

The Write Advice 128: GRACE PALEY

  

The Write Advice 217: CAN XUE

 

As soon as I learned to read, I fell in love with it.  When I read primary literature stories, I began an undertaking — playing the parts of my stories in my mind.  Those parts — sometimes they were from my reading materials, sometimes they were just my inventions — but if I loved a certain character in a book very much, I acted that character many times, and was moved deeply by the acting.

      Language is a magical thing.  When a child who is very sensitive to spiritual things enters that world, his or her imagination will proliferate wildly, and performances will become his or her real life.  So although I didn’t begin writing formally until I was thirty, I gave performances all the time.  And only these sorts of performances could satisfy my needs.  All the other things were at most second-best compared with this.

 

 

Interview [Chinese Literature Today, 2010]

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read about the life and work of Chinese novelist (and recent Nobel Prize candidate) CAN XUE:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-67014660

 

 

 

 

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The Write Advice 193: CAN XUE

 

 

 

The Write Advice 117: JENNIFER EGAN

 

 

The Write Advice 041: MAYA ANGELOU

 

The Write Advice 216: EUDORA WELTY

 

At the time of writing, I don’t write for my friends or myself, either; I write for it, for the pleasure of it.  I believe if I stopped to wonder what so-and-so would think, or what I’d feel like if this were read by a stranger, I would be paralyzed.  I care what my friends think, very deeply — and it’s only after they’ve read the finished thing that I really can rest, deep down.  But in the writing, I have to just keep going straight through with only the thing in mind and what it dictates.

      It’s so much an inward thing that reading the proofs later can be a real shock. When I received them for my first book — no, I guess it was for Delta Wedding — I thought, I didn’t write this.  It was a page of dialogue — I might as well have never seen it before.  I wrote to my editor, John Woodburn, and told him something had happened to that page in the typesetting.  He was kind, not even surprised — maybe this happens to all writers.  He called me up and read me from the manuscript — word for word what the proofs said.  Proofs don’t shock me any longer, yet there’s still a strange moment with every book when I move from the position of writer to the position of reader, and I suddenly see my words with the eyes of the cold public. It gives me a terrible sense of exposure, as if I’d gotten sunburned.

 

 

The Art of Fiction #47  [The Paris Review #55, Fall 1972]

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read about the life and work of North American novelist, journalist and photographer EUDORA WELTY (1909–2001):

 

 

 

https://eudorawelty.org/biography/

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Write Advice 089: EUDORA WELTY

 

 

The Write Advice 078: LARRY McMURTRY

 

 

The Write Advice 029: ANNIE PROULX

 

The Write Advice 215: CHINUA ACHEBE

 

…I think writing is such a serious thing that one ought to take it fairly easily and slowly, you know, at its own pace.  I don't like forcing a story.  Some days, weeks even, I can't write anything, and I don't want to go to the table and start scribbling, you see, I feel it's—it is an important thing and ought to be taken seriously.

 

Radio interview 1962 

[Reprinted in African Writers Talking: A Collection of Radio Interviews (1972)]

 

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read about the life and work of Nigerian novelist CHINUA ACHEBE [1930–2013]:

https://www.thoughtco.com/chinua-achebe-biography-4176505

 

 

 

 

 

You might also enjoy:

 

 

The Write Advice 176: ELIAS KHOURY

 

 

The Write Advice 153: AVNI DOSHI

 

 

The Write Advice 037: THICH NHAT HANH 

 

The Write Advice 214: VIRGINIE GRIMALDI

 

I thought reading and writing were solitary activities.  I was wrong: they are bridges between human beings.  When we exchange stories, you and me, we share a closeness with those who share the same emotions.  We have the impression that we know each other, that we understand each other without ever having met.  We want to grab them by the neck, tell them what we did last night, but we retain the awkwardness of our first meetings.  Words have this power.

 

The Aroma of Happiness is Strongest in the Rain (2017) 

 

 

 

See below for original French text

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read (in English) about the life and work of French novelist VIRGINIE GRIMALDI:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginie_Grimaldi

 

 

 

 

 

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The Write Advice 194: ANDRÉ BRETON

 

 

The Write Advice 166: LAILA LALAMI

 

 

The Write Advice 104: ARIELLE AARONSON

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

Je pensais que la lecture et l'écriture étaient des activités solitaires.  Je me trompais: ce sont des ponts entre les humains.  Lorsque nous échangeons, vous et moi, il y a cette proximité propre à ceux qui partagent les mêmes émotions.  On a l'impression de se connaître, de se comprendre sans s'être jamais rencontrés.  On a envie de se sauter au cou, de se raconter notre dernière soirée, mais on conserve la gaucherie des premières rencontres. Les mots ont ce pouvoir-là.

 

Le parfum du bonheur est plus fort sous la pluie (2017) 

 

   

The Write Advice 213: KAY BOYLE

 

How to release reluctant students to speech is the first problem for the teacher of writing.  At times the young find it as difficult to express their inner thoughts in words as do those whose minds have solidified into all but unbreakable moods.  But why, after all, should this inability to speak with the heart as well as with the lips be blamed on 'restrictive teaching'?  Is it not more a case of restrictive thinking (induced by restrictive living) causing this muteness, which perhaps no teacher can cure?  One can suggest reading to such students — great poetry, great novels — to help allay the fear of speaking.  But one cannot be sure that the students will dare to understand the words that other men have said.  It takes courage to say things differently: caution and cowardice dictate the use of the cliché.… Most adults, having somehow lost touch with the great simplicities, have forgotten that to write is to speak of one’s beliefs.  Turning out a typescript with the number of words neatly estimated in the upper right hand corner of the first page has nothing to do with writing.  Neither have questions about the prices paid by Harper’s Magazine or The Atlantic Monthly or The Ladies’ Home Journal or Esquire.  Writing is something else entirely, as the young instinctively know.

 

 

'The Teaching of Writing' [reprinted in Words That Must Somehow Be Said: Selected Essays of Kay Boyle, 1985]

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to visit the website of a US-based 

organisation dedicated to celebrating the life and

work of writer, educator and political activist KAY 

BOYLE (1902–1992):

https://kbs.hypotheses.org/

 

 

 

 

 

You might also enjoy:

 

 

Poet of the Month 085: KAY BOYLE

 

 

The Write Advice 193: CAN XUE

 

 

The Write Advice 113: ELIZABETH McKENZIE

 

The Write Advice 212: JAMES JONES

 

I would like to leave books behind me to let people know that I have lived.  I'd like to think that people would read them avidly, as I have read so many and would feel the sadness and frustration and joy and love I tried to put in them, that people would think about that guy James Jones and wish they had known the guy who could write like that.

 

Letter to George W (Jeff) Jones [3 November 1942]

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to visit the website of the JAMES JONES LITERARY SOCIETY:

 

 

http://www.jamesjonesliterarysociety.org/index.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Write Advice 006: JAMES JONES

 

 

The Write Advice 106: JAMES JONES

 

 

The Write Advice 117: IRWIN SHAW

 

   

The Write Advice 211: BETSY LERNER

 

Chances are you want to write because you are a haunted individual, or a bothered individual, because the world does not sit right with you, or you in it.  Chances are you have a deep connection to books because at some point you discovered that they were the one truly safe place to discover and explore feelings that are banished from the dinner table, the cocktail party, the golf foursome, the bridge game.  Because the writers who mattered to you have dared to say I am a sick man.  And because within the world of books there is no censure.  In discovering books, you became free to explore the full range of human motives, desires, secrets, and lies.  All my life, people have scolded me for having an excess of feeling, saying that I was too sensitive — as if one could be in danger from feeling too much instead of too little… I am not suggesting a writer let it bleed so much as I am suggesting that he understand his motivation.

      The more popular culture and the media fail to present the real pathos of our human struggle, the more opportunity there is for writers who are unafraid to present stories that speak emotional truth, or that make such an intimate connection that briefly we become children again, listening with rapt attention… At a time when people are encouraged to follow their bliss, to pursue whatever makes them feel good, I suggest you stalk your demons.  Embrace them.  If you are a writer, especially one who has been unable to make your work count or stick, you must grab your demons by the neck and face them down.  And whatever you do, don't censor yourself.  There's time and editors for that.

 

The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers (Revised edition 2010)

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to visit the website of North American writer, poet, editor and literary agent BETSY LERNER:

 

https://betsylerner.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You might also enjoy:

 

 

The Write Advice 184: BETSY LERNER

 

 

The Write Advice 197: BETSY LERNER

 

 

The Write Advice 151: MAGGIE O'FARRELL

 

The Write Advice 210: ANTHONY BURGESS

 

What could I teach these sharp, wary, vigorous Creative Writers?  Only the grammar they should have learned in fourth or fifth grade, only the professional trickery which shocked them with its insincerity.  They were terribly sincere, even when they divined that there was money in this writing racket if only you cut out the artsy-shmartsy crap.  By professional trickery I meant and mean the use of repetitive verbal tropes to fix a character in the reader’s mind, helped along by ocular tics and patches of alopecia (give the character the name Fox, since he has fox-mange); how to describe a seething party with everybody talking at once; how to convey a stormy sea by raiding an arbitrarily chosen page of a dictionary (stairwells of foam, waves rearing in stalagmites, precipitating in stalactites, staminiferous in their stalwart stallion-balled stalling angles). Or I could concentrate on opening techniques, with reference to The Good Soldier or Middlemarch.  What I could not evade was the dogged listening to dull work in progress.  Wow, that’s great, Janice…If these young people learned nothing else, they learned how heartbreaking the writing game was.

 

You've Had Your Time (1990)

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to visit the website of THE INTERNATIONAL ANTHONY BURGESS FOUNDATION, an English-based organisation which 'encourages and supports public and scholarly interest in all aspects of the life and work of Anthony Burgess.'  It also operates an archive/performance space in his home town of Manchester.



http://www.anthonyburgess.org/

 

 

 

 

You might also enjoy:

 

 

The Write Advice 190: ANTHONY BURGESS

 

 

The Write Advice 170: ANTHONY BURGESS

 

 

The Write Advice 110: ANTHONY BURGESS

 

The Write Advice 209: JOYCE BUTLER

 

So I came to the realisation that writing for me is like breathing, it’s something I simply must do. Knowing my fingers and mind are working with a special sort of synchronicity, tapping into something bigger than me. And having had my fair share of depression in the past, I know writing is part of my scaffolding of psychological support in life, that built me back up into the person I was before and after mental illness.

 

'Writing under the radar: aspiring authors on overcoming rejection' [The Irish Times, 5 March 2021]

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read the full article by Irish writer JOYCE BUTLER:

 

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/writing-under-the-radar-aspiring-authors-on-overcoming-rejection-1.4501348

 

 

 

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The Write Advice 183: WEATHERGLASS BOOKS

 

 

The Write Advice 171: DOLLY ALDERTON

 

 

The Write Advice 134: JAMIE RAINTREE

 

   

The Write Advice 208: BARRY HINES

 

My books are all conventional in form. They have a beginning, a middle and a sort of ending – mainly in that order – with the occasional flashback thrown in…I write about real people and show a section of their life, without the Hollywood endings which rarely happen outside Hollywood. Disney offered to make Kes, on the condition that the hawk recovered. Should we have sold out? I know which way would always be right for me.

 

Quoted in his obituary [The Guardian, 20 March 2016]

 

 

 

Use the link below to read the obituary of British novelist BARRY HINES (1939–2016):

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/20/barry-hines-obituary-a-kestrel-for-a-knave-author

 

 

 

 

You might also enjoy:

 

 

The Write Advice 154: ALAN JUDD

 

 

The Write Advice 138: STAN BARSTOW

 

 

The Write Advice 101: KINGSLEY AMIS