I'VE GOT A LITTLE LIST
by Erica Jong
From The Nation

Weekly Tips for Writers
by Erica Jong

Also see:
Erica's 20 Rules for Writers
Organizations that Help Writers

The Week of September 24, 2007

The intellect is a fifth wheel…
-Henry Miller, in conversation

He might have said the ego is a fifth wheel.  Or self-consciousness is a fifth wheel.  Or self-criticism is a fifth wheel.  When you write you want to become a conduit, a channel, a pipe from muse into matter.  You as a writer do not exist.  Only the writing does.

The Week of September 17, 2007

This is also the real secret of the arts: always be a beginner.
--Shunryu Suzuki 

Always beginning again, this is the secret the masters know. Writing is practice, but one never becomes perfect; one only opens oneself for more practice.   

A big part of being an artist is being able to tolerate, even to embrace, the darkness. Think of yourself as a daffodil bulb under the earth. Push toward the light.

The Week of September 10, 2007

Saints, I see the world is mad.
If I tell the truth, they rush to beat me,
if I lie, they trust me.
--Kabir 

Did you expect to win approval for telling the truth? Do you remember Dante, Voltaire, Cervantes, Swift? Few are the great spirits who did not at one time or another write in jail, in exile, in the madhouse, at the foot of the gallows.

The Week of September 3, 2007

Not I, but the wind that blows through me.
--D.H. Lawrence

When the work is flowing, it will feel like a river coursing, a wind blowing, a door opening – with the creator herself having become only a conduit, a tube, a funnel, a hinge.  Even if it bears the marks of her own personality, her own time-bound existence on the planet the world’s impetus comes from a mysterious source outside the self.

The Week of August 27, 2007

If one woman were to tell the truth about her life, the world would split open.
--Muriel Rukeyser

It doesn’t get easier to tell the truth.  It always gets harder.  The deeper you go, the harder it gets. 

The great revolution of women writing honestly about their lives, their sexual and emotional selves, quickly ossified into convention and was co-opted by formula-writers.  Female pain and female sexuality became commonplace.  Danger became safe.  Risk became predictable.  A new convention was born: the convention of the confessional novel. 

Start again.  Go into your heart and find your own truth.  That will always be untarnished, fresh, red as arterial blood.  And pulsing.

Erica's 20 Rules for Writers

1. Have faith--not cynicism
2. Dare to dream
3. Take your mind off publication
4. Write for joy
5. Get the reader to turn the page
6. Forget politics (let your real politics shine through)
7. Forget intellect
8. Forget ego
9. Be a beginner
10. Accept change
11. Don't think your mind needs altering
12. Don't expect approval for telling the truth -
(Parents, politicians, colleagues, friends, etc.)
13. Use everything
14. Remember that writing is Heroism
15. Let Sex (The Body, the physical world) in!
16. Forget critics
17. Tell your truth not the world's
18. Remember to be earth-bound
19. Remember to be wild!
20. Write for the child (in yourself and others)

There are no rules
Erica Jong

-Top of Page-