For all those currently bereft of inspiration, here’s a reason to pick up your pen again. The Advanced Fiction Workshop at the University of Arizona is trying out an experiment they’re calling Significant Objects:

Writers purchase an essentially valueless object (less than $5, typically secondhand), write a story or essay or poem about it, and we will auction the object and the writing off on ebay…

Any profits go to a local cat shelter. So win win.

A bored reader has lots of other things to do. Hook them right away. Do not waste your time, because if you do they will feel you are wasting theirs.

William Gibson’s Neuromancer kicks off with one of the greats:

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

That has nothing to do with the plot. He is just describing the sky. But the invocation of omnipresent, flickering, slightly decayed and malevolent yet mundane technology establishes everything you need to know about the story that follows.

Gibson himself said:

The first line must convince me that it somehow embodies the entire unwritten text…

It’s a challenge. You might have the whole piece done but still feel dissatisfied with the opener. Spend the time to get it right.

(h/t Joe Fassler)

Many writers get to work once they have a concept. Have idea, everything else follows.

Edward Albee disagrees:

I don’t have ideas. I have people. They meet. Things happen. They are changed. Find out why these people are in your head. Eventually they’ll say: ‘Write me’

The second edition of my calendar for Workman, The Writer’s Year: 365 Days of Inspiration, Prompts, and Quotes is now on sale! Think of it when shopping for that friend or relative who has always talked about being a writer but needs a push. Or take a look when stalled on your own project (shopping for writing calendars is a superb procrastination technique).

Each day of The Writer’s Year comes with a bit of inspiration from a great author, like this from Leslie Jamison:

With each project, you eventually have to surrender the perfect version of the work to make room for what you actually create.

There are also exercises to get the words flowing:

Start a flash fiction story (300–1,000 words) with this line: “Down the slope and across the valley they rode.”

And also stories about how writers overcame an obstacle or lack of confidence:

Comedian, essayist, and all-around exemplar of drollery Stephen Fry was once three chapters into a new novel, Revenge, when he found himself in a “pickle.” He realized too late that the story he was so pleased with was quite similar to The Count of Monte Cristo. Fry calmed down once he discovered that Alexandre Dumas’s storyline was reworked from a popular contemporary urban legend. Happy that “Dumas pinched the story, too,” Fry went ahead and finished his book, changing his character names to anagrams of Dumas’.

Buy it now from Workman, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, or your local indie.

Don DeLillo has famously regimented writing habits. Every day at the desk, with two long segments broken up by a run to clear his mind. Not a bad way of going about things, for anybody who has the ability to maintain that kind of 9-5 schedule, but also not the sort of thing that every writer has the time for.

In this Paris Review interview, though, DeLillo points out something he strives for which every writer can try for:

No snack food or coffee. No cigarettes—I stopped smoking a long time ago. The space is clear, the house is quiet. A writer takes earnest measures to secure his solitude and then finds endless ways to squander it. Looking out the window, reading random entries in the dictionary…

Staring out the window is nice but doesn’t put words on the page. Time is a commodity. Don’t waste it.

Snacks are nice, though.

When Gary Shteyngart met Philip Roth, the unofficial dean of American letters had some advice for him:

He told me not to eat butter…

This may not seem that helpful at first glance. But Shteyngart saw a silver lining:

I’m not sure that counts as “writing” advice, but it’s kept me squarely in the 128-132 pound zone, which has made me super-hungry as a writer…

Listen to what the Roths of the world tell you if you’re lucky enough to be around them when they dispense their advice.

Even when it makes no sense.

According to screenwriter writer David Koepp, who has knocked out screenplays for everything from blockbusters like Jurassic Park to nifty little ghost stories like Presence, momentum is key to getting anything done and done well:

You want to just execute it and have it done, so you can then go back and read it to see what’s lacking. Some days you’ll write seven or eight pages that you just cut the next day because you’re finding the story. It’s part of the process…

Just get it on the page. Write now. Cut later.

America’s greatest aphorism factory since Ben Franklin, Mark Twain had a lot to say about a lot of things. Since he was a pretty efficient writer, supposedly averaging about 1,400 words a day, Twain thought a lot about the mechanics of his craft.

One of his most frequently quoted pieces of advice came in a letter where he argued for simplicity:

I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English – it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it: don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it…

That’s where the quotation usually ends. But Twain goes on:

I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them – then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart…

Keep it simple. Avoid excess description when you can. Get to the point. But avoid being too strict about it.

The English language is a lovely tangle of a garden. Don’t be scared of leaving the path and getting lost in the mess now and then.

Umberto Eco was the kind of writer many aspire to become. Witty, pugnacious, ridiculously well-read, and generally up for anything, whether it was an ornately detailed conspiracy theory, heavily researched mystery novel, or punchy political essay.

Given that, he had a lot to tell other writers about their craft, even if he failed to follow his own advice. Here are a few of Eco’s rules for writing, delivered with tongue planted firmly in cheek:

• “A complete sentence should comprise.”
• “Avoid clichés: they’re like death warmed over.”
• “No plurale majestatis, please. We believe it pompous.”
• “Don’t write one-word sentences. Ever.”

This is Denise Levertov in 1960:

I do not believe that a violent imitation of the horrors of our times is the concern of poetry. Horrors are taken for granted. Disorder is ordinary. People in general take more and more “in their stride” — the hides grow thicker. I long for poems of an inner harmony in utter contrast to the chaos in which they exist. Insofar as poetry has a social function it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock…

It was a time filled with art that strove very hard to épater les bourgeois. You still see the desire today, and for sometimes good reason. The moment people start thinking they know what art should be doing or saying, it’s a good time to shake things up.

At the same time, as Levertov says, shock is more likely to leave calluses than epiphanies.

(h/t Maria Popova)

Over the course of a rumination about Orson Welles’ late masterpiece F for Fake (which is always worth pinning an essay or two on), Emily St. James breaks down narrative into just three concepts:

But: This introduces the idea of opposition. The hero has done something, but the villain has done something to oppose it.
Therefore: This introduces the idea of progression. The hero has done something, and therefore the world adjusts to her actions (usually with some new struggle the hero must overcome).
Meanwhile: This introduces the idea of parallelism, of two things happening at the same time, so we can always cut to something else. The hero is saving the world. Meanwhile, her friend is off dealing with the fallout.

Choose one. Write a story using that concept.

Off you go.