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Advice for Writers

On 14 December 1959 C. S. Lewis offered to a correspondent this advice about writing:

"It is very hard to give any general advice about writing. Here's my attempt.

  1. Turn off the Radio.
  2. Read all the good books you can, and avoid nearly all magazines.
  3. Always write (and read) with the ear, not the eye. You shd. hear every sentence you write as if it was being read aloud or spoken. If it does not sound nice, try again.
  4. Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else. (Notice this means that if you are interested only in writing you will never be a writer, because you will have nothing to write about . . .)
  5. Take great pains to be clear. Remember that though you start by knowing what you mean, the reader doesn't, and a single ill-chosen word may lead him to a total misunderstanding. In a story it is terribly easy just to forget that you have not told the reader something that he needs to know -- the whole picture is so clear in your own mind that you forget that it isn't the same in his.
  6. When you give up a bit of work don't (unless it is hopelessly bad) throw it away. Put it in a drawer. It may come in useful later. Much of my best work, or what I think my best, is the re-writing of things begun and abandoned years earlier.
  7. Don't use a typewriter. The noise will destroy your sense of rhythm, which still needs years of training.
  8. Be sure you know the meaning (or meanings) of every word you use."
Collected Letters, Volume III, pp. 1108-1109

Comments

Lisa Marie said…
LOL I can think of several writers who have made a name for themselves by writing books ABOUT writing. They'd probably disagree with point #4.
Will Vaus said…
They probably would. But I think CSL is correct on this point. If all you are interested in is writing that is not a sufficient end in itself. It is like the contrast Lewis often draws between looking at or looking along. You can look at a sunbeam or you can look along it back up to the sun. In the same way, you can look at writing, and some writers can sometimes write helpfully on this subject, as Lewis briefly has. But it is much more important to look along someone's writing to a more interesting subject. The same is true with God. We can look at what other people have had to say about God. Or we can look along what they say, or write, back up to God himself and perhaps even enter into a relationship with him.

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