The Marginalian
The Marginalian

John Green’s Superb Advice to Aspiring Writers and Creators in the Digital Age

Advice to aspiring authors from successful ones seems to be a special meta-genre of literature, with notable contributions from Ernest Hemingway, H.P. Lovecraft, Neil Gaiman, and a running list of literary greats. But some of the best and timeliest advice ever given comes from prolific author John Green, whose most recent novel, The Fault in Our Stars, became TIME’s #1 fiction book of the year. In this erratic but infectiously charming video, Green reflects on why he loves the internet and offers some invaluable advice to aspiring writers, echoing Schopenhauer’s admonition about writing for money and recasting Faulkner’s famous contention that writers write “not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before” in timely light:

Every single day, I get emails from aspiring writers asking my advice about how to become a writer, and here is the only advice I can give: Don’t make stuff because you want to make money — it will never make you enough money. And don’t make stuff because you want to get famous — because you will never feel famous enough. Make gifts for people — and work hard on making those gifts in the hope that those people will notice and like the gifts.

Maybe they will notice how hard you worked, and maybe they won’t — and if they don’t notice, I know it’s frustrating. But, ultimately, that doesn’t change anything — because your responsibility is not to the people you’re making the gift for, but to the gift itself.

For more timeless wisdom on writing, see the collected advice of great authors, then revisit 2013’s best books on writing.


Published January 14, 2014

https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/01/14/john-green-advice-on-making/

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