The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Search results for “advice for writers”

What to Do When Your Wife Is More Successful than You: Wise Advice from Tchaikovsky’s Father, 150 Years Ahead of Its Time
What to Do When Your Wife Is More Successful than You: Wise Advice from Tchaikovsky’s Father, 150 Years Ahead of Its Time

“Married happiness is based upon mutual respect, and you would no more permit your wife to be a kind of servant, than she would ask you to be her lackey.”

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Are Writers Born or Made? Jack Kerouac on the Crucial Difference Between Talent and Genius
Are Writers Born or Made? Jack Kerouac on the Crucial Difference Between Talent and Genius

“Genius gives birth, talent delivers.”

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George Orwell on Writing and the Four Questions Great Writers Must Ask Themselves
George Orwell on Writing and the Four Questions Great Writers Must Ask Themselves

“By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself.”

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Werner Herzog’s No-Nonsense Advice to Aspiring Filmmakers and Creative Entrepreneurs
Werner Herzog’s No-Nonsense Advice to Aspiring Filmmakers and Creative Entrepreneurs

Why all creative work is the product of “a furious inner excitement” and how to cultivate the best possible “climate of excitement of the mind.”

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The Hedgehog and the Fox: Italo Calvino on the Two Types of Writers
The Hedgehog and the Fox: Italo Calvino on the Two Types of Writers

“I am a fox, even though I dream of being a hedgehog in all my dreams, and even though I try to write hedgehog books if you take each of them one by one.”

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Jane Austen’s Advice on Writing, in Letters to Her Teenage Niece
Jane Austen’s Advice on Writing, in Letters to Her Teenage Niece

Epistles on the fine art of “speeding truth into the world.”

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Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch’s Three Rules of Writing and Four Elements of Style: Timeless Advice from 1914
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch’s Three Rules of Writing and Four Elements of Style: Timeless Advice from 1914

“Persuasion — the highest form of persuasion at any rate — cannot be achieved without a sense of beauty.”

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Zadie Smith on the Psychology of the Two Types of Writers
Zadie Smith on the Psychology of the Two Types of Writers

“It’s a feeling of happiness that knocks me clean out of adjectives. I think sometimes that the best reason for writing novels is to experience those four and a half hours after you write the final word.”

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Celebrated Writers on the Creative Benefits of Keeping a Diary
Celebrated Writers on the Creative Benefits of Keeping a Diary

Reflections on the value of recording our inner lives from Woolf, Thoreau, Sontag, Emerson, Nin, Plath, and more.

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Nietzsche’s 10 Rules for Writers, Penned in a Letter to His Lover and Muse
Nietzsche’s 10 Rules for Writers, Penned in a Letter to His Lover and Muse

“Style ought to prove that one believes in an idea; not only that one thinks it but also feels it.”

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