Mardy Grothe - Neverisms

Never force an idea; you’ll abort it if you do.ROBERT A. HEINLEIN, in Time Enough for Love (1973)

This entry from “The Notebooks of Lazarus Long” appears in the middle of a longer passage that speaks to a common experience among writers:

If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work,

never force an idea; you’ll abort it if you do.

Be patient and you’ll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait.

Never write about a place until you’re away from it,

because that gives you perspective.ERNEST HEMINGWAY

This came in a conversation with Arnold Samuelson, who recorded it in With Hemingway: A Year in Key West and Cuba (1984). Hemingway added: Immediately after you’ve seen something you can give a photographic description of it and make it accurate. That’s good practice, but it isn’t creative writing.

Samuelson hitchhiked from Minnesota to Key West, Florida, in 1934, hoping to meet Hemingway, his literary hero. The writer took an immediate liking to the adventurous young man and hired him as a deckhand for his new fishing boat, the Pilar . After a year, Samuelson returned home, and the two men continued a correspondence until Hemingway’s death in 1961. Samuelson eventually settled in Colorado, where he built homes by day and violins by night. After he died in 1981, his daughter Darby found a draft of the With Hemingway manuscript stashed away in a trunk. She spent over a year readying the manuscript for publication.

Never tell your reader what your story is about.GEORGE V. HIGGINS

In On Writing , a 1990 writing guide, Higgins added: “Reading is a participatory sport. People do it because they are intelligent and enjoy figuring things out for themselves.”

Never put off till to-morrow the book you can read today.HOLBROOK JACKSON, tweaking a classic saying,

in his 1930 book The Anatomy of Bibliomania

Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure;

emotion is easily propagated from the writer to the reader.JOSEPH JOUBERT

Never insult a writer.

You may find yourself immortalized in ways you may not appreciate.GARRISON KEILLOR

Never force yourself to read a book— it is a wasted effort.ARTHUR KOESTLER

Koestler offered this in his 1945 book of essays The Yogi and the Commissar . He added: “That book is right for you which needs just the amount of concentration on your part to make you turn the radio off.”

Never use an abstract term if a concrete one will serve.DAVID LAMBUTH

In The Golden Book on Writing (1976), Lambuth added, “Appeal directly to your reader’s emotions rather than indirectly through the intermediary of the intellectualizing process. Tell him that the man gave a dollar to the tramp rather than that he indulged in an act of generosity .”

Never trust the artist. Trust the tale.

The proper function of a critic

is to save the tale from the artist who created it.D. H. LAWRENCE, in Studies in

Classic American Literature (1923)

Lawrence, a novelist who was writing as a critic in this observation, believed there was often a great difference between the tale authors intended to tell and the story that was eventually told. Speaking as a critic, Lawrence said the “didactic statements” that authors make about their works should be ignored. It’s an audacious pronouncement, suggesting that critics know more about an author’s work than the authors themselves.

Never open a book with weather.ELMORE LEONARD

This was the first of ten writing rules that Leonard originally enumerated in a 2001 New York Times op-ed piece. In 2007, it was published as Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing , a beautifully produced gift book with illustrations by Joe Ciardiello. Noting that readers are more interested in characters than weather, he warned, “The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people.” Leonard’s list also included these no-nos:

Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”

Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said” . . . he admonished gravely.

(Notice here that Leonard violates his own rule to make the point.)

Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.

On this last point, Leonard wrote, “The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in.” He illustrated his point by writing: “I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with ‘she asseverated,’ and I had to stop reading to get the dictionary.”

Never exaggerate. Never say more than you really mean.C. S. LEWIS, in a 1959 letter to an aspiring writer

Never be sincere—sincerity is the death of writing.GORDON LISH

This was a stock saying that Lish offered in his writing workshops as well as in his everyday conversation. After serving as fiction editor at Esquire , Lish became an editor at the publishing firm of Alfred A. Knopf, where he was known as “Captain Fiction” for his work with such writers as Cynthia Ozick and Raymond Carver (many believed he served as more than an editor for Carver, with some even suggesting he was Carver’s “ghostwriter”).

Never give away a copy of your book to anyone who might buy it—

except maybe your mother.PAUL RAYMOND MARTIN

This comes from Martin’s Writer’s Little Instruction Book: Getting Published (2005). The book contains numerous suggestions and tips, many expressed neveristically:

Never excuse your work as “just a draft.”

Never submit a story still damp with inspiration.

Never argue with an editor over a rejection or a killed assignment.

Never allow the editor in your head to

dampen the emotions in your heart or the enthusiasm in your soul.

Never take your professional relationships for granted—

not with editors, not with agents, not with publishers.

Freshen these relationships with every new moon.

Never ask anyone, “Have you read my book?”DAVID L. MCKENNA

I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century:

that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.JAMES A. MICHENER, embracing an old tradition

William Safire told me something that really helped:

“Never feel guilty about reading. That’s what you do .”PEGGY NOONAN

Never say, “I’m nauseous.”

Even if it’s true, it’s not something you ought to admit.PATRICIA T. O’CONNER, in Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s

Guide to Better English in Plain English (2009)

In her bestselling style guide, O’Conner pointed out that we are made sick ( nauseated ) by someone or something that is sickening ( nauseous ). People who say “I am nauseous” are—technically—saying, “I am sickening.”

Never forget you are writing to be read,

to have your words experienced by others.ALICE ORR, in No More Rejections: 50 Secrets

to Writing a Manuscript That Sells (2004)