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5 Writing Tips: Paul Harding

By Paul Harding | Nov 22, 2013
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Paul Harding is the author of two novels, Tinkers and Enon, both of which have received starred reviews from PW. Oh, and the former is also the winnner of the Pulitzer Prize. Pay attention, because it's not every day that a Pulitzer winner shares his secrets. And there's even a special bonus writing tip. 1. Write as precisely and as lucidly and as richly as you can about what you find truly mysterious and irreducible about human experience, and not obscurely about what will prove to be received opinion or clich once the reader figures out your stylistic conceit. Theres all the difference in the world between mystery and mystification.

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2. Contrary to all those times youve heard a writer confess X at a reading that he writes fiction because he is a pathological liar, fiction writing is all about telling the truth. Only $18.95/month for Digital Access or $20.95 for Print+Digital Dont confine truth toAccess! fact. Imaginative truth is as powerful and often enough more so than fact. William Hazlitt wrote that poetry (and by extension, fiction) is the language of the imagination and it, is not the less true to nature, because it is false in point of fact; but so much the more true and natural, if it conveys the impression which the object under the influence of passion makes on the mind.

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3. Dont write your books for people who wont like them. Give yourself wholly to the kind of book you want to write and dont try to please readers who like something different. Otherwise, youll end up with the worst of both worlds. I write lyrical, introspective, experiential books concerned with consciousness and perception. If a reader wants to know what my protagonists insurance policies are, hell be better off curling up with a nice cup of chamomile tea and an actuarial table. Similarly, dont write your books for bad readers. Your books will suffer from bad readers no matter what, so write them for brilliant, big-brained and big-hearted people who will love you for feeding their minds with feasts of beauty.

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4. It is true even though everyone says it is that you need to read and read a lot and read the best books. Not only do you need to read the best books, you need to read them well. I think its true that generally speaking your writing can only be as good as the best books youve read. (There are exceptions to this rule, and those are the writers youd like to strangle for their off-handed brilliance, but they are so rare as to prove the rule by their exception. They are also so rare that you should not be tempted to think that you are one of them. You are not.) Its true, too, that your writing can only be as good as the best readings youve given of the best books. I cringe when I hear someone say, I read a lot of books. Better to read one good book well than a hundred poorly. Aspire to be a world class reader. 5. Fiction is about immanence. We are beings who experience our selves in time and space, through our senses. Fiction persuades its readers that they are reading something artful by immersing them as fully as possible in the senses and perceptions, the thoughts and actions of fictional lives. No matter how philosophical or rhetorical you want to be, at the end of the day all philosophy and rhetoric is derived from sitting on a hard, uncomfortable park bench in the cold, or sweating it out on a cot in Mumbai, or chopping carrots for the stew, or standing in high cold wet grass at dawn. 6. Get your art written any way you can. Its tempting as a teacher to present your own method as normative. Its maybe even more tempting as a student to look for a method that sounds good and austere and disciplined, with a dash of charming self-deprecation thrown in, and conform to it in the hopes that it will work for you, because writing is hard, after all, and its nice to think that if you follow a prefabricated set of rules youll get a story or a poem or a novel out of it. But a huge part of being a writer is discovering your own intellectual and aesthetic autonomy, and how you best get the best words onto the page. The musician Tom Petty tells a great anecdote about working with the producer Jeff Lynne. Petty was in the studio making an album and being very doctrinaire about some recording method or another, much to Lynnes exasperation, and so Lynne finally said to him, Tom, no one gives a shit about how you make your records. They only care if the record sounds good. Outside of writing workshops and seminars, no one cares if you sit facing the blank page for six hours every day beginning at sunrise, or if you loaf around frittering away most days like a bum, or if you write your book one line at a time on the sly in between typing your bosss business letters at the office. Whats important is that your reader holds a thrilling, amazing work of art in her hands.

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Suzanne Marie DeWitt Lovely, inspiring, and encouraging words. Thanks Paul. Reply Like 1 March 13 at 4:40pm

Everyman Jack University of Copenhagen I want to know where you get off plagiarizing my mind for item three. I am not complaining, dear writer. I am just astounded you did it so well that even I the source, so to speak errr write, can understand it. Thanks for the whole piece. Well put, usable! Reply Like 2 November 24, 2013 at 11:20am

Audrey Montgomery #4- Don't hate me cause I'm beautiful. After Sixty eight years of road weary miles, the only beauty left in me is in the things that come out of my mind. Thomas E. Montgomery Reply Like Nikki Bee 1 December 16, 2013 at 1:29pm Top Commenter For all your German to English needs. . . at Freelance translator

I really appreciate the last tip. I get so irritated with authors and creative writing teachers alike who tell aspiring writers--many of them full-time students or professionals in another field-that one can only be a writer if they have a strict, regimen and devote the same amount of time every day to meeting a specific quota for pages or words by the time one goes to bed. I feel like that is such privileged advice, since many of us do not have the kind of lives where we can just drop everything for hours a day and focus on our writing. I absolutely agree with him, "it doesn't matter how the book is written" and that books still seem to be written by people who don't follow this disciplined method, because as long as you are writing something, it is still getting written. The time of publication will just be pushed back. Reply Like 1 November 28, 2013 at 10:37am

Leanne Dyck University of Winnipeg So many nuggets of gold. I especially like, 'Don't confine truth to fact'. And I'm committed to becoming a 'world class reader'. Thank you, Paul Harding. Reply Like 1 November 25, 2013 at 8:16am

Arinetta Utley Representante at Miche Love this advice. Number 5 is my favorite. Details, details and more details. ... that's my take a-way. Thanks. Reply Like Mikael Covey 1 November 25, 2013 at 9:21am Top Commenter Works at Author

This is the second time I've read "authors' tips." Both have been great, even though I expected them not to be. I.e., I'm leery of "writing tips" but...since I agree with Harding, he seems really smart to me. - MCovey, editor, Lit Up Magazine Reply Like 1 November 22, 2013 at 4:50pm

Syzygy Pop Los Angeles, California ah, if only i believed in the authentic autonomy... Reply Like November 22, 2013 at 5:07pm Robert Mendelson Reply Like Pete Goudey anyone see the 3 "n"s in "winner" ?? lol Reply Like December 6, 2013 at 2:43pm l_b_moniz (signed in using yahoo) Wow, he really sounds like a writing teacher from Harvard. Obviously no down in the trenches journalistic writing in his background. My personal feeling after half a century as a salaried writer is that #4 is a self-description. Also, to the editor: It's WRentham, Mass., rather than Wentham. Reply Like November 30, 2013 at 11:16am
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Top Commenter Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Writing tip #6: Read, and then reread, Paul Harding's 5 writing tips (and his bonus tip, too!) 1 November 22, 2013 at 9:44am

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