There are many books about writing. They inspire with the example of their eloquence as well as their advice.
A book (or a blog like this one) about writing can be your secret friend.
My favorite book of this kind is called Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking. Neither of the authors, David Bayles and Ted Orland, are primarily writers, although the book is beautifully written.
And their observations about making “art” struck me as completely apt to writing.
At the time I found it, I was not a beginning writer. I had been slogging away for more than a decade, and my chest relaxed a little at the opening quote, from Hippocrates: “Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, judgment difficult.”
Then the book begins: “Making art is difficult.”
Unlike so many others, this book acknowledged my difficulties and didn’t seem overly optimistic. It wasn’t written to sell books.
Many years later, the truths in this book still seem true to me.
Much of your work will seem a mistake.
“To all viewers but yourself, what matters is the product: the finished artwork. To you, and you alone, what matters is the process: the experience of shaping that artwork.”
“The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars. One of the basic and difficult lessons every artist must learn is that even the failed pieces are essential.”
The big danger is quitting.
“Those who continue to make art are those who have learned how to continue–or more precisely, have learned how to not quit.”
“Artists quit when they convince themselves that their next effort is already doomed to fail. And artists quit when the lose the destination for their work–for the place their work belongs.”
“Quitting means not starting again–and art is all about starting again.”
The best way not to quit is to find comrades and develop and stick to useful habits.
Share your work in progress with other writers or with a writing coach or editor. If you write best in the mornings, stick to the routine. Wear the same pair of slippers that seemed to make you write so well the other night.
“The hardest part of artmaking is living your life in such a way that your work gets done, over and over–and that means finding a host of practices that are just plain useful.”
Keep revising.
“Tolstoy, in the Age Before Typewriters, re-wrote War & Peace eight times and was still revising galley proofs as it finally rolled onto the press….Lincoln doubted his capacity to express what needed to be said at Gettysburg, yet pushed ahead…”
“The piece of art which seems so profoundly right in its finished state may earlier have been only inches or seconds away from total collapse.”
Review your own work.
“Your work is your guide: a complete, comprehensive, limitless reference book on your work. There is no other such book and it is yours alone.”
“Ask your work what it needs, not what you need. Then set aside your fears and listen, the way a good parent listens to a child.”
“Look at your work and it tells you how it is when you hold back or when you embrace. When you are lazy, your art is lazy; when you hold back, it holds back; when you heistate, it stands there staring, hands in its pockets. But when you commit, it comes on like blazes.”
Stay true to yourself.
“You make your place in the world by making part of it–by contributing some new part to the set….Each new piece of your art enlarges our reality. The world is not yet done.”
Be brave.
Brave is not the same as fearless. You will be afraid if you are taking risks.
“Sometimes to see your work’s rightful place you have to walk to the edge of the precipice and search the deep chasms. You have to see that the universe is not formless and dark throughout, but awaits simply the revealing light of your own mind.”