Learning from the great writers

By Dennis Mellersh

Aspiring authors looking for advice on how to write the  book or books they may feel they have inside their them can gain valuable insights into the creative writing process by not only reading the works of great writers, but also by reading their comments on the art of writing, the purpose of writing, and life in general.

This can include biographies and autobiographies of major novelists, their letters, and articles written about them.

As an example, let’s look at Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938), the major early 20th Century novelist, and some comments on writing and the writing life he wrote in one of his letters*. (Note: not to be confused with the contemporary writer Tom Wolfe).

In one of his letters, Thomas Wolfe noted, “I am working from six to ten hours a day…I sleep till noon, go for a walk, buy a book, read for an hour, then back to my room and work from four or five o’clock until ten at night. Then I go out to eat and walk, back at midnight or one o’clock, and then work till three or four.”

“…The best life I can now dream of for myself, the highest hope I have is this: that I believe in my work and know that it is good and that somehow, in my own way, secretly and obscurely, I have power in me to get the books inside me out of me. ..”

“You ask again if I look upon writing as an escape from reality: in no sense of the word does it seem to me to be an escape from reality; I should rather say that it is an attempt to approach and penetrate reality.”

These words about writing and the writing life from Thomas Wolfe are just a minuscule example of the encouragement, guidance, and inspiration that we can find in works by great writers and works written about these writers.

I would urge you however, not to depend only on the Internet for researching this type of material. Better to make the time to go to your local library and get involved with real books. As an aspiring book writer your research universe needs to be much wider than electronic materials.

*This letter by Thomas Wolfe was excerpted from The Letters of Thomas Wolfe, edited by Elizabeth Nowell, and was reproduced in The Creative Writer, published by Writer’s Digest, Copyright 1972.