Trust your reader, stop spoon-feeding your reader, give your reader credit for being as smart as you at least, and stop being so bloody beguiling; you in the back row, will you turn off that charm! Plain words on plain paper. Remember what Orwell says, that good prose is like a window-pane. Concentrate on sharpening your memory and peeling your sensibility. Cut every page you write by at least one third. Stop constructing those piffling little similes of yours. Work out what it is you want to say. Then say it in the most direct and vigorous way you can. Eat meat. Drink blood. Give up your social life and don’t think you can have friends. Rise in the quiet hours of the night and prick your fingertips, and use the blood for ink…..But do I take my own advice? Not a bit….” – Hilary Mantel
Al die schrijfadviezen zijn prima te lezen als hoe-te-leven-tips.