For the last seven years Poets & Writers Magazine has published Ten Questions, a weekly series that interviews authors of new works of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. The idea is to celebrate the publication of their books while sharing insights about their professional journeys, offering the magazine’s readers both inspiration and practical tools to apply to their own craft and careers. Authors reveal useful, surprising, and sometimes touching details about their writing habits, artistic influences, experience working with agents and editors, and more about their path to publishing everything from debut books to the latest title in an already expansive oeuvre. As 2024 draws to a close, we share some of our favorite responses this year to the question that speaks directly to our desire for some guidance through the often-dark labyrinth of the literary life: What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received?
Clockwise from upper left: Miller Oberman, Kimiko Hahn, Srikanth Reddy, Ismet Prcic, Tara M. Stringfellow, Margot Livesey, Callie Siskel, Melissa Mogollan, Morgan Talty, and Karla Cornejo Villavicencio. (Credit: Oberman: Beowulf Sheehan; Hahn: Beowulf Sheehan; Reddy: Kaitlyn Shea; Stringfellow: Josh Looney Photography; Livesey: Michael Lionstar; Siskel: Lauren Kallen; Mogollon: Joy Imani Bullock; Talty: Tin House; Cornejo Villavicencio: Talya Zemach-Bersin.)
1. “The wonderful poet Alice Friman told me that a poem is a ghost and the words are the sheet you throw over the ghost so you can see it. ‘You can never see the poem,’ she said. ‘It’s invisible. The best you can do is make your words, your sheet, as sheer as possible, to glimpse it.’ She also told me (and you have to imagine this in a very heavy New York accent), ‘If you’re kissing JoJo behind the barn, and you have an idea for a poem, STOP KISSING JOJO.’ Sometimes, when I see a writer sitting somewhere furiously writing (all you public space writers!) I also picture some sad JoJo abandoned by a barn.” —Miller Oberman, author of Impossible Things
2. “I was in an undergraduate workshop with Marvin Bell at the University of Iowa. He said something to the effect of: ‘You can’t fool the unconscious.’ And it’s true—you can go with intention, or you can explore where the poem leads you. Where your unconscious leads you. To quote Frost, ‘And this has made all the difference.’” —Kimiko Hahn, author of The Ghost Forest: New and Selected Poems
3. “This isn’t writing advice, but it’s great advice for writers and for pretty much anyone in all sorts of situations. I once heard someone talking about an art studio course where the instructor was circling the room, looking at students’ work while they were making their sculptures. The instructor stood behind one student who was struggling with a project, maybe overthinking it and trying all sorts of different things that just weren’t working—and becoming hopelessly tangled and frustrated in the process. The teacher whispered into the student’s ear, ‘Let it be latent.’”
“I have no idea if that helped the student or if it just worsened their perplexity, but it’s helped me again and again as a writer. Whenever I start to feel like I’m forcing things, I try to remember to ‘let it be latent’—to trust that what you’re trying to bring out might already be there, perceptible to others, informing what you’re trying to do from within. Maybe it’s just me, but it always helps.” —Srikanth Reddy, author of The Unsignificant
4. “Aleksandar Hemon answered a fan letter of mine early on in his career. I asked him, how does he do it, write these delightful, cohesive stories, after everything he’s been through. Everything I write, I complained, comes out in these chunks, these shards of narrative that don’t fit together. He replied, ‘You have a life story, and for that there’s no form that already exists. You have to find a form that fits your life story.’ I was free then, off to the races.” —Ismet Prcic, author of Unspeakable Home
5. “Keep writing. I know it’s not the most helpful. But in some ways, it is. If you love this craft, if you want to add to it in whatever small way you can, then keep writing.” —Tara M. Stringfellow, author of Magic Enuff
6. “Use an outline—it’s the editor’s plea, and they’re right each time. The best spiritual advice I’ve received is to avoid writing for an imagined white audience that may or may not exist and whose minds I cannot read and whose hearts it is not my job to change. Just write, you know?” —Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, author of Catalina
7. “I gotta go with what Rick Bass said to me: ‘Make something inexplicable happen, and then work to reconcile it, to make sense of it, while being specific.’” —Morgan Talty, author of Fire Exit
8. “As a writer, sometimes it’s better to lean into your strengths instead of trying to make up for your weaknesses. Sometimes the story needs that.” —Melissa Mogollon, author of Oye
9. “If you already know what you want to say, if you are attempting to transcribe the past, it won’t come alive on the page.” —Callie Siskel, author of Two Minds
10. “Tolerate your own mediocrity. Believe in the optimism of revision.” —Margot Livesey, author of The Road From Belhaven
