the word studio notebook

On Writing Writing Advice

I set aside this space to put in some writing advice—maybe a quote from some famous novelist or long-dead playwright—but finding writing advice now would send me sailing across the open sea, from island to island, whiling hours on pre-whittled quotes and Wikipedia links hidden behind choking vines. Those hours spent trawling the Internet’s seas would be years off my characters’ lives, a decade of adventure traded for a bon mot on the shore. If you need me, I’ll be in the bar at port, plied with drinks and telling tales, for a writer at sea is safe but that’s not what writers were made for.