![Ten things about writing Ten things about writing](https://bookanista.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Black_Water_Sister_feature.jpg)
Ten things about writing
Any writer is prey to the temptation to hand out writing advice at the least provocation, but I try to refrain most of the time. There is sufficient writing and publishing advice on the internet to equal even the cat photos and pornography. But here are ten things I believe about writing: things I tell...
![Let the reader in Let the reader in](https://bookanista.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Samantha_Harvey_feature-290x290.jpg)
Let the reader in
I only have one tip for writing that I feel strongly about, and that is to write something that allows space for the reader. The reader is a living, breathing presence in the novel – not a particular reader for whose tastes you must write, but a notional one: a mind that lives among your...
![Make way for the good stuff Make way for the good stuff](https://bookanista.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Susan_Choi_290-290x290.jpg)
Make way for the good stuff
Susan Choi is the author of the novels The Foreign Student (1998), recipient of the Asian-American Literary Award; American Woman (2003), a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize; A Person of Interest (2008), a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award; and most recently My Education (2013). A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the...
![Golden rules Golden rules](https://bookanista.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Marmalade.jpg)
Golden rules
In the 1980s Nina Stibbe wrote letters home to her sister in Leicester describing her trials and triumphs as a nanny in north London to the family of Mary-Kay Wilmers, now editor of the London Review of Books. There’s a cat nobody likes, a visiting dog called Ted Hughes, almost daily suppertime visits from Alan...