Writing Advice from Classic Authors

On Certain Brisk, Bright Days by Kate Chopin

By | On February 24, 2015 | Updated August 15, 2026 | Comments (0)

On Certain Brisk, Bright Days, an essay by American author Kate Chopin, was originally published in the St. Louis Dispatch in November 1899. It was the same year her now-classic novella The Awakening was published.

In her analysis of The Awakening, Sarah Wyman writes that it “came under immediate attack when published.” Though it was rarely formally banned, as myth would have it, the amount and ferocity of the vitriol against this exquisitely written novella banished it from the public just as thoroughly as if it indeed had been.

The author died virtually forgotten, yet The Awakening has been rediscovered and holds a secure and prominent position as a watershed text in U.S. literature and feminist studies.” Despite the initial negative initial reaction to her novella, Kate Chopin created this cheery description of her writing life: Read More→

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Quick Writing Tips from Katherine Anne Porter

By | On February 9, 2015 | Updated September 16, 2026 | Comments (0)

Here are some helpful writing tips from Katherine Anne Porter (1890 – 1980), novelist and short story writer best known for Ship of Fools and Pale Horse, Pale Rider. Hers was a true American rags to riches story.

Porter often took many years after events to write about and analyze them fully, using her own life as a basis for her work. Her writing was a way to face questions that were left unanswered in her own life, giving her work a passionate, realistic, and sometimes harsh voice. Read More→

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How to Find Time to Write: Advice from Classic Authors

By | On January 6, 2015 | Updated July 5, 2026 | Comments (0)

In Thunder and Lightening: Cracking Open the Writer’s Craft, Natalie Goldberg offers advice on how to find time to write. She suggests structuring your time — strictly!  Be precise, set your writing time up in advance, and take that time commitment seriously:

“… Don’t ever say you’ll write every day because when you don’t — and I promise you, there will be days you won’t — you’ll hate yourself. Let’s push it further — where will you write? At the Blue Moon Café? OK, you’ve made a date, and like any other — with the dentist, the accountant, the hairdresser — you have to keep it. You’re committed, it’s in your appointment book.”

Finding time to write has always been a concern, especially for women, who traditionally raised the kids, kept the house, and cared for aging parents. And sometimes, wrote to pay the bills before they allowed themselves to write for self-expression. Read More→

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Louisa May Alcott’s Advice to Aspiring Writers

By | On December 29, 2014 | Updated May 11, 2025 | Comments (1)

Even after Louisa May Alcott had already achieved fame as an author, she continued to answer letters from readers.  Louisa seemed rather smitten with her own narrative and didn’t mind repeating it for her own benefit and that of others.

She was generous in her advice to aspiring writers — readers of her work, especially young women — who sought words of wisdom for achieving success.

On occasion, Louisa professed disdain for writing what she called “moral tales,” but any reluctance on her part gave way to willingness to write them anyway, because, as she said, they paid well. The money she earned allowed her to care for her dear mother and family.

 

There’s no easy road to success

Here’s a response Louisa sent to one female reader, a Miss Churchill, asking her advice on achieving success. It was written on Christmas Day, circa 1878:

“I can only say to you as I do to the many young writers who ask for advice —there is no easy road to successful authorship; it has to be earned by long and patient labor, many disappointments, uncertainties and trials. Success is often a lucky accident, coming to those who may not deserve it, while others who do have to wait & hope till they have earned it. This is the best sort and the most enduring.”

. . . . . . . . . .

I worked for twenty years …

“I worked for twenty years poorly paid, little known, and quite without any ambition but to eke out a living, as I chose to support myself and begin to do it at sixteen.

This long drill was of use, and when I wrote Hospital Sketches [see LMA’s Civil War Journals] by the beds of my soldier boys in the shape of letters home I had no idea that I was taking the first step toward what is called fame. Read More→

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Self-Discipline for Writers: Tips from Classic Women Authors

By | On October 22, 2014 | Updated August 9, 2025 | Comments (2)

Developing the discipline to write regularly is an age-old dilemma. For tips on self-discipline for writers, we’ll turn to some of our classic women authors. A famous writerly quote goes something like: “The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.”

Attributed to Mary Heaton Vorse (1874 – 1966), variations of it have been credited to (mostly male) authors from Ernest Hemingway to Kingsley Amis.

If only it were that simple. Ms. Vorse plied her trade in an era when the only thing between the writer whose seat was on the chair and the typewriter or notebook on the desk was the dreaded blank page. For today’s writers, that dreaded blank page is on the computer screen, and behind it, the entire universe on the web, seducing you with endless distractions. Read More→

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