Six Writing Tips From John Steinbeck

Steinbeck has been my favorite author ever since I was forced to read Cannery Row freshman year of high school. Friday in Florence was heavily inspired by (sometimes dangerously close to) Steinbeck’s writing style, with me even borrowing a few characters from his books. I felt it fitting to end this little mini-series of the tips of my favorite authors with the one who inspired me to become one. Without further ado, below you will find the six major lessons on writing by John Steinbeck.

Accept Fear

It is not so very hard to judge a story after it is written, but, after many years, to start a story still scares me to death. I will go so far as to say that the writer who not scared is happily unaware of the remote and tantalizing majesty of the medium.

Steinbeck won a National Book of the year award, a Pulitzer in Literature, and countless other awards for his writing. If anyone could be confident in their storytelling, it was him. Yet with every story, fear was always present. I can’t speak for Steinbeck in what caused this fear; maybe fear of not doing the story justice, or fear of how it will be received, but if one of the greatest writers of this country still felt that fear at the beginning of each story, then you will as well. Accept it, and keep going.

Don’t worry about finishing

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

We start a project with grand ideas of how it will finish. How it will look, how it will be received and adored by the masses. We rarely achieve what we envision in our minds, and the frustration of this inevitably can paralyze the writer. Don’t worry about the end result. Worry about the page (or screen these days) in front of you. Or as a much smarter person once said, “just keep swimming.”

Write for One

Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.

When I first started Friday in Florence, I spread myself too thin. I kept trying to bend my writing so it would appease every face I thought might read it. In trying to please everyone, I wasn’t able to please even one.

I ended up choosing a certain person who had actually inspired some of my writing and writing like only they were going to read it. Rather than feeling like I was writing with a crowd of people behind me, looking over my shoulder and giving me unwarranted suggestions, my writing became a single conversation with this individual. The crowd faded away, and I was free to focus my efforts.

I wish that I had known this at the beginning.

Stay Disciplined

All sorts of things might happen in the course of this book but I must not be weak. This must be done. The failure of will even for one day has a devastating effect on the whole, far more important than just the loss of time and wordage. The whole physical basis of the novel is discipline of the writer, of his material, of the language. And sadly enough, if any of the discipline is gone, all of it suffers.

In writing, there is no boss. At most, you have an impatient publisher or a nagging agent, but for the most part, you are the boss. It’s up to you to have the discipline to clock in every day, to take responsibility for a bad day, and still show up the next. To be a professional. The greatest writers were not great because they were favored by constant inspiration or talent, but rather because they had the discipline to keep going when both evaded them. Stay the course.

There is no magic formula

If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes, but by no means always, find the way to do it. You must perceive the excellence that makes a good story good or the errors that make a bad story. For a bad story is only an ineffective story.”

Everyone hopes that there is a secret to writing. The fact that I have spent so much time researching my favorite authors’ methods rather than actually creating something myself is a testament to this hope. There are tips, better ways of doing things that save time and focus efforts, but there are no shortcuts. Find something worth expressing, and then try your best to convey it sincerely. 

Understand it never gets easier

I will end this article and mini-series with this. Steinbeck, after winning every award for writing possible, including a Nobel prize, had this to say about the craft.

 I remember one last piece of advice given me. It was during the exuberance of the rich and frantic '20s, and I was going out into that world to try and to be a writer.

      I was told, "It's going to take a long time, and you haven't got any money. Maybe it would be better if you could go to Europe."

      "Why?" I asked.

      "Because in Europe poverty is a misfortune, but in America it is shameful. I wonder whether or not you can stand the shame of being poor."

      It wasn't too long afterward that the depression came. Then everyone was poor and it was no shame anymore. And so I will never know whether or not I could have stood it. But surely my teacher was right about one thing. It took a long time - a very long time. And it is still going on, and it has never got easier.

      She told me it wouldn't.

Here’s to it never getting easier.

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