“Nobody can advise you and help you, nobody,” said Rainer Maria Rilke in Letters to a Young Poet more than a century ago. “There is only one way. Go into yourself.” Rilke, of course, was right – nobody but yourself can help. In the end it all comes down to the strike of the word on the page, not to mention the strike thereafter, and the strike after that. But Rilke was taken by the request from a young writer, and he corresponded with Franz Xaver Kappus in 10 letters over the course of six years. Rilke’s was advice on matters of religion, love, feminism, sex, art, solitude and patience, but it was also keyed into the life of the poet and how these things might shape the words upon the page.
“This most of all,” he says. “Ask yourself in the most silent hour of night: must I write?”
- There are no rules
- Your first line
- Don’t write what you know
- The terror of the white page
- Creating characters
- Writing dialogue
- Seeking structure
- Language and plot
- Punctuation
- Research
- Fail, Fail, Fail
- Throw it all away
- Your last line
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