Margaret Atwood on Writing
Margaret Atwood is one of our most treasured writers of science fiction, dystopian fiction, and feminist fiction. Recently, her classic cautionary story The Handmaid’s Tale was turned into a chart-topping series on Hulu, but that’s just one of dozens of critically acclaimed, mind-bending works she has penned over the course of her career.
Ms. Atwood has taught writing for decades, most recently as part of the Masterclass franchise, and has a lot to say about the craft and call of writing.
12 Margaret Atwood Quotes on Writing
1. All writers are double, for the simple reason that you can never actually meet the author of the book you have just read. Too much time has elapsed between composition and publication, and the person who wrote the book is now a different person.
If you’ve ever been traditionally published, you feel the other edge of this sword. In the year or two between typing “the end” and seeing your book in print, you’ve grown so much as a writer that the book almost embarrasses us. That’s just part of the game, and we should resist that temptation to be embarrassed — instead replacing it with pride about how much we have grown in our chosen craft.
The other thing to remember about this is how much books can change people. You’ve felt it. I’ve felt it. Nobody (well, nobody I’d trust) hasn’t come away from at least one book a different person than they were when they opened it. That’s the beauty of writing, the thing we should all aspire to.
2. If you really do want to write, and you’re struggling to get started, you’re afraid of something. What is that fear?
I encountered this early in my life, and it’s really helped me navigate writing as a career. It starts with writer’s block. When the words aren’t coming, ask what you’re afraid the words are going to say. Very often, it’s simply a fear that they won’t be good words — and turning off the internal editor solves the writer’s block.
When that’s not it, we can examine what fear is holding us back. Is the scene dealing with some trauma we haven’t fully processed ourselves yet? Does it cover material or ideas we don’t want our parents or kids to know we think about? Do we know at a deep level that it’s not the right move for our character or plot, and we’re afraid of what the mistake will look like? Whatever the fear, identifying it is the first step in putting it to rest.
See also: all the business of writing tasks we keep putting off. The marketing, social media, pitching, ad spend, networking, and all the rest; we’re afraid we’re not good at it, that we’ll fail. The only way to get over that is to become better at those tasks.
3. When I was young I believed that “non-fiction” meant “true”. But you read a history written in, say, 1920, and a history of the same events written in 1995: they’re very different.
I view this as a call to make certain our fiction includes what is true as deeply and fundamentally as we can. Sure, it can include all the dinosaurs, spaceships, and magic spells we want. That’s just fiction, and has nothing to do with the truth.
We should ask ourselves as we sit down for our next project, what truths we want the story to reveal. Written from the start with this in mind, we can craft fiction that’s realer than today’s newspaper.
4. All writers learn from the dead. As long as you continue to write, you continue to explore the work of writers who have preceded you; you also feel judged and held to account by them.
This one hits me in two ways. First, it reminds me that it’s okay for us to be derivative from time to time, especially early in our careers. We started wanting to write because an author moved us deeply. It’s okay to want to pay homage to that writer on our own pages.
Second, that line about being judged and held to account gets me every time. As writers, we too often compare ourselves to those great writers we love: the once-in-a-generation talents whose books have stood the test of decades, and were written while they were at the top of their game. We don’t have to produce something that good to write something worth selling and being proud of.
5. Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you’re on your own…
She’s right. It is gambling. It’s placing financial and emotional bets on our ability to express on the page what’s going on in our heads and our hearts. It’s lonely, too. Even with a writing group, a mentor, some editors, and a publicity team, nobody’s in our heads but us.
Those are some of the ways this is a tough gig, but that’s okay because…
6…Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.
Ms. Atwood’s conclusion to the above truths is so pithy and challenging it always makes me smile. Writing is hard. Some will say that being an aspiring writer is especially hard, and I would agree with them. Choosing this path means accepting the hardships and moving forward anyway.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn't gripe and vent about it from time to time. That’s necessary in every career. We just shouldn’t let the tough stuff we volunteered for get in the way of doing the job.
It’s worth doing.
7. What you read is as important as what you write.
It seems like every writer who gives advice has something along the lines of this to say. Too many aspiring writers tell me they don’t read much anymore — and a few seem even contemptuous of the people who read what they write.
That’s no way to succeed as a writer.
Elite athletes work out for hours each day, but they watch their diet all day every week. Input determines output, so it’s our job to read. Two small details on this I feel not enough writers are fully aware of:
- This includes reading bad books. By reading a bad book in our genre, and identifying what makes it bad, we become better able to make the same determinations about our own writing.
- Audiobooks are not cheating. As writers, we’ve already given up a chunk of our discretionary time. It’s perfectly okay to do our reading while driving, mowing the lawn, and folding the laundry. For some of us, it’s the only way we can.
8. All stories are about wolves…anything else is sentimental drivel. Think about it. There’s escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist.
This interesting and complex metaphor helps me determine the core conflict and message of anything I’m writing. It helps me find the bare bones, then suck the marrow from them to put it on the page.
It’s also funny, and helps me approach the challenges of writing with a lighter heart and better attitude. YMMV, of course. Maybe for you clowns is a better metaphor. Or kittens. Whatever works for you is perfectly fine.
9. The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself.
Apply this first to writing that first draft, the one that often comes like pulling teeth. If you tell yourself nobody but you gets to see that first pile of words, you can move swiftly, maintain momentum, take risks, and experiment in ways you wouldn’t otherwise. You can always clean up on the second pass. It’s immensely freeing.
Of course, Ms. Atwood was referring to the finished product and how you express your personal truths on the page. Writing takes courage, because each line tells the reader a little about our secret selves. By pretending nobody is going to read what we write, we’re able to tell a little more, with a little more honesty.
10. Nobody knows where ideas come from, but let us say, if you immerse yourself in something, whether it be music, painting, or writing…you are going to get ideas about it. But you have to do the immersing first. You’re not just sitting there, waiting for lightning to strike.
“Where do you get your ideas?”
Nobody really knows, but the quote above gets pretty close as far as I can tell. We get ideas about a thing by being involved in that thing. We practice it, read about it, talk with friends about it, daydream about it. Out of that involvement comes deeper understanding, better technique…and ideas.
Then we take those ideas and turn them into stories. That’s the gig.
11. You become a writer by writing. There is no other way. So do it. Do it more. Do it again. Do it better. Fail. Fail better.
There’s not much else to say about this. If anybody has written a more accurate, clear, direct, and actionable plan for becoming a successful writer, I've never seen it.
12. Possibly, then, writing has to do with darkness, and a desire (or perhaps a compulsion) to enter it, and with luck to illuminate it, and to bring something back out to the light.
I see two ways to look at this: one for us as authors, and one for the protagonists in our stories.
For our protagonists, it’s a blueprint for their tale. They start in the light, enter darkness, go through it, and come out brighter for the journey. Whatever structure you put on it, however long they stay in there, that’s the basics. It’s good to ask ourselves about the story in those terms, to help us find what doesn’t belong — and what needs expanding.
For us, it’s a call to our duty as writers. It’s our job to shine a little light into the world. Whether that light is shone to clearly describe and define a nonfiction topic, or to help readers feel seen and hopeful, or simply to give a chuckle or a scare to brighten a day, that’s what we do and why we do it.
One For the Road
I’d like to close with my very favorite quote from this highly accomplished writer:
I would rather dance as a ballerina, though faultily, than as a flawless clown.
To me this addresses how hard writing is. To make it as a writer — whether you define “make it” as anything from making a good living to spinning an entertaining yarn — is difficult. It’s far more difficult than working a nine to five that doesn’t call you to share a little bit of your soul.
But that difficulty makes it worth doing, even in the middle of the night when your brain tries to convince you otherwise. It’s better to be a flawed writer than somebody who doesn’t write at all.
Photo Credit: Piarasò Mídheach (Collision 2022, Opening Night, June 21, 2022.) CC BY 2.0
