10 Bits Of Writing Advice From Colson Whitehead
We’re writing about the award-winning author of The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead. In this post, we feature 10 bits of writing advice from Colson Whitehead.
Colson Whitehead (born 6 November 1969) is an American novelist. He was the first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for consecutive books: the historical novels The Underground Railroad (with elements of speculative fiction)Â and The Nickel Boys.
Whitehead blended suspense and fantasy in his first novel, The Intuitionist
. He has written in many genres since then. He is the author of 11 books, including Crook Manifesto (a work of crime fiction and a family saga), Apex Hides The Hurt (with elements of the surreal), 
Zone One (a novel in a post-apocalyptic United States ravaged by zombies), and Sag Harbor (a coming-of-age story that explores the intersections of race and class).
Whitehead has also published two works of non-fiction, The Colossus of New York ( a collection of essays about New York City) and The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death (a dive into the 2011 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas).
Whitehead is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship (2002) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2013). In 2020 he was awarded the U.S. Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.
In this post, we share bits of writing advice from the award-winning writer.
10 Bits Of Writing Advice From Colson Whitehead
1. Change Your Voice
‘Some of my narrators tell jokes; some don’t. Some have five-clause sentences. Some are very terse. The subject matter determines how you tell the story. If you’re writing a book that is uplifting, it affects the narrator. If you’re writing a novel where everything’s determined by fate and nothing turns out right, that affects the narrator, whether it’s first person or third person. All of those things have to be considered before you start writing.’ Booth
2. Just Write
‘Well, always keep writing. Get better. No one is born a great writer. You just have to keep doing it, make mistakes and learn from them.’ (The Connector)
3. Interact With The World
‘Well, the more you know about the world and about yourself — hopefully you are growing as a person and understanding how things work — this enriches your art. I think the books you read and the music you listen to go into the hopper with your life experiences. The more you interact with the world, the more you can make that into more interesting and credible characters and situations and more fulfilling stories.’ (Booth)
4. Pay Homage To Your Influences
‘[I] Loved science fiction and horror growing up, those stories inspired me to become a writer. I was at a place in my career where I wanted to pay homage to those influences and pay back the debt.’ (Goodreads)
5. Switch Genres
‘I switch things up from book to book because I’m so sick of the previous book that I want to do something different. Each genre requires a bit of figuring out at the beginning, but if it’s not hard it’s probably not worth doing.’ (Goodreads)
6. Work On Point Of View
‘Whenever you are trying to write from this or that character’s perspective, you try to figure out how their psychology, education, vocabulary and current mood/situation are shaping how they are seeing things in that moment. Then, with luck, you find the right words to get it down for the reader!’ (Goodreads)
7. My Writing Process
‘I’m a stay-at-home writer. If I’m in a café with my laptop, I can’t break down weeping or take a nap. At my house, I can walk around, lie down, make a ham sandwich.’ (AARP)
8. Write 8 Pages A Week
‘I don’t write every day. I try to write eight pages a week. As long as I make my eight pages a week, I feel pretty good, like I’m putting a dent in it.’ (AARP)
9. Look At The World As An Outsider
‘Artists are outlaws. We have a monstrous way of looking at the world. We fit in on subways, on city streets, but if you go a little deeper, you’ll find something wonderfully strange.’ (AARP)
10. Skip Ahead In The Plot
‘If I do have trouble [with writer’s block], it’s not knowing what a character is going to do in a situation — so I’ll just skip ahead in the plot. But after my poker book, The Noble Hustle, I’ve been able to find my voice really quickly.’ (EW)
Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Colson_whitehead_2014.jpg
Larry D. Moore, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
by Amanda Patterson
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