Lev Grossman’s 7 Tips For Writers

Improve your writing with seven tips from Lev Grossman, the bestselling American author of The Magicians series.

Lev Grossman is an American novelist and journalist. He was born on 26 June 1969. After graduating from Lexington High School, Grossman studied literature at Harvard University, graduating with a degree in literature in 1991.

He is the author of the novels Warp, Codex, The Magicians, The Magician King, and The Magician’s Land. As a novelist, he is best known for The Magicians trilogy, which has now been published in 30 countries and adapted as a TV show that ran for five seasons. His newest books are The Silver Arrow and The Golden Swift—two novels for children, and The Bright Sword: A Novel of King Arthur. A rhyming picture book, The God of Sleep was released in March 2026.

He was also a senior writer and book critic for Time. His essays and criticism have also been published in Vanity Fair, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Salon, Slate, Entertainment Weekly, Buzzfeed, NPR, and many other places.

Visit his website: levgrossman.com and follow him on Instagram and Twitter

We found this advice for writers and journalists on Quora and wanted to share it with you.

Lev Grossman’s 7 Tips For Writers

1. ‘Get your stuff in on time.
2. Don’t write anything that you wouldn’t say out loud – don’t say “perhaps”, say “maybe”. Don’t say “yet” when you mean “but”. And so on.
3. Read read read, all you can, all the time. Don’t worry about other people influencing you, that’s a good thing. Your voice will still be your own.
4. Write write write. Writing is a craft not a gift. You have to practice.
5. Get lots of sleep.
6. Make an outline.
7. Don’t assume other people are smarter than you, or more talented than you, or more magic than you. Nobody knows anything. Everybody’s faking it.’

Photo credit: Mathieu Bourgois

by Amanda Patterson

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