Isaac Asimov’s Writing Tips and Tricks

Love the art of writing, learn to juggle, be businesslike…and more

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In Science Fiction legend Isaac Asimov’s book, Essays on the Past, Present & Future, I found an essay where he talks about Writing. I am a nervous and anxious person — especially when it comes to my writing career (who isn’t?) so, I got excited having discovered a resource from one of the most prolific and successful writers of all time. So out of the excitement, I want to share with all you writers and readers what I found relevant and share worthy.

First, he differentiates between a prolific writer and a chronic writer:

“prolific” seems to refer to little more than the quantity of written material, whereas “chronic” implies an abnormality, almost a sickness. A prolific writer may just be working hard, but a chronic writer (you might judge) can’t help himself because he is in the grip of a vitamin deficiency or a hormonal imbalance.

He then defines a ‘Successful Writer’ as someone who sells what he writes most of the time.

He shares a small business tactic for writers — if anyone manages to gain even a certain fame in nonliterary circles through the sheer quantity of output, their name becomes generally recognizable, and any books written may sell that many more copies and benefit the bank account.

He then shares the rules.

7 RULES TO BECOME A PROLIFIC WRITER:

1. You can’t start from scratch: Without previous experiences, you cannot just one day say I want to be a prolific writer, and then sit down to write with that in mind. You need to have an innate ability or talent to write. This requires education, from which you acquire vocabulary and mechanics of language like spelling and grammar. After that, you need to have intelligence, imagination and a sense of application and perseverance. All this is needed because you will have to read works of good writers, observe their techniques, and survive the difficult period in which you gradually learn to do it yourself. Nobody can teach you. They may direct you or correct you, but eventually, you have to sense the subtleties yourself — Just like learning to ride a bicycle.