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David Mitchell writing lit history and literature creativity and innovation thought and opinion

A blank page is also a door — it contains infinity, like a night sky with a supermoon really close to the Earth, with all the stars and the galaxies, where you can see very, very clearly… You know how that makes your heart beat faster?

Great writers – including Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates, Jonathan Franzen, and David Mitchell (quoted above) – on facing the blank page and overcoming creative block.

writing advice history and literature lit David Mitchell

I have kids [so] my routine has to fit in around being a dad. But that’s okay – in real life you can’t wait around for the Muse to show up, you have to look at the clock, think “I have 45 minutes before I have to be at the school gates”, and work out a scene or polish a piece of dialogue, etc. Oddly enough the time constraint can focus you and bring out the best in you. More generally, the things you think are stopping you writing – being ill, or having to do a dull part-time job, or looking after a relative – are things that can feed into your work in the future. Utility is largely a matter of perception.

In a Reddit AMA about his new book, novelist David Mitchell reflects on the role of daily routine and work ethic in writing, echoing Isabel Allende’s memorable words: “Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too.”

Anthony Trollope put it in even more unambiguous terms a century and a half earlier in his advice on how to be a successful writer:

My belief of book writing is much the same as my belief as to shoemaking. The man who will work the hardest at it, and will work with the most honest purpose, will work the best.

autism culture and society psychology thought and opinion David Mitchell

Sentience itself is not so much a fact to be taken for granted, but a brick-by-brick, self-built construct requiring constant maintenance. …[The Reason I Jump] goes much further than providing information, however: It offers up proof that locked inside the helpless-seeming autistic body is a mind as curious, subtle, and complex as yours, as mine, as anyone’s. … Both emotional poverty and an aversion to company are not symptoms of autism but consequences of autism, its harsh lockdown on self-expression and society’s near-pristine ignorance about what’s happening inside autistic heads.

David Mitchell’s poignant introduction for The Reason I Jump – the eye-opening, soul-stirring memoir of a 13-year-old autistic boy.

Pair with artists’ and children’s drawings of what autism feels like and Temple Grandin’s remarkable legacy in shedding light on the misunderstood autistic mind.