Wally Bock's Zero Draft

John Pierce wrote several books for the popular market, including science and science fiction. . Most of them are forgotten. They’re not the reason I’m sharing his advice.

Pierce was a star engineer who worked at Bell Labs in the 1950s and 1960s. He received several awards including the IEEE Edison Medal for “his pioneer work and leadership in satellite communications and for his stimulus and contributions to electron optics, travelling wave tube theory, and the control of noise in electron streams.” He also gets credit for coming up with the name “transistor.”

The following advice was intended for engineers, but if you want to write a book, you should pay attention.

“There’s a difference, you see, in thinking idly about something, and in setting out to do something. You begin to see what the problems are when you set out to do things.”

Want more? Check out the complete list of Advice from the Masters posts.

Mark Twain is one of those people, like Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, or Lao Tzu, who get credit for a lot of witty things they didn’t say. And many of the things they actually did say get distorted and amplified as they’re passed from brain to brain.

That doesn’t seem to matter much in most contexts, where those quotes are used for motivation. But if you want to be accurate you should do some research. You may find something interesting.

The following quote is from George Bainton’s book, The Art of Authorship: Literary Reminiscences, Methods of Work, and Advice to Young Beginners, published in 1890. Bainton solicited the quote from Twain. And Twain gave credit for the original idea to Josh Billings

That’s the pen name used by Henry Wheeler Shaw. In the late Nineteenth Century, he and Twain had comparable reputations as humorists. Since Billings’ original version was both affected and slightly different, I’ll go with Twain as the author of this bit of sage writing advice.

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

Want more? Check out the complete list of Advice from the Masters posts.

C. J. Cherryh. Ah, you think, what an interesting name. The “h” is silent and the name is pronounced “Cherry.” OK, then what’s the point? Well, in this case, when C. J. Cherryh started writing science fiction, her editor decided that “Cherry” sounded too much like a romance author.

Did you notice that I said, “she?” She (Carolyn Janice) is “C. J.” to disguise the fact that she’s a woman. When she started writing, publishers didn’t think that people would buy science fiction written by a woman. Sigh.

Well, guess what? She writes good stuff. She’s won some awards, but what’s most impressive to me is that she’s the only writer I know of to have an asteroid named after her. Here’s her advice for people who write.

“It is perfectly okay to write garbage–as long as you edit brilliantly.”

Want more? Check out the complete list of Advice from the Masters posts.