The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Anthony Trollope’s Witty and Wise Advice on How to Be a Successful Writer

“Expect anything worthwhile to take a long time,” I paraphrased Debbie Millman in the last of my seven life-learnings from seven years of Brain Pickings. While the notion of “grit” as the greatest predictor of success may be a product of modern psychology, the ethos behind it is something creative people, and writers in particular, have known for ages. The novelist Isabelle Allende put it best: “Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too.” E.B. White, too, admonished that “a writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.” Indeed, a look at the daily routines of famous writers makes one meta-point clear: Showing up day in and day out, without fail, is the surest way to achieve lasting success.

But no one captured this grand truth more unequivocally and elegantly than Anthony Trollope (April 24, 1815–December 6, 1882), one of the most prolific and successful Victorian novelists.

In April of 1860, 45-year-old Trollope responded to a letter by his neighbor, Catherine Gould, whose husband had decided to try his hand at writing for money and wanted to know the secret of the trade. The letter, found in The Letters of Anthony Trollope (public library), is brilliantly timeless and timely, a much-needed reality check for all aspiring writers as well as entrepreneurs of all stripes in our age of expecting instantaneous success:

My dear Catherine.

I have no more doubt than you have, — and probably in truth much less, that a man like Gould with good education & good intellect may make money by writing. I believe that the profession requires much less of what is extraordinary either in genius or knowledge that most outsiders presume to be necessary. But it requires that which all other professions require, — but which outsiders do not in general presume to be necessary in the profession of literature, — considerable training, and much hard grinding industry.

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.

All trades are now uphill work, & require a man to suffer much disappointment, and this trade more almost than any other. I was at it for years & wrote ten volumes before I made a shilling –, I say all this, which is very much in the guise of a sermon, because I must endeavor to make you understand that a man or woman must learn the tricks of his trade before he [or she] can make money by writing.

Trollope’s wisdom joins this growing archive of notable advice on writing. Complement it with more advice to aspiring writers from Ernest Hemingway, H.P. Lovecraft, and Neil Gaiman, then see more thoughts on the question of writing for pay from John Updike and Michael Lewis.


Published April 24, 2014

https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/04/24/anthony-trollope-secret-of-writing-letter/

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