of words, of a word

Wall Street Journal: What tip would you give to first-time writers?

Teju Cole: Keep writing, just write it! The most common thing I find is very brilliant, acute, young people who want to become writers but they are not writing. You know, they really badly want to write a book but they are not writing it. The only advice I can give them is to just write it, get to the end of it. And, you know, if it’s not good enough write another one.

I’d like to meet fewer people who say ‘Oh, I want to write a book, here are 10 pages I’ve written,’ and more ‘Oh, I want to write a book, here are 300 pages I’ve written.’

— Teju Cole on Why Photography Beats Literature, (an interview with Teju Cole by Margherita Stancati), India Real Time