Gillian Flynn spent years in journalism before fiction, and it shows in the advice she gives. She's blunt about where good writing comes from, and it has nothing to do with waiting for inspiration. In her telling, good writing is what happens when you show up and do the work, even on the bad days.
There's No Muse Coming
Flynn's core piece of advice comes straight from her old day job. Before Gone Girl, she spent roughly a decade at Entertainment Weekly, writing to deadline whether she felt like it or not. When she switched to fiction, that habit came with her.
I could not have written a novel if I hadn't been a journalist first, because it taught me that there's no muse that's going to come down and bestow upon you the mood to write. You just have to do it.
Gillian Flynn, The Guardian
She's just as blunt about persistence. Flynn has said the thing separating published writers from unpublished ones often comes down to stamina more than raw talent. Plenty of gifted people, in her view, stay unpublished only because they quit when the writing gets hard. Her fix is simple: read constantly, and keep writing.
Write the Character People Won't Like
Flynn is known for narrators who are cruel and dishonest, and she thinks more writers should let their characters off the leash. She doesn't read to find a friend or a hero on the page, and she doesn't write for that either. What interests her is a psyche worth poking around in, someone whose behavior makes you want to understand how they got that way.
That's why she pushes back on the word unlikable, especially when it's aimed at women. Flynn identifies as a feminist and has argued against the idea that women are innately good or nurturing, and she's happy to write female characters who are angry and calculating. She'd rather write something people argue about than something they finish and forget.
Don't Edit While You Create
Her last bit of practical advice is about self-censorship. Flynn says you can't worry and write at the same time. If you're bracing for how a reader will react to a dark scene, you get a nagging voice on your shoulder that keeps you from writing well. So she puts everyone out of her head, writes the story she needs to write, and worries about reactions later. Some of that looseness comes from letting first drafts be messy, since she's said she lets it flow and often writes far more than she keeps.
See the full Gillian Flynn writing routine for how she puts this into practice.
What You Can Steal
- Treat writing like a job, not a mood. Show up on schedule and produce, muse or no muse.
- Outlast the hard part. Flynn says quitting when it gets difficult is what keeps talented writers unpublished.
- Let your characters be difficult. Interesting beats likable almost every time.
- Silence the internal critic on the first pass. Worry about the reader's reaction after the scene exists, not during.