Advice to Writers: Gustave Flaubery

The Artist Must Raise Everything to a Higher Level

The artist must raise everything to a higher level: he is like a pump; inside him is a great pipe reaching down into the bowels of things, the deepest layers. He sucks up what was pooled beneath the surface and brings it forth into the sunlight in giant sprays.

-GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

This is very good advice. A person must challenge themselves with writing. Write genres you are not familiar with along with the genres you are familiar with. Write something new that is completely away from the ordinary things a person you read. To survive in this business, you have to do completely different things as possible.