We find Harding to be refreshingly unselfconscious in his outspoken commitment to deep reading, freedom of the imagination, and literary idiosyncrasy, all of which happen to be things Atelier26 exists to champion. How could we not join in sharing Harding's tips? Here are some of our favorite snippets:
Write as precisely and as lucidly and as richly as you can about what you find truly mysterious and irreducible about human experience, and not obscurely about what will prove to be received opinion or cliché once the reader figures out your stylistic conceit. There’s all the difference in the world between mystery and mystification. ...(This one reminds us of something Cyril Connolly said in The Enemies of Promise, which M. Allen Cunningham quotes in The Honorable Obscurity Handbook: "The only way to write is to consider the reader to be the author's equal. To treat him otherwise is to set a value on illiteracy.")
Don’t write your books for people who won’t like them. Give yourself wholly to the kind of book you want to write and don’t try to please readers who like something different. ... Your books will suffer from bad readers no matter what, so write them for brilliant, big-brained and big-hearted people who will love you for feeding their minds with feasts of beauty. ...
...You need to read and read a lot and read the best books. Not only do you need to read the best books, you need to read them well. I think it’s true that generally speaking your writing can only be as good as the best books you’ve read.See all five of Harding's tips here.
