“My advice is free, excellent, unsought after but given without stint,” Flannery O’Connor wrote to a novelist friend, tongue firmly in her cheek. To another friend she wrote, “I am very handy with my advice and then when anybody appears to be following it, I get frantic.” I first read The Habit of Being, O’Connor’s selected letters, to learn more about her life and character; it was an additional delight to discover that the letters were full of free and excellent advice for the fiction writer. I got frantic trying to remember it all, so I started writing it down…
Subscribe to get access to all online articles
Already a member?
Sign in to read this article
Digital Subscription
$88/ YR
Get the latest ideas from Australia’s most insightful writers.
- Digital Subscription includes
- Online editions of Quadrant Magazine
- Printed editions of Quadrant Magazine
- iPad ready PDF
- Access to Quadrant Archives
Printed & Digital Subscription
$108/ YR
For avid readers of leading ideas
from Australia’s brightest.
- Printed & Digital Subscription includes
- Online editions of Quadrant Magazine
- Printed editions of Quadrant Magazine
- iPad ready PDF
- Access to Quadrant Archives
- Quadrant Patron includes
- Online editions of Quadrant Magazine
- Printed editions of Quadrant Magazine
- iPad ready PDF
- Access to Quadrant Archives
- All new editions of Quadrant Books
- Exclusive invitations to Quadrant Dinners, book launches and events.