@infiniteb88ks: In 1959, C. S. Lewis did a seventh-grader’s homework. A teacher in America had told her class to write to a famous author and ask for advice on writing. A girl named Thomasine picked Lewis. He was 61, a professor at Cambridge, and the author of all seven Narnia books. Letters reached him from around the world. Children wanted to know about Aslan. Adults asked about faith, grief, and their own work. On December 14, he answered Thomasine. The letter is collected in Letters of C. S. Lewis, edited by his brother W. H. Lewis. He opens by admitting that general advice about writing is difficult to give. Then he gives her eight rules. The first is four words. Turn off the radio. Today, it would be the phone. You sit down to write, and an hour goes. He tells her to hear every sentence she writes. Read it aloud. If it sounds wrong, try again. Be clear, because the reader cannot see the picture in your head. Then comes rule six. Keep the work you abandon. Put it in a drawer, he says. Much of his best work was the rewriting of things he had begun and given up years earlier. He had an example behind him. In 1939, with children evacuated from London staying at his house, Lewis began a story about four children sent away because of the air raids. He wrote an opening and stopped. He returned to the story years later. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was published in 1950. Six more Narnia books followed. Thomasine’s letter came three years after the last of them appeared. Lewis doesn’t mention Narnia in his reply. He tells her to keep her unfinished pages. By then, children were writing to him because of a story he had once put aside. Save this for the next time you sit down to write. #cslewis #writingadvice #writingcommunity #narnia #BookTok

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Monday 12 October 2026 18:43:47 GMT