Six Canadian writers on some of the best and worst advice they've received

The end of the year is a time to look back and tally up the advice we took or discarded. With that in mind, six authors pass on some writing advice they've been given over the years.  

Good advice

Carleigh Baker says: "I feel that the best advice I ever got was to pay attention, learn the rules and then get ready to break them — but you've got to learn the rules first!"

• Carleigh Baker on the intense emotions that drive her writing process

David Bergen says: "Read. Read the best that's out there and then imitate. Eventually you'll move beyond imitation into your own voice."

• David Bergen on Mennonite food and literary tattoos

M.G. Vassanji says: "One person told me to be precise. Other than that, the advice I would give is don't listen to anybody. Just keep quiet and write."

• M.G. Vassanji on how an idle thought grew into several big ideas

Bad advice

Emma Donoghue says: "'Write what you know.' I mean, yes — if you happened to spend the summer you were sixteen working in a funeral parlour — then great, use that material. But you're likely to run out of that stuff fast. I think that advice cramps the ambition of writers. In the days of the internet, there is no excuse for not plunging into and researching any subject you want to write about. So I'm all for writing what you have no idea about until you start."

• Emma Donoghue: How I wrote Room, the movie

Anosh Irani says: "I haven't really been given bad advice. But sometimes people say 'I have an idea for a book! Why don't you do this?' The ideas can be great, but when they try to structure them...it's not the greatest."

• Anosh Irani on the universal search for home

André Alexis says: "'Write what you know' — everybody tells you that! Actually, I know very little! But, I'm in love with the imagination; I'm in love with what the imagination does with the world. Yes, your writing is inevitably based in where you come from and who you are, but those are things that you can take for granted. Get beyond yourself! You don't have to write what you know — what you have to do is write well, and that's a different matter."

• How André Alexis wrote Fifteen Dogs

Carleigh Baker, David Bergen, M.G. Vassanji, Emma Donoghue, Anosh Irani and André Alexis's comments have been edited and condensed.