An email I wrote to someone teaching undergraduate fiction writing who wanted things to teach:

“The one good thing I learned from Curtis Sittenfeld about writing short stories is that it’s like preparing for a packing trip to a mountain top. You pack everything that  you are going to need on the way up to get you to the top and you don’t want to pack any extra because it will only burden you. I think Frank Conroy used to say that, at least that’s what she said. 

Also there’s Hemingway’s parable of the iceberg, where the short story is what appears above the water, but there is an entire mass underneath it, which the reader won’t see but will realize or feel is there. 

Those stuck with me from my undergrad writing courses. 

The best things I know about writing, though, are to have confidence and to know grammar. The writer is the one responsible for making the reader buy into a sack of lies (or “the fictional dream” as John Gardner called it) or to travel a train of thought, and without confidence all is lost. 

You should also give them Amy Hempel’s story The Most Girl Part of You ( http://wolfweb.unr.edu/homepage/calabj/298/The_Most_Girl_Part_of_You.pdf ). They will hate it but ten years later one of them will realize that it was actually genius and then he or she will think warm thoughts about you. 

etcetera.”

An email I wrote to someone else who had complained about using too many verbs in an email:

“There’s nothing wrong with verbs or too many verbs. They are what give writing life.”