Craft Book Lessons: What Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet Taught Me About Fiction Writing

❄️December greetings, writers!🎄

December always feels like a whirlwind. Between holiday gatherings, family get-togethers, travel, and year-end responsibilities, it can be hard to carve out time for creative work.

That’s why this month, instead of tackling a hefty craft tome, I turned to a shorter book packed with timeless wisdom: Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet.

On the surface, this isn’t a craft book about fiction writing. But I’ve always believed writers can learn from any genre, and especially from the words of writers who have left a lasting mark.

Rilke’s letters, written more than a century ago, still speak to the challenges, doubts, and joys of the creative life.

From Letters to a Young Poet, here are four fiction writing lessons I found especially meaningful:

1. Writing as necessity, not choice

In his very first letter, Rilke tells the young poet to write only if writing feels absolutely necessary. Art, he insists, should not be about ambition or recognition but about answering a deep inner need.

If you can live without writing, he suggests, then don’t write. That can sound stark, but I think it’s also freeing.

For fiction writers, it’s a reminder that the stories we choose to tell should matter to us in a visceral way. They should be the ones we can’t put down, even if no one else ever reads them.

For me, this lesson came alive in my current project. I’d started drafting a different novel idea in the previous year, but it fizzled out.

Only when I listened to the story that had been tugging at me for years—the one I couldn’t let go of—did the words finally flow.

Rilke’s challenge is worth carrying: are you writing the story you must write?

2. Patience and ripening

In another letter, Rilke compares the creative process to a tree ripening fruit. Growth can’t be rushed or forced. He encourages the young poet to embrace waiting, to trust that creative work develops in its own time.

That image resonates with fiction writing, where it’s tempting to push too hard for speed or word-count output. But characters, arcs, and themes don’t always reveal themselves on command.

Drafts take time.

As someone who often overwrites, I found this idea comforting. I can allow myself to let drafts sit, to return to them when I’m ready to see them with new eyes.

Rilke’s reminder is that patience isn’t passivity... it’s part of the process of deepening the work.

3. Loving and "living" the questions

One of Rilke’s most quoted lines comes from Letter Four: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.” Instead of demanding quick answers, he encourages embracing uncertainty as a vital part of life.

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue.... And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now."

-R.M. Rilke

That advice feels tailor-made for novelists. So much of fiction is about questions—about identity, morality, love, justice—and rarely are those questions neatly resolved. The best stories invite readers to live inside the questions with the characters.

When I’m drafting, I sometimes pressure myself to resolve everything too cleanly. Rilke reminds me that it’s okay, even preferable, to let the questions breathe.

My job is to pose them honestly and let the story carry them forward.

4. Solitude and struggle as part of the work

Several of Rilke’s letters touch on solitude. He stresses that artists must learn to be alone, to embrace the silence where creativity grows.

Struggle, too, is not to be avoided but faced as part of becoming. There is no growth without discomfort, without hard work.

Writing fiction is often lonely work. It’s just me at my desk, facing the blank page. But Rilke reframes solitude not as isolation but as fertile ground.

And he reminds me that the discomfort—the doubt, the difficulty, the moments when nothing seems to work—isn’t a sign I’m failing.

It’s part of the creative life itself.

This perspective helps me see struggle differently. Instead of fighting it, I can accept it as proof that I’m engaging with the work deeply. His letters helped me see solitude and struggle not as obstacles to writing but the soil where stories takes root.

However, I'm also grateful to have been part of a writing community. Joining a novel writing accountability group kept the solitude from becoming overwhelming. (You can read more about that journey here.)

Final fiction writing takeaways from this craft book

Letters to a Young Poet may be slim, but it’s full of reminders that feel just as relevant now as they did a century ago: writing as necessity, patience in the process, living the questions, and finding value in solitude and struggle.

These aren’t technical craft tips, but they can help shape how we approach fiction writing at the deepest level. In a busy December, that feels like exactly the kind of guidance I need.

For me, Rilke's words are a reminder that writing is more than a career path—it’s a vocation. There will always be ups and downs, but if we're called to write, our task is to lean into that calling.

Have you read Letters to a Young Poet? Did any of Rilke’s words resonate with your own writing journey? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments or a message here.

Peace & plenty,