She writes, in singing, soaring, street-savvy prose, about a corner of North West London, and the people who call it home[footnoteRef:4]. This book has many of the same themes that you can find in Zadie's other works such as White Teeth. The major themes that Zadie likes to incorporate in her works are[footnoteRef:5]: [3: (Patterson)] [4: Ibid. ] [5: (Isbister)]
identity and nationality miscegenation racial discrimination gender politics history religion tradition and assimilation
IV. Smith's Writing Process
The Guardian reached out to many authors in 2010 and asked them to offer a set of their own rules for writing[footnoteRef:6]. She created an interesting set of rules: [6: (Popova)]
1. When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.
2. When an adult, try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.
3. Don't romanticise your 'vocation'. You can either write good sentences or you can't. There is no 'writer's lifestyle'. All that matters is what you leave on the page.
4. Avoid your weaknesses. But do this without telling yourself that the things you can't do aren't worth doing. Don't mask self-doubt with contempt.
5. Leave a decent space of time between writing something and editing it.
6. Avoid cliques, gangs, groups. The presence of a crowd won't make your writing any better than it is.
7. Work on a computer that is disconnected from the -internet.
8. Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.
9. Don't confuse honours with achievement.
10. Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand -- but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never -being satisfied.
Smith says she spends...
She is also focused on trying to write something different and makes that one of her priorities. She does not worry about being productive, rather she only writes when she feels inspired to do so. [7: (Field)]
V. Conclusion
Zadie Smith has worked hard to stand out from the crowd. In fact, that is one of her top priorities. She has a unique manner of her own creative process that has allowed her to create some original works in a time in which originality is often hard to produce. Her first popular work, White Teeth, covers racial and ethnic issues in an extraordinary fashion. Much of her inspiration comes from her own life. Her mother was Jamaican and her father was British and she was raised in multicultural environment in which she faced many of the issues that she writes about. She only writes when she feels the need to write about an issue that comes to mind and then she spends the bulk of her time concentrating on the first part of the book to really develop her ideas. For these reasons and more, Zadie Smith is a perfect example of a modern writer has been able to carve out a unique niche for herself.
Works Cited
Field, R. "In Essays, Author Zadie Smith Reveals Her Process." 11 November 2009. NPR Books. Online. 11 April 2013.
Inspirational Black Literature. "Zadie Smith - Biography." N.d. Inspirational Black Literature. Online. 11 April 2013.
Isbister, H. "Smith, Zadie." May 2012. Postocolonial Studies @ Emory. Online. 10 April 2013.
Patterson, C. "How Zadie Smith is Trying to Wake White Writers Up." 10 October 2012. Huffington Post. Online. 10 April 2013.
Popova, M. "Zadie Smith's 10 Rules of Writing." 19 September 2012. Brain Pickings. Online. 11 April 2013.
