Ten rules for writing fiction
I saw this today on the Guardian website and I thought some people here might be interested.
Get an accountant, abstain from sex and similes, cut, rewrite, then cut and rewrite again – if all else fails, pray. Inspired by Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing, we asked authors for their personal dos and don'ts
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/20/ten-rules-for-writing-fictio...
Most of the writers I don't know off the top of my head, but there are a few very well-knowns like Gaiman and Zadie Smith. And it seems like some people have put in more effort than others.
Thanks for the link, very intersting.
the first rule of writing fitcion is that you do not talk about writing fiction. don't go to starbucks to type your novel so everyone knows that you are writing and maybe they will come over and ask you about it and you say i am a writer and then 2 seconds later you sip you decaf-vanilla-coffe with a loud slurp and the person leaves and then you say to yourself "cool now i can get back to writing if people start bothering me" and the person next to you drinking an americano with a straw and a hair lip.
Gaimen? Really? He's a *writer*? I always just thought he was an *author*. It takes a special skill to write the worst goddamned episode of a third-rate science fiction space station TV series, which is something he excelled at.
I also disagree with Leonard's first rule. The first line in William Gibson's Neuromancer is about the sky looking like a television tuned to a dead station; thats one of the best goddamned first lines I've ever seen in a book.
Margaret Atwood's list is wonderful. Not only is it a smart, functional list but its *witty*, so you enjoy reading it. Most "this is writing" lists are boring or offensively clever (Peter David, please go fuck yourself) but Atwood's is writing the list as she'd write write anything else. And therein lies the trick of it all.
Geoff Dyer's #6 is what I butter my bread with.
I construct my memories with my present. I am lost, abandoned in the present. I try in vain to rejoin the past: I cannot escape. - Sartre