Writer's Rules - More

 I started going through these lists for kicks and found a lot that was actually helpful, even inspiring, then I got sidetracked.

Not sure if I can follow Walter Benjamin in all of his list, The Writer’s Technique in Thirteen Theses: Walter Benjamin’s Timeless Advice on Writing, but these I find provocative:

        Keep your pen aloof from inspiration, which it will then attract with magnetic power. The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself. Speech conquers thought, but writing commands it.
        Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Literary honour requires that one break off only at an appointed moment (a mealtime, a meeting) or at the end of the work.
        Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what is already written. Intuition will awaken in the process.

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Do not write the conclusion of a work in your familiar study. You would not find the necessary courage there.

Stages of composition: idea — style — writing. The value of the fair copy is that in producing it you confine attention to calligraphy. The idea kills inspiration, style fetters the idea, writing pays off style.

The work is the death mask of its conception.

I know more about Henry Miller than I have read (about nil), but I am going to include him because of what I know about him. After reading, I wound up quoting almost all of them!

3. Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.

4. Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!

5. When you can’t create you can work.

6. Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.

7. Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.

8. Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.

9. Discard the Program when you feel like it—but go back to it the next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.

10. Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.

11. Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.

The article also includes Miller's writing schedule. It reads as very sensible.

I have read Atwood, so I had to include Advice to Writers: Margaret Atwood’s 10 Rules of Writing. My friends have been afflicted with this one:

Ask a reading friend or two to look at your book before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You’ve been backstage. You’ve seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. . This friend should not be someone with whom you have a ­romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.

And I am learning this one:

Hold the reader’s attention. (This is likely to work better if you can hold your own.) But you don’t know who the reader is, so it’s like shooting fish with a slingshot in the dark. What fascinates A will bore the pants off B.

(That was reprinted on Angela Carr's blog/website, a poet residing in Dublin)

I have not warmed to Jonathon Franzen, and I have tried (I think). I recognize he is very, very good, while he leaves me a bit less than enthralled with his characters. I read the list and my firs thought is, Ouch. Hits on all 10. The pain increased as I went down:

The most purely autobiographical ­fiction requires pure invention. Nobody ever wrote a more auto­biographical story than “The Meta­morphosis”.

You see more sitting still than chasing after.

It’s doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.

Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.

You have to love before you can be relentless.

I never read all that much of P.D. James, which is not a recommendation on my part or for me. Gotham Writer's reprinted P.D. James: 5 Bits of Writing Advice

1. Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft. The greater your vocabulary the more effective your writing. We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it.
2. Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.
3. Don't just plan to write—write. It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we develop our own style.
4. Write what you need to write, not what is currently popular or what you think will sell.
5. Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other people. Nothing that happens to a writer—however happy, however tragic—is ever wasted.

Having read two of the three Thomas Cromwell novels of Hilary Mantel, had to see Hilary Mantel's Ten Observations About Writing from TSP: The official blog of The Story Prize. 

 2 Free up your creativity: Liberate it from your expectations and experience. When you have an idea, don’t assume it’s a novel or story, just because that’s your usual medium. It might be a play, poem, song, or movie. Who knows, it might be best expressed as garden design. Or maybe you should knit it?
3.  If the rhythm of your prose is broken, read poetry.
4.  Cut every page of dialogue by one-third. 
5.  If a phrase troubles you, strike it out, and if there seems no alternative, try simple omission. If you are dubious about it in your manuscript, you’ll shrink from it in the printed book.

From 6 Writing Tips From John Steinbeck:

2. Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.

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4. If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn't belong there.

5. Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.

6. If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.

I have only read one of Annie Proulx's novels (Accordion Crimes, a strange and brutal novel), and one short story, no, not "Brokeback Mountian", but one that I thought lifted an idea from Independent People, and made it even more horrific). Herr rules appeared in The Guardian and were reprinted in “Five rules for writing fiction”: Annie Proulx. She proposes taking one's time, and

5 Rewrite and edit until you achieve the most felicitous phrase/sentence/paragraph/page/story/chapter.

I wish I had enough time left for me. Wasted 40 years to have the nerve to try my hand again at fiction - do not do the same.

 I got to be a fan of Ian Rankin's Rebus novels, and I was surprised to see Ian Rankin’s 10 Rules for Writing Fiction. I am afraid I do not know my markets and not getting very lucky, I doubt I can keep getting lucky. Notice his first rule. That rule and the second are really the most common rules; which may make them the essential ones.

Zadie Smith is a writer I got to read in prison, both her fiction and some of her non-fiction, who has impressed me with her intelligence and wit. Zadie Smith's White Teeth: 10 Golden Rules for Writers includes the rules as well as background on the writer. I suggest reading the whole thing. It is short while getting to the point. These 4 hit on things I have done wrong, or need to avoid:

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.

I have read a little of Eudora Welty (another great short story writer, btw), know she is quality stuff, still did not expect to get hit upside my head when I read Eudora Welty's Rules for Writing:

• “Every good story has mystery—not the puzzle kind, but the mystery of allurement.”
• “The great stories of the world are the ones that seem new to their readers on and on, always new because they keep their power of revealing something.”
• “Beware of tidiness.”
• “Beauty comes from form, from development of idea, from after-effect. It often comes from carefulness, lack of confusion, elimination of waste—and yes, those are the rules.”

I figured out the first one reading Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge; it remains a good one to keep in mind, the reader must want to turn the page. 

I have read only one of Anne Rice's books, that was about 1990, but reading How I Do It: Anne Rice on Writing Technique. I kept thinking, That's a good idea and pointed a hole or two I had dropped into. A smart woman who thought about what she was doing. Here last rule:

If these “rules” or suggestions don’t work for you, by all means disregard them completely! You’re the boss when it comes to your writing.

I have not read but maybe one of Anton Chekhov's short stories, I have, instead, read   his plays. I do have a collection here, which is like all the books here, gathering dust. All the same, I am copying all of his rules from Anton Chekhov’s six writing principles, but mostly on account of the last one:

1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature
2. Total objectivity
3. Truthful descriptions of persons and objects
4. Extreme brevity
5. Audacity and originality: flee the stereotype
6. Compassion

(That comes from One Wild Word.) 

I am including all of Mark Twain's rules, even though they are duplicative of many here, because Hemingway said American writing started with him, and because it is Twain talking here:

1. Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
2. Use the right word, not its second cousin.
3. As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.
4. You need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God's adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by.
5. Substitute damn every time you're inclined to write very; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
6. Use good grammar.
7. Damnation (if you will allow the expression), get up & take a turn around the block & let the sentiment blow off you. Sentiment is for girls. . . . There is one thing I can't stand and won't stand, from many people. That is, sham sentimentality.
8. Use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English--it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in.
9. The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is that you really want to say.
10. Write without pay until somebody offers pay. If nobody offers within three years, the candidate may look upon this circumstance with the most implicit confidence as the sign that sawing wood is what he was intended for.

I will be keeping #10 in mind. These came from Mark Twain's Top 10 Writing Tips)

Richard Ford I read a novel and heard him on NPR's Fresh Air, his rules are a bit different and may be more pertinent for that: Richard Ford’s 10 rules for fiction writers. Or impertinent.

I almost forgot of William Faulkner's advice, 20 Pieces of Writing Advice from William Faulkner, which need to be read in full, they are too complex, too long for excerpting here. Just follow the link above.

The source of all these were 45 Writers’ “Rules for Writing”, and you might notice I dod not go through all 45.

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