Though I'm not sure what spawned its resurgence, we're going through a new wave of responding to Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules book. The Guardian brings together some of fiction's best to posit alternative rules.
Here are ten of my personal faves (with an annotation or two):
1. "Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can't sharpen it on the plane, because you can't take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils." (Margaret Atwood -- chosen mostly because I like that she says "aeroplanes" and mentions knives.)
2. "You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there's no free lunch. Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you're on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine." (Atwood again, makes me want to stop whining.)
3. "Do not place a photograph of your favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide." (Roddy Doyle)
4. "If you use a computer, constantly refine and expand your autocorrect settings. The only reason I stay loyal to my piece-of-shit computer is that I have invested so much ingenuity into building one of the great autocorrect files in literary history. Perfectly formed and spelt words emerge from a few brief keystrokes: 'Niet' becomes 'Nietzsche', 'phoy' becomes 'photography' and so on. Genius!" (Geoff Dyer--the closest any of us can get, despite the miracles of owning a Mac, to having a "writing machine." I'd need to program in 'fb' equals "face burning with..."--one of those tics I recently discovered, along with various tortured ways of describing panic.)
5. "Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire." (Geoff Dyer -- good to know my basement full of regrets has use!)
6. "The first 12 years are the worst." (Anne Enright -- let's hope she's right!)
7. "Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die." (Enright. Love her, especially with her follow up to this one: "You can also do all that with whiskey.")
8. "Only bad writers think that their work is really good." (Enright. Then so many of us are spectacular!)
9. "Don't have children." (Richard Ford -- it pisses me off enough to make me want to write.)
10. "Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting." (Jonathan Franzen. Cool, I only know a few verbs.)
11. "Keep a light, hopeful heart. But expect the worst." (Joyce Carol Oates. I can see that, when tempered, my negativity has a bright side!)
12. "Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet." (Zadie Smith, echoing something Franzen says. But how do they bear the lonely minutes?)
13. When asked for 10 rules, find 13. (Andrea Dupree)
Take a look -- there are some good ones in here! Oh, and then disconnect from the Internet instantly and write.
aed
