Suggestions for Writers

I got this, too, from Making Light; really sometimes I hardly know how I would organize my day without Teresa's weblog.

She calls it "Gene Wolfe's Rules for Writers." I had to go look. I admire Gene Wolfe somewhere the wrong side of idolatry.

They sit so much better with me than anybody else's. I might argue with one or two, but they do not provoke an allergic reaction, a resistance like that of a two-year-old threatened with being deprived of a large fragile glass object, a mad "I won't do it and you can't make me" or "what the hell is your problem, you moron" response.

So I thought I'd provide the link:

http://subnet.pinder.net/onwriting/index.asp?name=./References/19970101wolfe.htm

I think the reason I like these better than most is partly that Wolfe and I have similar aesthetics, though hardly similar practices; but mostly it's that it hardly ever says "Never" (except in one ironic bit) or "Always," does not toy around with forbidding or prescribing very specific words and phrases, and often says "Try to" rather than "You must."

I'm quite sure a person could violate every one of them and write a good book, but I don't feel the usual desire to do just that, IMMEDIATELY.

Pamela