Rules of Writing

The ever-so-brilliant Margaret Atwood presented her 10 rules of writing in The Guardian almost two years ago. I just stumbled upon them reposted on Brain Pickings and couldn't resist the urge to repost them as well.

My favorite rules of Atwood's are:

• Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.
• 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.

Writing is such a tricky thing. Like shooting fish with a slingshot in the dark. All we can do it keep working at it and hope we truly inspire that one reader. We write and read to be in conversation, in community with one another. And yet writing can be such a lonely game. As Atwood says, "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."

What are your rules for writing?

Read Margaret Atwood's full list of rules on Brain Pickings here:
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/10/05/margaret-atwood-10-rules-of-writing/

And read the original article from The Guardian featuring rules from other writers, such as Jonathan Franzen, Neil Gaiman, and Joyce Carol Oates, here:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/feb/20/ten-rules-for-writing-fiction-part-one

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