Zadie Smith's Ten Rules for Writing Fiction
1 When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.
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.
6 Avoid cliques, gangs, groups. The presence of a crowd won't make your writing any better than it is.
7 Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet.
8 Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.
9 Don't confuse honours with achievement.
10 Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand – but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.
To read the complete Guardian article, click here.
posted by Clare Dudman at 9:55 pm
4 Comments:
Brilliant! Thanks for sharing those, Clare. Very appropriate, even for creative non-fiction authors. Isolating oneself is one of the hardest parts about writing, but often necessary to place oneself in that creative place. The tricky part is that while promoting a book requires many public appearances, writing involves being alone. So I expect that writers will someday have robotic doppelgangers to doing the signings, talks and online promotion, while they sit quietly in a room to write the books.
By the way, to me Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet still resonates as valuable advice for writers.
And thank you for the tip about Rilke's Letters. I'd not heard of that and ordering it now. I agree with you about the writer's dichotomy, too. I think most writers prefer their own company.
Tip no. 7. Definitely.
Yes,Cromercrox - all computer ranges should include a special writers' model.
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