Writing Advice: 16 Essential Rules

Instead of answering a reader question, I’m going to do something a little different this month.

The Guardian newspaper in London recently asked a whole bunch of writers for their ten rules of writing. They got 29 responses, with well-known and respected writers like Jonathan Franzen, Zadie Smith and Joyce Carole Oates amongst them. The compendium of all this information is a real treasure trove of useful writerly advice – I suggest you read the whole two-part article, here and here, as soon as you can. But for those of you who are a little pushed for time, I have pulled my favorite – and to my mind the most essential – of all the advice into the list below (English spelling left intact).

It was hard to cull these nuggets from so much wisdom, and my choices certainly reflect my proclivities as a reader – I couldn’t help but draw more heavily, perhaps, from those writers that I admire most. But this list also addresses the concerns that I see arising most in the writing students and coaching clients that I work with day after day. It’s amazing how many of the writers questioned by the Guardian had some version of “be persistent” on their lists, or how many of them suggested that you need to be careful about what criticism you listen to.

So, for better or worse, read on. Personally, I’m printing this list and sticking it up by my desk – and taking down that picture of Virginia Woolf while I’m at it.

1. The first 12 years are the worst. (Anne Enright)

2. Don’t give up. (Ian Rankin)

3. Turn up for work. Discipline allows creative freedom. No discipline equals no freedom. (Jeanette Winterson)

4. Work on a computer that is disconnected from the ­internet. (Zadie Smith)

5. 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)

6. Read aloud to yourself because that’s the only way to be sure the rhythms of the sentences are OK (prose rhythms are too complex and subtle to be thought out – they can be got right only by ear). (Diana Athill)

7. Do be kind to yourself. Fill pages as quickly as possible; double space, or write on every second line. Regard every new page as a small triumph. (Roddy Doyle)

8. Do change your mind. Good ideas are often murdered by better ones. I was working on a novel about a band called the Partitions. Then I decided to call them the Commitments. (Roddy Doyle)

9. Never worry about the commercial possibilities of a project. That stuff is for agents and editors to fret over – or not. Conversation with my American publisher. Me: “I’m writing a book so boring, of such limited commercial appeal, that if you publish it, it will probably cost you your job.” Publisher: “That’s exactly what makes me want to stay in my job.” (Geoff Dyer)

10. Have more than one idea on the go at any one time. If it’s a choice between writing a book and doing nothing I will always choose the latter. It’s only if I have an idea for two books that I choose one rather than the other. I ­always have to feel that I’m bunking off from something. (Geoff Dyer)

11. Description is hard. Remember that all description is an opinion about the world. Find a place to stand. (Anne Enright)

12. Read. As much as you can. As deeply and widely and nourishingly and ­irritatingly as you can. And the good things will make you remember them, so you won’t need to take notes. (A. L. Kennedy)

13. Learn what criticism to accept. (Ian Rankin)

14. Know the market. (Ian Rankin)

15. Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever. (Will Self)

16. 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. (Zadie Smith)