The Case of the Eight and Two Hundred Thirty-Eight Rules

While checking out Bob Freeman's latest LOST in Translation post, I stumbled across an older post attributed to Neil Gaiman.

Neil Gaiman on Writing

1. Write.

2. Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.

3. Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.

4. Put it aside. Read it pretending you’ve never read it before. Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that this is.

5. Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

6. Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.

7. Laugh at your own jokes.

8. The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it ­honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

Good advice, particularly number five.

As I said to Jaym Gates earlier today, I think non-writers give the best feedback on what works and doesn't work in a story. Non-writers look solely at the story itself, as a whole, whereas writers tend to always view something in light of how they would write it, not as the author had written it. And the advice given is often tough to navigate through, especially for younger writers.

But Gaiman provides some excellent advice here. I wanted to see where this quote originally came from, so I jumped on the trusty Way Back Machine and found Ten Rules for Writing Fiction, posted by the UKs Guardian back in February for in their Rules for Writers series. Aside from Gaiman's eight tips, you can find over two hundred additional tips from a wide variety of authors.

There be much wisdom in all that...