Five Rules of Writing

Most people love writing for the simple fact that poetry and creative writing don’t have very many rules outside of school. Therefore these are not strictly rules, they are are mere suggestions from one writer to another.

1. Don’t throw anything away. I’ve heard horror stories of authors torching the sole manuscript they wrote because they aren’t satisfied with it. You labor over a work for months or years or even a decade and in a few minutes it’s been reduced to ash. I can’t imagine feeling anything other than utter regret. Manuscripts change when we look at them overtime. Usually they aren’t as great as we thought they were. But sometimes they are better. And you are robbing yourself of that. I always felt furious when Amy burns Jo’s manuscript in Little Women. Honestly I would probably have just let her drown (kidding).

   
   

2. Measure progress. It is important to log how far you are getting in your work. Even if it’s just jotting a few lines in a writing journal “wrote the dinner scene today. Ended on a cliffhanger” But numbers can be important too. Some writers sit down and write x amount of time a day (for me it depends on what the project is). Or x number of words per day. You will usually get more done if you know how much your getting done.

   
   

3. Give it distance. There was an author who said if you thought you were done with a manuscript put it away in a drawer for seven years without looking at it. While I don’t advise that don’t zip it off to a publisher or agent as soon as it’s done. Get some fresh pairs of eyes on your work and wait until your own eyes are fresher. You’ll spot the typos you never knew existed. You’ll realize you used the same word twice in one sentence. Or that the ending makes absolutely no sense. All things you want to see before you send it off to the powers that be.

   
   

4. Perform small acts of curtesy. Inn the olden days, it was known as SASE (including a self addressed envelope so agents could mail back their opinions without wasting their own envelopes and stamps  and writing out the envelopes themselves). Now you just have to be courteous in emails and on Submittable. Some magazines ask for cover letters. It is courteous to thank the agent/ publication and acknowledge that the people who make decisions for the magazine are people too and sometimes they aren’t getting paid. I don’t know if it always influences your chances of publication but I can’t see why it would hurt.

   
   

5. A writer is someone who writes. Some people only count writers as someone who has been published or been paid for their writing or have an MFA. I’m here to tell you that’s not true. A writer is someone who writes. And by write I mean editing, revising, worldbuilding, querying, drafting, brainstorming, any part of the writing chain. A writer is someone who writes.