Several GITS readers emailed me about a great series The Guardian ran recently: Ten Rules For Writing Fiction. Today we feature Annie Proulx:
1 Proceed slowly and take care.
2 To ensure that you proceed slowly, write by hand.
3 Write slowly and by hand only about subjects that interest you.
4 Develop craftsmanship through years of wide reading.
5 Rewrite and edit until you achieve the most felicitous phrase/sentence/paragraph/page/story/chapter.
Anything on the list here today that catches your eye, gives you inspiration, or causes you to rethink your approach to writing?
Tomorrow I’ll feature a different writer from The Guardian series and their rules on writing.
I'm hardly a polished pro, but i'm glad to see the first suggestion: proceed slowly and carefully. I'm going about writing my first screenplay and frankly doing a LOT more reading and studying of others' works than much writing – in large part because I know that I'd rather get it pretty darned close to exact the first time thru and just polish and tweek on my rewrites and edits, rather throw it all out there in a mad race and have to completely redo major sections. I got the sense others work more in the mad dash pace and my caution isn't shared by others. Glad to read otherwise.