Rules for Writing Fiction

So you want to write a novel. Cool. Do you have a writing routine? What are they? Share them with us. I know no one's routine is like another’s. I had none in the beginning. I was undisciplined. Somehow I finished my first novel and looked like a marathoner who came in last. While writing FLESH, which will be published by Black Heron Press in 2011, I was regimented. I wrote every day. Each day faithfully by sticking to the seven rules—7 is my lucky number.

#1—find discipline in solitude, in aloneness so you can meet your characters. It’s like a rendez-vous with ghosts. Then make that meeting every day or every night with no excuses.

#2—write each scene as if it were the only thing in your universe; it must command all your attention.

#3—write one scene well and that scene would breed the next scene.

#4—leave room for readers to participate: don’t overwrite.

#5—stop where you still have something to say so the next day you wouldn’t face a dry well.

#6—read each day to keep your mind off your own writing.

#7—don’t believe in any other rules except yours.

If you were born to write, write something, even if it’s just a suicide note. When you write, you’re the only writer that exists, none before you, none after you. Somewhere I remember Toni Morrison once said, "I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it."

Let me ask you: Do you take anything you read seriously? I do, only when it really knocks me out. "You wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it." Don’t you love a reader like Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye? And Groucho Marx. "From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it."

[Image from http://biocreep.blogspot.com]