the less permanent

o. do not follow my rules for fiction until you have read every volume of the Norton Anthology of Literature and Socrates Adams-Florou’s list. Also, read this before you sit down to write anything ever.

1. always always carry a moleskine everywhere with you in your pocket and sit in a coffee shop and write pages and pages of ideas that you have had that morning in perfect, beautiful handwriting. never make any mistakes that have to be scribbled out, never write anything that you might find embarrassing later. never write down any ideas that wont make it into a novel. never, ever, ever forget to do this. write every idea you have in your moleskine, write every note you write in your moleskine. only use a fountain pen and an unlined moleskine and black ink. always make sure your notes are complete with immaculate illustrations.

2. always write all of your notes on the computer first. write them in text edit on the mac (if you don’t have a mac buy one) and then in one long Word document. Write the notes in bed but the Word document at a desk with music on.

3. never, ever, ever use similes or metaphors. never try to explain how a character is feeling. never ever start a chapter on a saturday morning.

4. always write fully dressed.

5. always write in bed.

6. go for a run before you write – write all of the ideas you had when running down onto your iPhone, then in a moleskine, then on the computer. Any ideas you have after getting home from your run must be immediately written on the computer.

7. never, ever write without a set of rules given to you by someone else.

8. set up a blog, never ever publish anything on it until it has been read eleven times (no more no less) and edited three times.

9. throw stuff up on your blog without thinking about it.

10. never publish anything until you have sent it to an editor who works for a publisher or literary magazine or journal. if it is criticized in any way, change in completely and then delete it. if it is ignored edit it another eleven times and put it on your blog.

11. make sure that all of your characters are people the reader would like to have sex with.

12. never mention the weather

13. never describe your characters

14. always change your mind about where the story is going and who the main character is.

15. always make sure that lots of stuff ‘happens’ and that there is ‘a point’ to the story, always make sure that the main character ‘has balls’.

Tags: total bullshit

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