TECH: 101 Tips (41)

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

original posting 30 July 2009

Writers' Digest, October 2004, pages 26 to 33, has a collection of short "nuggets of wisdom" related to getting published. Maria Schneider is the author of the compilation. Take a deep breath, and here we go:

"Neophyte writers often weaken their writing -- and pick up rejection slips -- by breaking rules in ways they feel are clever but in reality are just inappropriate. Step one: learn the rules. Step two: break them." Stephen Blake Mettee

Shouldn't there be a step between those two? Something like practice, practice, practice? I think about Ray Bradbury talking about copying for some incredibly long period of time, and all the other greats who usually indicate that they steeped themselves in learning the rules and practicing them for a long time before their "instant" success. The novelists who talk about their five or ten novels that they wrote before their first sale -- which is touted as being a breakthrough first novel.

It's not really that the rules are all that great, or that you should treat them as some kind of handcuffs or punishment. It's just that these are things that people have found work, and doing your writing inside the guidelines makes it easier for you as a writer and for your readers. So why do it the hard way?

Somewhere I've seen a comment about swimming in a river with the current -- you can swim against the current, and get nowhere. You can swim across the current, and you get somewhere, but you're also fighting the current to reach the point that you intend to reach. Or you can swim with the current, and you go faster than you thought you could. Sometimes I think the rules are like a current of the river.

Just remember Maugham's advice. "There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." Or is that fortunately?