Rules for Writing

.
LEFT: Marina Warner's writing room, from the Guardian's series "Writers Rooms"

I'm off to film bink hanging banners in church (for this upcoming Passion Sunday)--I'm hoping I can catch the fall of red cloth... Seems I didn't get my fill of it in "Orestes & the Fly."

I keep thinking I'm done with moviemaking because it calls for so much boring physical labor (as opposed to the boring mental labor of writing), but I guess I'm wrong.

For your amusement, I leave these links from two Guardian articles I found on Neil Gaiman's Journal.
(I don't write fiction, but these apply to all sorts of creative work.)

1.Ten rules for writing fiction

2.Ten rules for writing fiction (part two)

Here are a few I especially liked.

Colm Tóibín
7 If you have to read, to cheer yourself up read biographies of writers who went insane.

RIGHT: My writing space. (The laptop sits on those paint-stirring sticks, so it doesn't get diaper rash on its bottom.)

Will Self:
8 The writing life is essentially one of solitary confinement – if you can't deal with this you needn't apply.

9 Oh, and not forgetting the occasional beating administered by the sadistic guards of the imagination.

Rose Tremain:
5 When an idea comes, spend silent time with it. Remember... Kipling's advice to "drift, wait and obey".

Philip Pullman:
My main rule is to say no to things like this, which tempt me away from my proper work.

Helen Simpson:
The nearest I have to a rule is a Post-it on the wall in front of my desk saying "Faire et se taire" (Flaubert), which I translate for myself as "Shut up and get on with it."

My very favorite, from Margaret Atwood:
Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.