In one of my David Foster Wallace related searches, I have found out about Jonathan Franzen, a friend of the late writer of Infinite Jest. Mr. Franzen has been in the writng business since the eighties also and yet has only four novels and two non-fiction books to his resume. I find soothing this streak of writers that seem to only pick up a pen when they have something to write about. Mr. Franzen has set his own set of rules for writing, which I have thought to share with you.
1. The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator.
2. Fiction that isn't an author's personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn't worth writing for anything but money.
3. Never use the word "then" as a conjunction – we have "and" for this purpose. Substituting "then" is the lazy or tone-deaf writer's non-solution to the problem of too many "ands" on the page.
4. Write in the third person unless a really distinctive first-person voice offers itself irresistibly.
5. When information becomes free and universally accessible, voluminous research for a novel is devalued along with it.
6. The most purely autobiographical fiction requires pure invention. Nobody ever wrote a more auto biographical story than "The Metamorphosis".
7. You see more sitting still than chasing after.
8. It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction (the TIME magazine cover story detailed how Franzen physically disables the Net portal on his writing laptop).
9. Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.
10. You have to love before you can be relentless
You have to love before you can be relentless...isn't it beautiful? Mr. Franzen, you're as good as read.
