Baraka_Guru

While I don't mind it being framed as "how to write fiction," I think writers need to be careful with "rules for writing fiction." New and emerging writers can easily fall into the trap of seeking out the "rules of writing"--whether secret or not---so that they can apply them while they do their thing.

The problem with this is that it can stifle or otherwise ruin that art of the new writer. I myself am guilty of this. I was a much freer and self-propelled writer as a teenager and in my early twenties. As I went through college and university, working several part-time jobs, I stopped writing fiction. Most of my writing was functional and non-fictional.

Now, as I sit five years into a career as a book editor, working mainly on non-fiction and poetry, and with fiction only on occasion, I find myself wandering back to the curiosity I had in writing fiction. I have many story fragments in my head, but no structures upon which to apply them. And so I've had many false starts where I attempted to apply rigid systems to them, through the use of books on writing.

I have one in particular that is supposed to help with the writing of short stories. It is a systematic approach using index cards and categorization of elements. For some reason I find this excruciating to follow, and my energy tends to fizzle out.

On the other hand, short fiction isn't an easy genre to write. Novels have more flexibility in that if they're more sloppy, it's either more difficult to notice or people don't mind.

Either way, if I attempt to apply a rigid structure to writing, it chokes me out. But at the same time, free-flowing approaches are so ungainly that it eventually chokes itself out. I need to find a balance of elements that works for me.

I like Enright's rules. The first one made me laugh, probably because it's true. But what I like about them is they aren't rigid rules; they aren't prescriptions. In a way they are rules that flout rules as many new writers may think of them.

I haven't read the article yet, but I'll be sure to make my way through the other rules. This could be the kind of thing I need to get back into the writing habit. The one thing I am going to attempt is to write fantasy stories. The reason for this is because that was the first genre I wrote in as a teenager. It was through these stories that I received my first praise as a writer. And so I look at this as a way of "going back to my roots."

Maybe I'll cobble together a set of "rules" from these authors. This is how I look at rules now. Rules are what you apply to yourself based on what you know that works to keep you chugging along. If you allow others to apply rules to you, it can easily do more harm than good, especially if it is an entire set of rules applied to you entirely intact.

There is more than one way to write fiction. Actually, there are countless ways.

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot