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Jonathan Franzen

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 auto­biographical 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.

9 Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.

10 You have to love before you can be relentless.

Richard Ford

1 Marry somebody you love and who thinks you being a writer’s a good idea.
2 Don’t have children.
3 Don’t read your reviews.
4 Don’t write reviews. (Your judgment’s always tainted.)
5 Don’t have arguments with your wife in the morning, or late at night.
6 Don’t drink and write at the same time.
7 Don’t write letters to the editor. (No one cares.)
8 Don’t wish ill on your colleagues.
9 Try to think of others’ good luck as encouragement to yourself.
10 Don’t take any shit if you can ­possibly help it.

Helen Dunmore

1 Finish the day’s writing when you still want to continue.
2 Listen to what you have written. A dud rhythm in a passage of dialogue may show that you don’t yet understand the characters well enough to write in their voices.
3 Read Keats’s letters.
4 Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn’t work, throw it away. It’s a nice feeling, and you don’t want to be cluttered with the corpses of poems and stories which have everything in them except the life they need.
5 Learn poems by heart.
6 Join professional organisations which advance the collective rights of authors.
7 A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk.
8 If you fear that taking care of your children and household will damage your writing, think of JG Ballard.
9 Don’t worry about posterity – as Larkin (no sentimentalist) observed “What will survive of us is love”.

Roddy Doyle

1 Do not place a photograph of your ­favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.

2 Do be kind to yourself. Fill pages as quickly as possible; double space, or write on every second line. Regard every new page as a small triumph ­–

3 Until you get to Page 50. Then calm down, and start worrying about the quality. Do feel anxiety – it’s the job.

4 Do give the work a name as quickly as possible. Own it, and see it. Dickens knew Bleak House was going to be called Bleak House before he started writing it. The rest must have been easy.

5 Do restrict your browsing to a few websites a day. Don’t go near the online bookies – unless it’s research.

6 Do keep a thesaurus, but in the shed at the back of the garden or behind the fridge, somewhere that demands travel or effort. Chances are the words that come into your head will do fine, eg “horse”, “ran”, “said”.

7 Do, occasionally, give in to temptation. Wash the kitchen floor, hang out the washing. It’s research.

8 Do change your mind. Good ideas are often murdered by better ones. I was working on a novel about a band called the Partitions. Then I decided to call them the Commitments.

9 Do not search amazon.co.uk for the book you haven’t written yet.

10 Do spend a few minutes a day working on the cover biog – “He divides his time between Kabul and Tierra del Fuego.” But then get back to work.

Margaret Atwood

1 Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can’t sharpen it on the plane, because you can’t take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils.

2 If both pencils break, you can do a rough sharpening job with a nail file of the metal or glass type.

3 Take something to write on. Paper is good. In a pinch, pieces of wood or your arm will do.

4 If you’re using a computer, always safeguard new text with a ­memory stick.

5 Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.

6 Hold the reader’s attention. (This is likely to work better if you can hold your own.) But you don’t know who the reader is, so it’s like shooting fish with a slingshot in the dark. What ­fascinates A will bore the pants off B.

7 You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there’s no free lunch. Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you’re on your own. ­Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.

8 You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You’ve been backstage. You’ve seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a ­romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.

9 Don’t sit down in the middle of the woods. If you’re lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.

10 Prayer might work. Or reading ­something else. Or a constant visual­isation of the holy grail that is the finished, published version of your resplendent book.

pornind de la cele zece reguli ale scrisului ale lui elmore leonard, the guardian a cerut mai multor autori sa-si expuna propriile reguli. pentru diversitatea lor, mi se pare ca merita un miniserial. am mai citit pe tema asta volumul lui stephen king despre scris dar am gasit sfaturile lui anoste.

elmore leonard

1 Never open a book with weather. If it’s only to create atmosphere, and not a charac­ter’s reaction to the weather, you don’t want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead look­ing for people.

2 Avoid prologues: they can be ­annoying, especially a prologue ­following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in non-fiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want.

3 Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But “said” is far less intrusive than “grumbled”, “gasped”, “cautioned”, “lied”. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with “she asseverated” and had to stop reading and go to the dictionary.

4 Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said” . . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances “full of rape and adverbs”.

5 Keep your exclamation points ­under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.

6 Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose”. This rule doesn’t require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use “suddenly” tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.

7 Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apos­trophes, you won’t be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavour of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories Close Range.

8 Avoid detailed descriptions of characters, which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants”, what do the “Ameri­can and the girl with him” look like? “She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.” That’s the only reference to a physical description in the story.

9 Don’t go into great detail describing places and things, unless you’re ­Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language. You don’t want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.

10 Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

de cind am inceput sa lucrez la un performance despre death metal, nu ma mai pot opri din citit pe aceasta tema. nici macar in perioada in care ascultam exclusiv muzica rock (17-20 ani) nu eram interesat de acest gen muzical, perceput ca un zgomot insuportabil de chitare insotit de grohaituri neinteligibile. cind auzeam cannibal corpse de exemplu in rockoteca, ma dadeam la o parte si asteptam sa bage metallica.
acum doua nopti, pornind de la o joaca pe sinth, am compus o piesa death-metal, conceputa intr-un frame contemporan, digital. se numeste e-doom si abia astept sa o inregistrez intr-un studio.
sint extrem de interesat de impactul internetului si al culturii digitale asupra subgenurilor extreme. mainstream-ul s-a schimbat, arta exprimata violent a devenit un loc comun, nu mai poti prezenta acelasi discurs ca anii 85-’95, anii de glorie ai death-metalului.
chiar si traumele sint altele decit in anii 80′-’90.

Hermes Pag 08, originally uploaded by jean_lorin.

Bucuresti, 2034. In oras traiesc aproximativ un milion de emigranti chinezi, aflati deja la a doua generatie. Cea mai mare parte locuiesc in Casa Poporului, compartimentata in stilul Orasului Interzis. Dobrogea s-a dezlipit de Romania, proclamindu-se republica si devenind rapid cea mai bogata tara a Balcanilor si principal producator de energie datorita centralei de la Cernavoda. Cartierul Giulesti se tranforma in Giulestinia, o zona libera, fara politie si legi, centru al comertului liber cu droguri si arme. In Muzeul de Arta al Romaniei se da o spargere. Desi e impuscat in plin, hotul fuge cu un tablou reprezentind o zeitate antica. Acesta e inceputul unor fenomene tot mai bizare pentru bucuresteni si marcheaza inceputul unei colaborari istorice intre politia romana si cea chineza. Dragos si Xiao pornesc in urmarirea lui Hermes, hotul de la muzeu si ajung pe urmele unei bande chineze de traficanti de organe care operase in Romania cu zece ani in urma. Descopera ca unele dintre victimele lor au evadat desi le-au fost extirpate toate organele interne. Hermes e una dintre ele. Ce s-a intimplat cu el in ultimii 15 ani?
Vom afla in capitolele urmatoare (daca vor fi concepute).

rezervoir organz e un proiect de roman grafic manga, inceput in iulie 2009, in Berlin, impreuna cu remus brezeanu. primul capitol e gata, a fost publicat in ultimul otaku magazine, asteptam propunerile unei edituri.
nu neaparat din romania.

o zi la oxford, intr-o atmosfera de harry potter.
o dupa-amiaza la sir john soane’s house museum.
o seara la trycicle, teatru unde s-a jucat seize the day, piesa in care toti actorii erau de culoare. in public, multi albi batrini si negri de toate virstele. avind locuri chiar linga scena si mi s-a parut ca asist live la un sitcom de genul printul din bel-air.
un prinz intr-o casa-muzeu, la etajul careia se afla atelierul lui damien hirst.
o seara la cock tavern theatre, dupa piesa, printre betivi care racneau pe un best of rod stewart.
multe dimineti lucrind in starbucks-ul din apropierea ICR-ului, unde as putea sa lipesc o eticheta cu numele meu pe unul dintre fotoliile de la etaj. e locul unde am intilnit cea mai captivanta galerie de posibile personaje.
cel mai bogat om din marea britanie, mittal (otel, otel, otel) sta in belgravia. in acelasi timp, zona devine tot mai squatata. cladiri de zeci de milioane de lire ajung sa fie locuite de homeless sau artisti.
o plimbare intr-o atmosfera fantomatica, aproape de miezul noptii, intr-un cartier de evrei ortodocsi, pe o strada cu case georgiene din care ieseau grupuri de barbati imbracati cu caftane, purtind caciului de blana uriase, de forma unor roti de masina. am trecut unii pe linga altii, ca animale din specii diferite.
un diner din brick lane, design fifties, cu chelnerite in sortulete, banchete rosii, carafa de apa si servete in patratele alb-verzi.
un magazin tinut de anarhisti, in care toate lucrurile sint gratis.
o plimbare cu un double decker original, pe ruta lui 9. tavanul e atit de jos incit nu puteam sa stau in picioare.
bucata de brinza gorgonzola pe care am dat 6 lire, exact cit pe o pereche de blugi de la primark.
aparitia primilor politisti cu pistoale din istoria londrei. in cazul unora, direct pistoale automate.

pina acum, desi sint mai tot timpul cu ochii pe sus, am gasit urmatoarele lucruri:
o umbrela
o moneda de 5 pence
o cordeluta verde de prins parul
si, mindria colectiei, un fular de casmir made in scotland.

imi propusesem sa incep sa merg in cartierele muncitoresti si pina la urma am ajuns in harrods. daca mai stau mult in zona asta, o sa incep sa ma transform. din fericire, pot sa-mi linistesc constiinta spunindu-mi zic ca documentez viata posh a unui personaj.
e musai ca intr-un viitor roman sa apara de acum un Pitt sau un Mike care sa lucreze in finante si sa faca shopping pe sloane street, apoi sa se imbete intr-un pub numit the dutchess and the lamb sau the two coffins and eight hedgehogs, sa ia un taxi si sa se culce ca sa o ia de la capat a doua zi de la 7.
oricit as detesta globalizarea, etajul din starbucks unde mi-am petrecut mai toate diminetile trecute a devenit un loc in care ma simt excelent (au o muzica f buna) si unde pot sa scriu relaxat, inconjurat de japonezi, indieni venerabili cu turbane si oameni de afaceri.
la ora 1, locul se populeaza brusc cu indivizi in haine de firma. pantofii unuia valoreaza cit toata garderoba mea. isi iau prinzul, de obicei citind o carte sau trimitind sms-uri, si la ora 2 dispar.
inainte de a intra in cafenea, imi iau micul dejun afara, la un chiosc atipic pentru belgravia. din fericire, l-am descoperit destul de repede. de obicei acolo maninca muncitorii care lucreaza in zona, semn ca mincarea e ieftina si buna.