Rules for Writing from Writers

by Dr Davis on March 2, 2010

10 Rules for Writing Fiction, part one, begins:

Never open a book with weather. If it’s only to create atmosphere, and not a charac ter’s reaction to the weather, you don’t want to go on too long.

There are compendiums of various authors’ 10 rules for writing. So this is more like 100 rules for writing.

10 Rules for Writing Fiction, part two, says:

Read Becoming a Writer, by Dorothea Brande. Then do what it says, including the tasks you think are impossible. You will particularly hate the advice to write first thing in the morning, but if you can manage it, it might well be the best thing you ever do for yourself. This book is about becoming a writer from the inside out. Many later advice manuals derive from it. You don’t really need any others, though if you want to boost your confidence, “how to” books seldom do any harm. You can kick-start a whole book with some little writing exercise.

There is other additional useful advice within this.

I think these are the sorts of things one should think about in a creative writing class.

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New: Old English Dictionary

by Dr Davis on March 2, 2010

A great article on the dictionary in general, but specifically the Old English dictionary being created.

They are creating a dictionary that includes not only every single word in a specific language, but every shade of meaning that each of these words has ever had. They can do this because they have managed to collect and organize every single word of text (that we know of) that native speakers of this language have written.

This is possible because no one has been a native speaker of this language for more than eight hundred years.

It’s an engaging article and quite enjoyable, even if you aren’t a bibliophile or an Old English person.

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