Colm Tóibín’s 10 Rules for Writing Fiction

We share multi-award-winning Irish novelist Colm Tóibín’s 10 Rules for Writing Fiction.

Colm Tóibín is a multi-award-winning Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic, and, most recently, poet. He was born on 30 May 1955. He is one of the most widely read writers in contemporary Irish literature.

He is the author of Brooklyn, a love story set against Irish migration to the United States in the 1950s, and The Testament of Mary, which was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize and adapted for the stage. Other novels include Nora Webster, House of Names, and The Magician.

In 2011, he published a memoir, A Guest at the Feast, and he won the Irish PEN Award for his contribution to Irish literature. His personal notes and workbooks are deposited at the National Library of Ireland. He was selected as the Laureate for Irish Fiction by the Arts Council of Ireland. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Colm Tóibín’s 10 Rules for Writing Fiction

1. Finish everything you start.
2. Get on with it.
3. Stay in your mental pyjamas all day.
4. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
5. No alcohol, sex, or drugs while you are working.
6. Work in the morning, a short break for lunch, work in the afternoon and then watch the six o’clock news and then go back to work until bed-time. Before bed, listen to Schubert, preferably some songs.
7. If you have to read, to cheer yourself up read biographies of writers who went insane.
8. On Saturdays, you can watch an old Bergman film, preferably Personaor Autumn Sonata.
9. No going to London.
10. No going anywhere else either.

This advice first appeared in The Guardian

Source for Image

by Amanda Patterson

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