Colm Tóibín’s 10 Rules for Writing Fiction

We share 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 30 May 1955.

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.

In 2011, he published a memoir, A Guest at the Feast, and he won the Irish PEN Award for his contribution to Irish literature. He is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Manchester.

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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TIP: If you want help writing a book, buy The Novel Writing Exercises Workbook.