Tuesday
Feb042025
40 Rules of Writing
Tuesday, February 4, 2025 at 5:26PM 
My daughter, the poet Raisa Tolchinsky, asked me what my rules of writing are, in response to Jack Kerouac’s rules of writing. I’m not a poet, I’m a screenwriter and playwright so probably only some of this is relevant to other forms of writing but so be it (with apologies for the explicit language; I don't know how else to talk about writing :)) :
- Be a nice person in life. Be a monster in your writing.
- Write monstrously.
- Write monsters.
- Write the scene you wish you could see.
- Write the scene you’re afraid to see.
- Write doors. Doors that your characters shouldn’t be opening but must open.
- Write doors. Doors that you as the writer keep trying to pry open until you finally do.
- Write doors. Especially that door that’s left closed even at the end. . . that we all have to open collectively by talking about by thinking about it by dreaming about it. .
- Write in the morning if you can, even if it’s for only 30 minutes. The rest of your day will be fucking awesome since even in your stupid day job all you’ll be thinking about is your writing and how you can’t wait to get back home to continue. . .
- Write until you’re not writing your character, but your character is writing his/her/their self. Because your character has always existed, you just had to breathe life into him/her/them.
- Your story already exists. Go find it. It’s hidden in that block of stone or behind that door or out there in the darkness. Or it’s in your dreams. Keeping looking.
- You won’t find your story sitting at the computer. Take walks, take showers, stare into space, take a nap, watch a movie. Your story will reveal itself. And THEN sit at the computer and write it down. That’s the easy part.
- Each morning -- Always look back at what you’ve already written, so you have a feel of the pace and language and where you are in the story.
- Each morning -- Never look back at what you’ve already written, you'll spend your day revising rather than moving forward, that’s a form of writer’s block. Haha. Just keep going. Both are true. Just depends on where/how you’re feeling.
- Each morning pose yourself a question about your character or your scene or your story. Now go off and live your life. Don’t worry, you’re working on the answer, whether you realize it or not.
- Writer’s block isn’t a bad thing. It just means you’re mulling, thinking, deciding, or you’re not writing the thing you should be writing or not ready to.
- You don’t have to write. If you’re not excited or curious to write. Do something else that gives you joy or fulfills your curiosity or challenges you intellectually. You can always come back to your writing.
- Write on a deadline :) Just get those pages out, you can revise afterward.
- Write 10 pages a day. Which means fuck off for most of the day and then finally puke the pages out right before your time to write is over. (I learned this from my friend Karey Kirkpatrick).
- Be excited when your writing keeps up at night. Cancel everything! Just write.
- Don’t send one thing out into the world. Send five or five hundred so that one rejection doesn’t hurt so bad.
- Find ways to keep going even when you're in your darkest place. Go work on that OTHER piece of writing that's been on the back burner. Go watch My Cousin Vinny or Elf :)
- You won’t know what people will respond to. That thing you worked so hard on no one will give a shit about. That thing you puked out might be the one. . . Be open. Be happy whatever people respond to. Be happy if one person walks up to you and says that thing you wrote. . . I’m still thinking about it.
- Don’t write for other people. Write for yourself, to give yourself something to stay up for other than scrolling (I wrote other than sex and alcohol, but I was worried I'd lose my PG rating so I erased that :) ) .
- Write the middle of your work first. The midpoint of your story reveals all the answers.
- Write the ending so you know you have an ending even if changes (The midpoint will tell you what the ending is).
- Don't feel like you need to write in order. One part of your story will tell you what the other part should be. Jump to the part you know or are excited to write.
- Your story is over when you’ve solved that problem you created for your character or that question you posed is answered. Denouements are bullshit and unnecessary.
- Your story begins when a question is posed, or a conflict is created. Exposition is bullshit and unnecessary.
- Keep erasing lines esp. lines of dialogue until there’s barely enough information, just enough so we’re curious, but not too much so we’re not confused. We should all be writing poems like Raisa.
- Screenwriting is the same as graphic novel writing (using minimal language we bring a series of stills to life, still that capture moments of change or tension.)
- Playwriting is a series of poems (I don’t know what the fuck I’m saying here but I really like that idea haha).
- Never censor or judge your writing while you’re writing. Wait until you revise. Then look at it with fresh eyes. Then go back into writing and don’t judge yourself until it’s time to revise one more time.
- Don’t write that thing you’re in the middle of. Wait until you have some distance and humor and can see it as a story, not as YOU. (And I disagree with David Lynch, therapy only makes you more creative and insightful, it takes nothing away.)
- Use things like printing out your writing or reading your writing out loud to see it in new ways when you can’t look at it anymore.
- When you fucking hate everything you’ve written, remind yourself of why you started and why you were so excited. That’s still in there. Somewhere. Find it.
- Don’t write answers, write questions. The answer comes at the end or not at all.
- Don’t write completions, write interruptions, the completion comes at the very end or not at all.
- There are no rules of writing. Do what works for you. What works for me is when my daughter asks me a question. That gets me excited to write.
- Ask Raisa how to write. She knows better than anyone.
