10 Rules of Creative Writing

1. You can write anything in any style.

2. Continually experiment with your style and the forms you use.

3. Read a lot of creative writing, and use the styles and forms you enjoy from what you read.

4. Don’t get too intellectual—feel more than think when writing and when editing your writing.

5. Get constructive criticism from other writers, or else you will see your writing from only your viewpoint.

6. Find the right creative atmosphere for you. Get into this atmosphere as much as possible. It could be in a library meeting room, in your basement with Mozart playing in the background, etc.

7. When you have written a considerable amount of work, send it out for being published. This will make you more concerned about the quality of your work and give you motivation.

8. Even though you can write about anything in creative writing, you must also check if a reader can understand it well enough. A total understanding by the reader is not necessary, but at least some cognitive connection should be able to be established between your writing and the reader.

9. It is a normal practice to take ideas from other writers and expand on them. You are not plagiarizing—only putting your own creative energy into an idea already shown in others’ writing and making it your own idea in the process.

10. When you have written for many years, you can make your own writing rules.