Ten rules plus one for beginner writers
Juan Carlos Onetti
I.
Don’t try to be original. Being different is inevitable when one does not care about being different.
II.
Don’t try to dazzle the bourgeois. It does not work anymore. The bourgeois only gets scared when his pocket is threatened.
III.
Do not try to complicate the reader, nor seek or claim his help.
IV.
Never write thinking of criticism, of friends or relatives, of the sweet bride or wife. Not even in the hypothetical reader.
V.
Do not sacrifice literary sincerity to anything. Neither to politics nor to triumph. Always write for that other, silent and implacable, that we carry within us, and it is not possible to deceive.
VI.
Do not follow fashions, abjure the sacred master before the third crow of the cock.
VII.
Do not limit yourself to reading already consecrated books. Proust and Joyce were despised when they showed their noses; today they are geniuses.
VIII.
Don’t forget the famous phrase: 2 plus two is four; but what if it were 5?
IX
Don’t disdain subjects with a strange narrative, whatever their origin. Steal if necessary.
X.
Always lie.
XI.
Don’t forget that Hemingway wrote: “I even did readings from a piece of the novels I’ve already written, which is the lowest thing a writer can fall into.”
