How to Write Stories About Writers Breaks the Rules

In 1995 a well meaning instructor at the Clarion Writer’s workshop informed me that there was one essential rule for writing that all would do well to follow. The rule was simply this:

Don’t write stories about writers.

I did not immediately take the rule to heart. After all this instruction seemed to contradict a rule I’d learned of even earlier. An English teacher at Palmer High School had told me that the important thing was to: write what you know. The two rules obviously contradict each other, but at the same time they share a common sensibility as both are, despite appearances, prohibitions. Over time I’ve decided that these rules serve the same function. They are dispensed by those who think of themselves as established to those who are beginning. And the intent behind the dispensing of these tidbits, these rules, is highly suspect.

For the young the adage–Write what you know– is an instruction to give up on writing anything. After all the typical young person drawn to literature is wise enough to know that she doesn’t know a thing.

The maxim–Don’t write stories about writers–is likewise a way to silence the small and common people who shrink from the real world and take refuge in words on a page. These lonely old men don’t have experiences worth knowing, and thereby they have nothing worth sharing. They ought not to bother.

So the rules are suspect in their intent, and after editing a couple of issues of Diet Soap, after receiving a number of interesting stories in violation of the second rule, it struck me that there was nothing to gain by continuing to abide by these rules, and perhaps a lot to gain by flouting them. And so, nearly 15 years after being told what not to do I have decided to start a publication that is about nothing more than breaking the rule.

At How to Write Stories About Writers we will never restrict ourselves to writing only what we absolutely know, and we will never discount our own experiences.

“How to Write Stories About Writers” is a blog where I’ll publish what I think are worthwhile stories about writers as they come in. To begin I’ll be publishing fiction once a week for four weeks. In between I’ll post nonfiction blog entries: book reviews, interviews, cranky email exchanges, manifestoes, and so on. I’ll be posting submission guidelines for How to Write Stories About Writers on the Diet Soap submission webpage sometime in the next few days.

The first story up is “Life’s Simple Pleasures” by writer and editor John Klima. .

This sudsy update was written on Monday, September 1st, 2008 at 10:16 am and is filed under How to Write Stories About Writers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.