22 Rules To Creating Great Writing

 

 

Life is an invitation to injury, experience, and dreaming. We must translate what we see, hear, feel, taste, think, smell, and question. Life is a puzzle -- all of the pieces. Are there, but we struggle to make the connections as to how they fit together. 

 

As writers, we are like children, seeking, wondering, exploring, and questioning. We try to recapture a more innocent stage of our lives. With our words, we look to both explain and to find answers. We take in raw data and seek to convert it into something that makes sense and has an impact. 

 

We try to capture moments in time with our writing, for even now as I draft this in pen and paper, the world around me is not static. It is ever-changing, evolving, growing, becoming, and turning. We each have internal flow going on -- our chemistry, moods, and unconscious processing of things is swirling about. We try to remain grounded long enough to craft a book with meaning, passion, purpose, pride, and power. We translate the life around and within us. 

 

One of the best books that I’ve read about creating is one that I recommend to you. It’s called The Creative Act: A Way of Being, by Rick Rubin with Neil Strauss. Here are 22 direct and beautiful quotes that hopefully make you a better writer:

1.      Our minds seek rules and limits. In attempting to navigate a large, uncertain, world, we develop beliefs that give us a coherent framework, reduced options, and a false sense of certainty. 

 

2.      Think to yourself: I’m just here to create

 

3.                  Break habits. Look for differences. Notice connections.

 

4.                  Train yourself to see the awe behind the obvious.

 

5.                  Mistaking adopted rules for absolute truths.

 

6.                  Not taking the work to its highest expression (settling).

 

7.                  Feeling like you need permission to start or move forward.

 

8.                  Prioritizing other activities and responsibilities over your commitment to making art. 

 

9.                  Each mindset evokes a universal rule: whatever we concentrate on, we get. 

 

10.              If we were to learn anything, it would be to free ourselves from any beliefs or baggage, or dogma that gets in the way of us acting according to our true nature. The closer we get to a childlike state of free self-expression, the puree our test and the better our art. 

 

11.              We can only flow with the challengers as they come and keep an open mind, with no baggage, no previous story to live up to. We simply begin from a neutral place, allow the process to unfold, and welcome the winds of change to guide the way. 

 

12.              If you are open and stay tuned to what’s happening, the answers will be revealed.

 

13.              It’s helpful to work as if the project you’re. Engaged in is bigger than you.

 

14.              What is true is that you are never alone when you’re making art. You are in a constant dialogue with what is and what was. 

 

15.              It’s a healthy practice to approach our work with as few accepted rules. Starting points, and limitations as possible. 

 

16.              Rules obeyed unconsciously are far stronger than the ones set on purpose. And they are more likely to undermine the work. 

 

17.               For every rule followed, examine the possibility that the opposite might be similarly interesting. Not necessarily better, just different. 

 

18.              Listening without prejudice is how we grow and learn as people. More often than not, there are no right answers, just different perspectives. The more perspectives we can learn to see, the greater our understanding becomes. Our filter can begin to more accurately approach what the truth is, rather than a narrow sliver interpreted through our bias. 

 

19.              A child has no set of premises it relies on to make sense of the world. It may serve you to do the same/

 

20.              Try to experience everything as if for the first time.

 

21.              As artists, we aim to live in a way in which we see the extraordinary hidden in the seemingly mundane.

 

22.              The magic lives in the wonder of what we do not know. 

 

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About Brian Feinblum

Brian Feinblum should be followed on www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog ©2024. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog. His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent.  This award-winning blog has generated over 3.9 million pageviews. With 4,900+ posts over the past dozen years, it was named one of the best book marketing blogs by BookBaby  http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs  and recognized by Feedspot in 2021 and 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by www.WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.” For the past three decades, including 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and director of publicity positions at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen, Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C. Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler. He hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America several years ago, and has spoken at ASJA, BookCAMP, Independent Book Publishers Association Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, Morgan James Publishing, and Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester) and The Washington Post. His first published book was The Florida Homeowner, Condo, & Co-Op Association Handbook.  It was featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald.