The Rules I Want to Break

The Rule of the Circle, the Rule of the Game
by Geta Bratescue

I learned about writing in school—mostly, of course, from people who themselves did not write—and my teachers taught me a simple set of rules that I should always follow, and today as I sit here blankly trying to think of what I should say, I hear their stern, reproachful voices reciting those rules, and I wonder, can I ever completely stop up my ears against them—Odysseus poured wax into the ears of his sailors to deafen them to the songs of the sirens, but those voices were coming from outside—and if you’ve made it this far into the story (because I have already broken rule number one: don’t write about yourself—no one really wants to know about you, because you are not that interesting and, besides, writing about yourself is narcissistic), you may be asking yourself, in a slightly irritated tone, exactly which rules is she talking about, and the good news is that I’ve suddenly decided just to go ahead and tell you (there, I’ve just broken rule number two, which is: “show, don’t tell”), so the rules I want to break—in addition to the ones already mentioned above—are: 3) write about what you know and, conversely, don’t write about what you don’t know (the idea being that if you’ve never been to sea, you should not write a novel about sailors, or if you’ve never been a lesbian, you should not write about lesbians, because you have no idea what it is really like—but of course, according to rule number one, you can’t write about yourself, either, and so the noose—or for you therapists out there—the Laingian knot—really begins to tighten), 4) short, declarative sentences are better than long, convoluted ones, and short, simple words are better than long, esoteric ones (well, that is how Raymond Carver wrote, right? and we should all write like Raymond Carver, right?), and, last but not least, 5) don’t write about writing (well, actually I kind of agree with that one, but then this story isn’t really about writing, is it?).

by Nina Zolotow

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