[John Whitworth]

I shall lie doggo and see what other people do. I forgot to say by 30 April. If anyone knows how to do that, do it friend.

No. 2846: the write stuff


George Orwell’s famous six rules for writing have been doing the rounds on Twitter. You are invited to invent the six rules for writing of a well-known author, living or dead, of your choice. Please email entries of up to 150 words to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 30 April.

[Brian Allgar]

This is depressingly similar to Comp. 2740, which was based on Henry Miller's "Work commandments". Apparently, it's not only competitors who go in for a spot of recycling.

For ease of reference, here are Orwell's rules:

1 Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2 Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3 If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4 Never use the passive where you can use the active.

5 Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

6 Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous.

[John Whitworth]

Orwell's rules wouldn't work very well for Nabokov. In fact Nabokov hated Orwell. And it would doubtless have been vicde-versa had Orwell lived long enough.

A competition! Write Lolita in the style of Orwell. Nabokov has already rewritten 1984. I think Bend Sinister is better.

[Adrian Fry]

Orwell's rules seem pretty tongue in cheek to me - the last is simply absurd. Win or lose, I am really going to go to town on this comp.

[Lance Levens]

William Faulkner's Six Rules for Writing:

1. Never write a clear sentence.

2. Never attach a relative clause not succeeded by a sequence of a dozen more of increasing complexity

3. Never write more than six pages without the appearance, at least once, of the word: "inviolate"

4. Never clarify place, time and person

5. Never conclude the story at the conclusion

6. Never imply that the race might survive the modern world.

[John Whitworth]

T.S. Eliot's Six Rules for Writing

1. Look on the world with the eyes of a saurian.
2. Write a few lines in a manner Victorian.
3. Fill them with languor and well-bred futility.
4. Hammering Jews has undoubted utility.
5. Old stuff in Sanskrit is good to come out with.
6. Send it to Ezra to bugger about with.