Writers as a group don’t have a lot of free time, and there’s no need to waste what little they have cramming down words. This is far more important than any page-count goals. By reading critically, you can see how a story works and understand which of the author’s choices were successful and which weren’t. Reading can certainly be helpful for writers, * but what matters is that you read critically, not how many books you read.

Is there a penalty writers have to pay if their list of rules goes over ten? Anyway, part one of this rule is exemplified by the sentence “Read everything you can lay hands on,” and it’s the same old cliché that pops up everywhere: that a successful writer needs to read a lot. In this first entry, Moorcock partakes of the classic gambit: smuggle two rules in under the same heading. I always advise people who want to write a fantasy or science fiction or romance to stop reading everything in those genres and start reading everything else from Bunyan to Byatt. My first rule was given to me by TH White, author of The Sword in the Stone and other Arthurian fantasies and was: Read. Will Moorcock finally unseat Vonnegut by achieving a rating of more than 50% useful? Let’s find out! The First Rule Instead, we’re looking at his ten rules of writing, making him the latest author to enter this prestigious competition. Fortunately, we’re not talking about Moorcock’s infamous essay * today.

I’d love to be more specific, but I’ve read the whole thing and that’s the best I could get. Michael Moorcock is a British author well known for writing dozens of influential novels over his long career and also for a rambling rant about how The Lord of the Rings and Watership Down are bad because of… reasons.

Michael morcock