April 1, 2008

Elmore Leonard
99 Rules For Writing

1.  Steal from the masters – they’re probably dead so they can’t sue you.
2.  Only use two-word titles.
3.  Quick Monkey.
4.  Trouser Snake.
5.  Never use a thesaurus.
6.  Dinky Winky.
7.  If you’re gonna fake it, fake it well.
8.  Gag reflex.
9.  Brush your teeth after every meal.
10.  Never write on the same side the page twice.
11.  Don’t pretend you don’t read you reviews.
12.  Take the money and run.
13.  No anthrax.
14.  For “he said,” never write, “he expostulated.”
15.  Alwayz uze spelchek.
16.  Never stick a fork in a toaster.
17.  If you don’t know something, make it up.
18.  Write in English.
19.  Never begin a book with the word “Vociferously.”
20.  No footnotes.
21.  No prologue.
22.  No index.
23.  No pop-ups.
24.  No nineteenth-century woodcuts by Boz.
25.  No expensive, limited editions with fake-fur covers.
26.  No King of Pop.
27.  No cats on the table.
28.  Prepositions are your friends.
29.  Adjectives are you enemy.
30.  Posture, posture, posture.
31.  Gut feelings.
32.  Skid marks.
33.  No baby talk.
34.  No nookie between chapters.
35.  Dunt tuse dia-lacht oonlass yer ken duit.
36.  Never end a book with “and.”
37.  Or “but.”
38.  When typing, use as many fingers as possible.
39.  When Shoreen brings a sawed-off shotgun to the airport, it’s likely the metal detectors will find it.
40.  Or maybe not.
41.  Never accept a blurb from a federal agent.
42.  Or Bret Easton Ellis.
43.  No waking up to find it was just a dream.  Or was it…?
44.  Hire a lot of researchers with a quick-response tema.
45.  Pay them in doughnuts.
46.  Floss.
47.  If asked to sign a breast, never use a pencil.
48.  Or an eraser.
49.  Try to keep it under a back a day.
50.  Order small, tip big.
51.  Use a zip disk.
52.  No children called “Rumor” or “Scout.”
53.  No haute couture.
54.  No garage wines.
55.  No novelle cuisine.
56.  Nothing macrobiotic.
57.  No Yoga.
58.  No Author’s Commentary.
59.  No director’s cut.
60.  No meetings.
61.  Try to keep under a pint a day.
62.  But try the Long Island waffle cone.
63.  Always check your cholesterol.
64.  Honey, disconnect the phone.
65.  Get back to where you once belonged.
66.  Never bet the ace.
67.  Beware the shill.
68.  Look for the tell.
69.  The lottery is for losers.
70.  Don’t forget to tip the super at Christmas.
71.  Don’t badmouth a cop who’s stopped you for speeding.
72.  If you’ve got it, show a little cleavage.
73.  He who represents himself has a fool for a client.
74.  Doctor Martens.
75.  Eskimo Kiss.
76.  Only a fool holds out for the top dollar.
77.  If that’s Quentin again, tell him I’m not home.
78.  Don’t take any wooden nickels.
79.  Load the dice.
80.  Load the bases.
81.  Damn the torpedoes.
82.  Cover your mouth when you cough.
83.  Never ask Charlie Rose about his hair.
84.  Recycle.
85.  Soak.
86.  Spit.
87.  Never dive into a cold swimming pool right after you’ve eaten.
88.  Risk factored.
89.  Fools suffered gladly.
90.  Never lose your cool.
91.  Don’t lose the remote.
92.  Rush Limbaugh is a big, fat idiot.
93.  Always keep your car keys in the same place.
94.  Never put a Q-tip deep in your ear.
95.  Keep the cigarette out of you author photo.
96.  Always carry breath mints.
97.  Wash behind your ears.
98.  AOL sucks.
99.  Clapton is God.

Sorry.  April Fools . . .

The Satanic Nurses and Other Literary Parodies by Miller, J. B.
New York : St. Martin’s Press, 2003

Hunting a tiger in Africa / Ernest Hemingway—Colita / Vladimir Nabokov—Obdurane / Ernest Shackleton—William Powell diary (1936) / Virginia Woolf—The rules / Norman Mailer—On the bus / Jack Kerouac—Lord of the strings / J.R.R. Tolkien—You’re full of crap / Cole Porter—en attendant frodo / Samuel Beckett—Paper cut / Raymond Carver—She’s a right Ho, Jeeves / P. G. Wodehouse—Later work / J. D. Salinger—Itch: A memoir of Edmund Morris / Ronald Reagan—Implausimento / Lillian Hellman—The diary of Anais Nin / Bridget Jones—Annoying play w/ dog / Edward Albee—Rabbit rocks / John Updike—Naked brunch / William Burroughs—The satanic nurses / Salman Rushdie—List of words / Joyce Carol Oates—Two cheers for leon bixby / John Irving—Belabored / Toni Morrison—What lights, which city? / Jay McInerney—Stalking Mr. Bellow / Martin Amis—Roth Unbound / Philip Roth—Graduation speech / Kurt Vonnegut—Waiting to Inhale / Terry McMillan—Angela’s eyelashes / Frank Mccourt—American opener / Don DeLillo—Trainspitting / Irvine Welsh—On Oprah / Jonathan Franzen—The evil Pajamas / Fay Weldon—Puffy combs is the new duke of seanhampton! / Tom Wolfe—Laundromat America / Rick Moody—All the pretty sentences / Cormac McCarthy—Box / Nicholson Baker—Vocabulary Crimes / E. Annie Proulx—A backbreaking work of incredible thinness / Dave Eggers—How it is to write / Savid Mamet—The vampire monologues / Eve Ensler and Anne Rice—Infinite pest / David Foster Wallace—Harry Potter and the rolling stone / J. K. Rowling—Bookorama Brett Easton Ellis—99 rules for writing / Elmore Leonard

and they think I’m too deep

My favorite from the 99 rules is “Never ask Charlie Rose about his hair.”

But am I the only one that thinks the funniest part of this whole thing is “All the pretty sentences / Cormac McCarthy?”

‘Cause that’s the only thing that kept taking me out of the story in No Country For Old Men. An otherwise fine novel.