If you're looking for some tips to improve your writing then look no further than Britain's the Guardian. The Guardian has been asking some big-name contemporary writers, including Can Lit grande dame Margaret Atwood for the "golden rules they bring to their writing practice." These rules for writers can be found here.
So far, the list of participating writers at the Guardian includes Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Hilary Mantel, Michael Moorcock, Will Self, Zadie Smith, Sarah Waters, Rose Tremain and Michael Morpurgo.
If you're looking for more writing tips, keep your eye on nowhearthis.ca for Q and As with all twelve of 2010's participating S.W.A.T. writers where they share, among other things, the best writing advice they've ever received and share their own advice for aspiring young writers!
The writers' tips range from the simple, like Zadie Smith's instruction to "[w]ork on a computer that is disconnected from the internet," to the more broad, like Michael Moorcock's "Ignore all proferred rules and create your own, suitable for what you want to say," to attestations to the importance of having friends help you with editing. As Margaret Atwood puts it, "You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You've been backstage. You've seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat."
(We were tipped off to this great feature by the National Post's The Afterword blog.)
