Kate Zambreno, who blogs at the supremely awesome
Frances Farmer is my Sister, posts some "
rules for writing":
1) Fuck around a lot when you're young. Do things for EXPERIENCE. Have lots of traumatic toxic love affairs. The best way to really get at the psychology of others is when they're suspended over you.
2) Continuing with the idea of fucking up, have at least one total to complete breakdown during this time period, or if possible, have it related to some trauma from childhood.
3)Survive
4) After surviving, begin to come into your own, begin to awaken.
5)Read philosophy & theory - don't borrow the language, engage with the ideas
6) Be political. Have opinions. Be angry. It's boring to not be political and engage with the world.
7)Read lots of literature. Be a voracious, promiscuous, engaged reader. Read the avant-garde, the high-modernists, works in translation, marginalized and "minor" writers, small press authors. Read the majors (Virginia Woolf, Beckett). Read the obvious books, wait a decade and read the non-obvious books, and then go back reappraise the obvious books.
8)See the world, see yourself, see others, see art, film...
9)Begin to keep a fairly involved journal
10)Always have really great pens. And notebooks. Have a notebooking system.
