At the Edge of the Known

Issue 143

Salerno 2016

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Just as you wouldn’t ever tap Louis Armstrong on the shoulder and say that’s not the proper way to play, you probably shouldn’t start announcing that there’s a proper way to write. My ears don’t really want to hear the genteel, rule-following version of John Coltrane or Dizzy Gillespie or Miles Davis, nor do they care for a Billie Holiday that’s constrained by a classical repertoire, and my eyes aren’t that interested in a writer that’s caught by old conventions and old assumptions and who is unwilling to even consider crossing any of the supposed prohibitions of the page. Pretty much any writing principle—right as you imagine it—is worth stretching to its boundary. And that’s a long way of saying that tossing writing rules onto the page is one surefire method of having, soon enough, the next great writer make you look foolish.

Nevertheless, because I have expertise at ignoring my own advice, I will state that there’s at least one rule that I’ll call essential. Of course there are alternatives and certainly diverse opinions on how best to approach a blank page, but this is one rule that, it seems to me, a disproportionate amount of prominent writers follow. In its simplest distillation the rule states that you should have a trajectory but not a plan.