In the past week I had several writers tell me they don’t like rules. They were actually mad about this. ‘Rules are for games’, one woman told me. ‘I don’t play games.’
I backed off. With writers you need to pick your fights. Or not pick them at all. Tacking in a different direction, I asked if others should follow rules. She didn’t know. But if they had talent, she imagined not.
Ah, talent. That was the difference.
She had a manuscript with her. This was a short story she intended to submit to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. She never published with a magazine before, and was going right to the top. You have to admire the chutzpah.
We sat in our local library. The only advice she sought was if the ms. was in proper form. In other words, there were some rules she was willing to follow. Smart.
She opened her laptop, this being the jet age and all. Everything seemed in order. Double spaced? Check. Single spaced name and address at the top? Check. Courier, story beginning halfway down, pages titled and numbered in the upper right corner? Check, check, and check. I frowned.
“What is it?”
“The title.”
She had titled her story ‘The Street’. I found this simplistic, or rather, uncompelling.
Silence. I should have known better. As I say, you have to be careful with writers. Especially stout, aggressive writers with short white hair. And especially stout, aggressive writers who are former high school chemistry teachers. “There is nothing” — she informed me after the appropriate, admonishing pause — “wrong with that title.”
What’s the story about? I asked.
“A street where somebody’s killed.”
“That’s it?”
Again, the pause. “Of course not! A woman dreams of a street named Chestnut Lane. The dream is very real, very specific, street sign, trees and houses, everything. In her dream there’s a murder at 666 Chestnut, but when the woman tries to find it, no such street exists. Then she gets a letter from the city. They are renaming her street Chestnut! And her address is…”
I stopped her. I got the picture. “Why not name the story ‘666 Chestnut’?”
“Why?”
”It’s freakin’ scary.”
“Is that one of your rules?”
“I don’t know. For a whodunit? Maybe.”
She snapped shut her laptop. She would think about it. For now, the important thing was to tighten things up, and get it off. I agreed.
There’s rules for both chemistry, and writing. You would think a teacher would know that. But writing has a way of distorting our judgment. And you can probably break rules in the art world more readily than, say, the sciences. After all, you only combine alcohol and sulfuric acid once.
The results, to use a euphemism, are impressive.
Richard Donnelly lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Classic flyover land. Which makes us feel just a little… superior. He publishes a weekly column of essays on the writing life at richarddonnelly.substack.com