VIA HARPERThe First Rule of Novel-Writing is Don’t Write a Novel
CRAFT AND CRITICISM FICTION AND POETRY NEWS AND CULTURE LIT HUB RADIO READING LISTS BOOK MARKS CRIMEREADS ABOUT LITERARY HUB VIA HARPER The First Rule of Novel-Writing is Don’t Write a Novel Elizabeth Percer: Nine Non-Rules for Writing By Elizabeth Percer March 25, 2016 If you’d asked me 15 years ago how I saw my future, I would tell you about all the hard work I’d put into earning my doctorate, about the post doc that promised me a way into a fantastic research opportunity; about the tenure track position I hoped to secure one day. I would tell you all this with a clenched jaw, a fierce smile, and a knot in my belly. Because although I’d spent most of my young life envisioning academic achievement as the pinnacle of success and fulfillment, these goals were forged from a lifetime of trying to measure up. I’d shoved my quirky, not particularly scientific self into a mold that suited my family of physicists, mathematicians, and software designers. But somehow along the way, in measurin
