Michael Moorcock – 10 Rules for Writing

Bunyan, Byatt, Conrad, Enid Blyton, HL Brunswick, Lester Dent, Michael Moorcock, Uncategorized
Michael John Moorcock (born 18 December 1939) is an English writer, primarily of science fiction and fantasy, who has also published literary novels. He is best known for his novels about the character Elric of Melniboné, a seminal influence on the field of fantasy in the 1960s and 1970s.
As editor of the controversial British science fiction magazine New Worlds, from May 1964 until March 1971 and then again from 1976 to 1996, Moorcock fostered the development of the science fiction “New Wave” in the UK and indirectly in the United States. His publication of Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad as a serial novel was notorious; in Parliament some British MPs condemned the Arts Council for funding the magazine.
In 2008, The Times newspaper named Moorcock in its list of “The 50 greatest British writers since 1945” (Wikipedia)
Here is his advice to would-be authors on how to write.
1. Read everything you can lay hands on. I always advise people who want to write a fantasy or science fiction or romance to stop reading everything in those genres and start reading everything else from Bunyan to Byatt.
According to Norstrom’s Alphabetical List of Famous Writers there are no writers between Bunyan and Byatt. The closest is H.L. Brunswick, author of the renowned “Nefarious Twelve” children’s series, whose oeuvre includes the wildly popular Nefarious Twelve Beat the Heck out of a Policeman. Brunswick was an unapologetic alcoholic and prominent member of the Friends of the Phlogiston Cowboy Society, who wrote almost thirty books for children including Nefarious Twelve Ruin a Perfectly Good Soufflé, Nefarious Twelve Bite the Hand that Fed Them and the ever-popular Nefarious Twelve Start World War III with a Balloon Whisk. Enid Blyton’s derivative Secret Seven Electrocute a Swan came along later and cornered the market in saccharine juvenile potboilers, thus ruining it for everyone else.