Dear All, Helps with your swift manifestos…
I do like the thread of manifesto of :
Philip Larkin (no sentimentalist) observed “What will survive of us is love.”
This extracted from The Guardians’ Successful authors dispensing advice to aspiring writers, as some manifestos could be gleaned, and derived, from the successful authors’ values. Other manifestos, nearly suggested by David Hare, Geff Dyer, Helen Dunmore Neil Gaiman (Laugh at your own jokes”) too, are good:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/feb/20/ten-rules-for-writing-fiction-part-one
David Hare
3 Style is the art of getting yourself out of the way, not putting yourself in it.
4 If nobody will put your play on, put it on yourself.
9 Never complain of being misunderstood. You can choose to be understood, or you can choose not to.
Geoff Dyer
Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire.
Helen Dunmore
9 Don’t worry about posterity – as Larkin (no sentimentalist) observed “What will survive of us is love”
Neil Gaiman
7 Laugh at your own jokes.
8 The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.
Happy Manifestoeing,
Ash