Rules for Writers

For this weeks podcast, I take a break from my reading of my 2009 novel, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, to read aloud my latest Locus column, Rules for Writers. The column sums up a long-overdue revelation I had teaching on the Writing Excuses cruise last fall: that the rules we advise writers to follow are actually just places where its easy to go wrong.

Theres an important distinction between this and the tired injunction, You have to know the rules to break the rules. Its...