Writing rules

(Image created on Canva)

Another thing I faffed at over the weekend was creating images on Canva to make wallpapers and Instagram posts.

(You can follow me on Instagram too, by the way…)

I’d seen these writing rules in several places and wanted to paste them everywhere to remind me of them, I think they’re so good.

Apparently, they’re known as Heinlein’s writing rules:

Writing rules

  1. You must write
  2. You must finish what you start
  3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order
  4. You must put it on the market
  5. You must keep it on the market until sold

So I made a wallpaper for my phone and I posted them to Instagram.

I liked the phone wallpaper so much, I made one for my desktop too, but I also added in a couple of things I’m always looking for (like the poet’s phone number and our current postcode), and a picture of the poet with the dog. I should really add a picture of the cat too!

The desktop wallpaper looks like a notice board with things taped to it, and there’s room on the left for my desktop icons. (I changed the personal details.)

Now I don’t need to paste a version onto the wall. I have them right in front of me, on both my desktop and on my phone.

The poet suggested that I needed to somehow share the blog posts to Instagram as well. But Instagram only allows something like 375 words and yesterday’s post was 943 words by the time I’d finished. Today’s has run out at 578 words. So 375 isn’t enough for me.

I thought about sharing a picture with a link to the blog post, but Instagram doesn’t like you doing that either. So instead, I created my first blog-promo Instagram post and I put the details in the caption:

I love faffing with this stuff so much, I’m starting to wonder if I should switch from writing to design…¹ (The red is to match the header on here, by the way.) However, as I don’t think it’s really going to work, I may just take this one down again and not bother in future.

¹ I’m not suggesting in any way that I’m any good at it, I just really enjoy messing.

Anyway, none of this was gonna get baby a new bonnet. I had work to do. A lot of work. I had to get on with it.

After posting yesterday’s blog and starting today’s, I also wrote a new newsletter post explaining how the newsletter will be going back to being a newsletter now that I’ve found the follow buttons over here.

You can see yesterday’s newsletter here. If you’re already a gmail subscriber, check your promotions tab as you’re likely to find them all so far in there. If you’re not a subscriber, follow the link and subscribe, and you’ll receive a free gift once I’ve worked out how to do it.

From next Monday (and I mean posts from today), I’ll do a weekly digest newsletter with hyperlinks to all of the posts in the previous week. Apart from yesterday’s. Yesterday’s newsletter had a link to yesterday’s blog post.

I kicked off the new ghostwriting job yesterday. All I needed to do was do a quick read-through and then request the deposit. Deposit approved, work will start as soon as I can.

I also continued with the existing ghostwriting job. I’ll be delivering that one today or tomorrow.