孔子说：父母在，不远游

The eight rules to writing short stories, by Kurt Vonnegut:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

But great writers tend to break all these rules, maybe except one.

Thanks Pranaya for highlighting this. Some quotes by Kurt Vonnegut  here.

As I begin to record what I felt recently in this post, I realise that there is nothing that I want to record anymore. Except that reading Stefan Sagmeister’s Things I have Learned In My Life So Far (I read the print version, not the online version) made me think a lot about my own current situation.

P.S. I never read on the website what others have so far learned in their lives because I want to go through the process on my own accord (and discover my own maxims). I decided to stop at Stefan’s booklets instead.