“5. You're Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop, You Know.

I mean, Christ, people. All that tapping and leaning back thoughtfully in your chair with a mug of whatever while you pretend to edit your latest masterpiece. You couldn't be more obvious if you had a garish, flashing neon sign over your head that said "Looking For Sex." Go home, why don't you. Just go.

Admittedly if everyone followed my advice the entire economy of Park Slope would implode. But look, do you want to write, or do you want to get laid? No, don't answer that. Anyway, if you really want to impress the hot whomevers, you'll bring your bound galleys to the coffeeshop to edit. That'll make the laptop tappers look like pathetic chumps. We're talking hot libidinous mammal sex for days.” — John Scalzi

“New Rule: Kill all your little darklings.” — Merrie Haskell

“I love print. I love magazines that commit and pay for long articles and long fiction. The web rewards neither approach. It's a packeted medium, a surf medium. Short bursts are the way to go. The web isn't a replacement medium -- it's *another* medium.” — Warren Ellis

“If you're a novelist, you think, 'Why wouldn't God do successive drafts of the universe?' And once he's finished one version, that draft would still exist and there'd be people living in it.” — Rudy Rucker

“Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.” — George Orwell

“The man was three ballet lessons and a breakdown in the girls' bathroom away from being an after school special of the worst and most poorly-acted kind.”