Rita Bullwinkel’s literary rulebook

26.06.2025
podcast
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Which rules govern literature? How to maintain order in the empire of the imagination? 

In this podcast we find out how writers do it. How do they manage to make their characters do what they want? How do they keep their ideas under control? Where does creative license end and discipline start? What is most important: talent or craft? 

Every writer has their own ideas about “the profession”, and many have written about it. Numerous famous authors have invented their own writing rules. In this podcast, our guest puts a couple of these axioms to the test, and at the end of the conversation they come up with one writing rule, one literary law of their own.  

Episode ten: Rita Bullwinkel, editor of McSweeney’s Quarterly, assistant professor at the University of San Francisco and author of the short story collection Belly Up. In 2024 she published her debut novel Headshot, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. 

The writing rules of Rita Bullwinkel 

One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Give it, give it all, give it now.
Annie Dillard
And always words fall short, always.
Marguerite Duras
Don’t write about what you know, write towards what you want to know.
Colum McCann
Don’t read your work out loud until its finished. I don’t trust a performance.
Toni Morrison

Bullwinkel’s Law 

Time is fiction’s sharpest knife. Wield it. 

26.06.2025