The pen commandments: A guide for the beginning writer (review)

Frank’s work is about the basic principles of writing. The author has a love for language. His work, in his definition, is ‘full of words—words about words and language and writing’ (xi) and is ‘a useful guide and playful one too’ (xii). There are ten chapters, as well as a preface, an introduction, ‘Recommended reading’, and an appendix on ‘The top ten grammar mistakes you shouldn’t make’.

Ch. 1, ‘Thou shalt honour thy reader’, discusses respect for the reader. F suggests that writers should choose the right topic, honor their readers by keeping them awake, delight their readers with something new, find their own voices, be imaginative and free to write, and silence those voices that tell some of them ‘you can’t write’.

Ch. 2, ‘Thou shalt not waste words’, suggests ways to keep the sentence firm and ways to save words, including a list of examples. Ch. 3, ‘Thou shalt not kill thy sentences’, explores promoting and maintaining the health of sentences, sentence types, the diseases and their cures in the sentence, subject and predicates, and clause and fragmentation. Ch. 4, ‘Thou shalt not pick on the puncts’, looks into the use of punctuation.

Ch. 5, ‘Thou shalt keep thy structure holy’, examines structure and how it applies to writing, the topic and concluding sentence, ways of writing the introduction, paragraph types, writing the conclusion, grabbing the reader’s attention, and choosing the title. A list of transition words and phrases is provided. Ch. 6, ‘Thou shalt describe thy world, express thy opinions, and preserve thy past’, investigates different types of description, sensory language, figurative and narrative language, and persuasive writing. Ch. 7, ‘Thou shalt take pleasure in thy pen’, deals with writing for pleasure, offering creative writing assignments such as writing a restaurant review, interviewing someone at least three times your age, writing a letter of complaint, and seventy-five ways to wiggle your pen.

Ch. 8, ‘Thou shalt not take essay tests in pain’, studies essay writing with basic useful steps such as keeping your pen moving, learning how to get your reader’s attention, and other related topics. Ch. 9, ‘Thou shalt overcome writer’s block’, offers suggestions for dealing with writer’s block including finding a suitable place to write, contacting friends for support, rewriting, and altering your state of mind. Case studies on writer’s block round out the chapter. Ch. 10, ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s prose’, scrutinizes plagiarism and how to write in your own voice.

It would have been useful to add to each chapter an introduction or conclusion that summarized the written examples discussed. Also, materials could have been added to discuss writing a report and writing in a diary (as ways to improve writing skills). As for the recommended reading list, it would be more useful if F had included comments on each book, perhaps even classifying them according to topic with reference to the corresponding chapters.

Overall, the work is well written in a lucid style. F shows a deep understanding of the nature of creative writing and has good taste in language and literature.