While reading my way through Chekhov's work, I stumbled upon one curious text. A listicle, writing advice from the master himself. And I thought it would be fun to translate and share it with you, not for the sake of helping to learn something or adding value, of course, but just to present what Anton Pavlovich considered as rules for authors. It's humorous, satirical, harsh and direct and completely orthogonal to what writing advice appears to be in our era, but not because it's outdated – it's timeless enough, you'll see – but rather because some things aren't being discussed or mentioned at all.
Rules for Aspiring Authors were printed in 1885, the issue №12 of The Wake-up Caller magazine[1], on page 145. The issue was dedicated to the magazine's 20th-year jubilee and the Rules were presented as a jubilee gift for the readers: "It is also said, there is no group that does not split up. The jubilee is over. In conclusion – a little gift..."
In 1904, in The Wake-up Caller № 27, on 18 July, Chekhov's obituary was printed. Right after the obituary, the Rules you are about to read were printed as well, together with A Toast in Honour of Prose Writers, both under one heading Chekhov's pages.
"...We present here," the obituary said, "two fine examples of Chekhov's original humour, two short articles which appeared in the pages of The Wake-up Caller some twenty years ago and touch on the life and work of a Russian writer, which title was sacred to Chekhov."
Today, I present you only the Rules For Aspiring Authors, but later I might translate the other piece included in "Chekhov's pages" as well. I enjoyed writing footnotes for them. They are a combination of my translator's struggles, interesting facts and notes to understand the context better.
Shall we?
I am using "The Wake-up Caller" instead of "The Alarm Clock" because it's closer etymologically to the original title "Budilnik" ("Будильник"). ↩︎