Poor Jonathan Franzen, as literally no one says these days. Last week the acclaimed novelist and, to many, human embodiment of white male privilege published his 10 rules for aspiring novelists and, as tends to happen any time Franzen dares to open his mouth, he was thanked for his trouble with derision.

Small sidenote here, but I really don’t get the Franzen loathing. Sure, he could lighten up on the constant talk about birdwatching, but otherwise the things Franzen is hated for are either not really hateworthy or not actually his fault. This all began in ye olden times of 2001 with the famous, nay, legendary saga of Oprah Winfrey choosing Franzen’s novel, The Corrections, for her book club and him saying he’d rather not, thanks. Winfrey’s book choices were often, he said, not incorrectly, “schmaltzy”. It was the snub heard around the world and Franzen was for ever cast as an elitist snob, his every pronouncement since (he hates social media! He likes nature!) taken as further evidence of his hatefulness, even though surely most people would love to live a nice, Twitter-free, nature-based life in California, as Franzen does.

A more credible argument against him, made by the novelist Jodi Picoult and others, is that he gets the kind of critical adulation denied to female writers, but I’m not really sure what Franzen is supposed to do about that. Increasingly, it feels like Franzen is a scapegoat for white guilt, a white liberal even other white liberals can hate, so they feel less bad about themselves. He would have had to have been invented if he didn’t exist. Fortunately, he does exist, but no one seems very grateful for it.

So, predictably, people hated Franzen’s rules for writing, which mixed the benignly helpful (avoid the internet and fancy verbs) with the unexpectedly koan-esque (“You have to love before you can be relentless.”) Interestingly, most of the hatred came from other writers, such as novelist Tessa Dare, who tweeted, “In which Jonathan Franzen reveals himself to be that guy who mentions Ayn Rand in his Tinder profile.” But as writing rules go, I’ve read a lot worse, and so I think we can conclude that the anger here isn’t really about the rules, but about Franzen, and even that isn’t really about Franzen, either.

I read writers’ writing tips all the time, not because I think they’ll magically make me into as good a writer as, say, Tolstoy (“The best thoughts most often come in the morning after waking while still in bed”) or Hemingway (“Always stop while you are going good and don’t worry about it until you start to write the next day”), but because I’m nosy and these tips invariably say a lot more about the author than they do about writing (Tolstoy knew the value of staying in bed; Hemingway was a machismo-riddled bolter who left writing sessions as casually as he left wives).

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The brilliant screenwriter, novelist and all round mensch, William Goldman, who died last week, was able to write stage directions more interesting than most novels: “Thirty-five and bright, [Butch Cassidy] has brown hair, but most people, if asked to describe him, would remember him as blond. He speaks well and quickly, and has been all his life a leader of men; but if you asked him he would be damned if he could tell you why.” I’ve read Goldman’s extremely enjoyable writing advice (“Thou shalt know thy world as God knows this one”), from his book, Adventures In The Screen Trade, about 1,017 times and – spoiler – I have yet to write a tenth as well as him. Similarly, Stephen King’s book, On Writing, is one of the most spine-cracked books in my home, and still that blockbuster novel eludes me.

The popularity of writing tips suggests a lot of people see fiction as a hobby anyone could knock off if they just knew the right tricks, as opposed to a job and a skill, and one requiring a serious amount of unique talent (although if Franzen said this, I honestly think he’d be pushed out into the Pacific Ocean on an ice floe).

Teachers and plumbers aren’t asked for their top 10 tips on how to do their job. Even acting – the only profession seen as more self-indulgent than writing – doesn’t sell this fallacy; no one’s asking Meryl Streep for her tips on how to play a bereaved mother, or Robert De Niro for his top 10 techniques for playing a mafia boss. The idea that any of us could write as well as Franzen, Goldman, or whoever, by literally writing like them is as absurd as suggesting that buying the same handbag as Kate Moss will make you look like the supermodel.

But given that everyone seems to be giving writing tips these days, here are mine, which precisely no one asked for:

1. Write something. Hate it.

2. Wonder why so many people want tips on how to do something that brings you only self-loathing.

3. Write more. Still hate it.

4. Read about how much people hate Franzen to cheer yourself up.

5. Repeat.