1. Never write to a perceived marketplace. Second guessing the taste of the public is as inscrutable as the hula-hoop, the pet rock and Everybody Loves Raymond. Leave that to agents, publishers, and marketers. Write in a way which trumps fashion, not caters to it. When you're told your work isn't sufficiently commercial, take heart in the following fact: yes, it's true that Bridget Jones Diary stayed on the New York Times Bestseller List for seventeen weeks in 1997, but Virginia Woolf has been selling quite briskly, thank-you, for almost a hundred years.

2. Write for readers who are smarter than you. If you're writing a medical thriller, assume it will be read by Harvard neurosurgeons. If you're scribing a historical romance, set against the backdrop of the Civil War, presume that Doris Kearns Goodwin and Ken Burns are among your readership. The moment your audience sniffs condescension, you've lost them forever.

3. Love the act of writing more than "being a writer." The notion of living the life of the aesthete in a swank little garret, paying visits to Charlie Rose to discuss your latest tome, is as seductive as it is fatal. I know a hip junior editor at a supermarket tabloid who spends more time pining for "legitimate" publication than she does putting her fingers to the keys. Spend more energy on your second draft than on your query letters. If you want to write, make peace with the idea that a monthly mortgage, a car loan, private school tuition for junior, credit card bills, hell, even regular eating habits---are all impediments to your craft. Fantasize about your chosen subject more than you fantasize about success. The personal satisfaction of a phrase well turnedthis is the only guaranteed reward that writing can offer. And if other rewards do follow, foreign rights, movie deals or, dare I say it, even Pulitzer Prizes, glorious as they are, they pale in comparison to that utterly thrilling, utterly private moment when a character you've created takes flight, and starts speaking to you, and you're suddenly a mere vessel, furiously transcribing her words. It never gets better than that. If you expect a different kind of gratification, then perhaps this isn't the profession for you.

4. Read, and read widely. If you want to write romances, then by all means, read those contemporary authors with names like Barbara, Belva, Danielle and Rosamund. But don't forget the ladies who invented the form; Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters. If mysteries are your genre of choice, then pepper your bookshelf with the occasional Hawthorne or Henry James. When it comes to horror novels, Stephen King would be the first to credit Ann Radcliffe and Edgar Allen Poe for most of what he knows. If you've a penchant for satire, then roll back the clock to Jonathan Swift and even Aristophanes. There are lessons to be learned from the author of the moment, of coursebut if you want to learn the rudiments of the form, then study the writers who formed the rudiments Remember: the author who writes more than he reads; that's the sure mark of an amateur.

5. Dismiss that woefully misguided maxim "Write What You Know." Instead, and I emphatically believe this, write what you don't know. Write about what confuses, enrages, haunts and confounds you. The writer who has the answers is penning propaganda; the writer on a quest for them is the one I'd rather read.

6. Stretch yourself. If you're a single working Mom with kids in daycare, don't write about it. Instead, write about the Dickensian workhouses for children in nineteenth century London. If you're in the National Guard, write about Incan warriors. If you're a straight man at home with a wife and three kids, and a gay man on business trips, trolling the local bathhouse.write about a double agent in World War II, his allegiance torn between warring countries. You'll be surprised how much you know.

7. Never be afraid to humiliate yourself. Arthur Miller said we haven't truly done our work if our writing fails to cut so deeply, so close to the bone, that we're vaguely embarrassed by it. When you write, don't be limited by your sense of shame.

8. Every time you start a book, assume it will never be published. The opportunity to revel in your subject, to drink it in, to obsess over it, should be enough. That way, even if your masterpiece never makes it to Barnes and Noble, by its completion, you'll still be the world's expert on the indigenous Eskimos of Greenland. For two, six, or twelve glorious years, you'll have walked in their snowshoes, and, book or no book--you'll be richer for it.

9. Study the sister arts. Nothing teaches you more about economy than Chinese brush painting; or more about rhythm than dance.

10. Be wary of Keynote speakers. Take panelists and seminars with a grain of salt. Don't follow the instructions of "How To" books. Don't attempt to imitate authors on the bestseller lists. Instead, when you sit down in front of your computer, the phone muted, coffee cup by your side--do something truly courageous: open a vein.

As we flounder into a new century, searching for new storytelling forms, new modes of literary experience-€“I'd like to proffer a single, final word. One we often hear shouted during dress rehearsal, or read as the last, fateful series of syllables typed by the playwright. But it's a word, which I hope will have new resonance, and promise a future ripe with possibility, alternatives to the corporate-sponsored opiates and palliatives too often mistaken for creativity, the therapy, the social conscience, the religion, the impossibility, the glorious conundrum that is art. One word which might actually pave the way toward a brighter future:

Blackout.

Thank-you very much.

In 2004, Doug Wright was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, a Tony Award for Best Play, the Drama Desk Award, a GLAAD Media Award, an Outer Critics Circle Award, a Drama League Award, and a Lucille Lortel Award for his play I AM MY OWN WIFE. Earlier in his career, Mr. Wright won an Obie Award for outstanding achievement in playwriting and the Kesselring Award for Best New American Play from the National Arts Club for his play QUILLS. His stage work has been produced in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, London, Helsinki, Stockholm, Bucharest, Krakow, Dublin, Budapest, Brasov and Viterbo, among other cities. Titles include: THE STONEWATER RAPTURE, INTERROGATING THE NUDE, WATBANALAND, BUZZSAW BERKELEY and UNWRAP YOUR CANDY. Upcoming projects include the musical GREY GARDENS, which will open on Broadway in November 2006 after a sold-out run at Playwrights Horizons in New York, and the stage version of THE LITTLE MERMAID for the Walt Disney Company. Mr. Wright’s film work includes the screenplay for QUILLS (Golden Globe nomination, Paul Selvin Award from the Writer’s Guild of America), and uncredited production rewrites for Sony and Twentieth Century Fox. He has developed material with directors ranging from Ron Howard to Milos Forman. For career achievement, Mr. Wright was recently cited with an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Tolerance Prize from the KulturForum Europa. He lives in New York with his partner, singer/songwriter David Clement.