Competition: Decalogue

In Competition No. 2740 you were invited to submit the ten work Commandments of the writer of your choice, living or dead.
There were some cracking entries this week — far more winners than there is space to print. Here is a taste of Brian Murdoch’s Tolkien: ‘1. If a book’s worth writing, it’s worth spinning out to three volumes … 4. You don’t need many women; it’s a man’s world in Middle Earth and 1930s Oxford colleges’; G.M. Davis’s Patience Strong: ‘Why dwell on thoughts that might give pain?/ Bring joy, like sunshine after rain.’ And J. Seery’s Hemingway: ‘if the writing is not running like a properly punched nose 1. Punch somebody. 2. If that fails, shoot a big, dangerous animal. Try a lion.’
The winners, printed below, earn £30 each. Chris O’Carroll takes the extra fiver.

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