Gathered by Mandi Casolo

An exhausting, if not exhaustive, meta-list of writing rules from writers including Margaret Atwood’s “Do back exercises,” and “Take something to write on. Paper is good. In a pinch, pieces of wood or your arm will do.”

In the helpful spirit, Kurt Vonnegut gives eight tips in his own voice, such as “Be a Sadist,” for how to write the ideal short story.

Jack Kerouac mailed a seriously pissed postcard to his editor, Malcolm Cowley, in 1956, threatening to pull the plug from On the Road. And C.S. Lewis would write a postcard in Anglo-Saxon.

Underground comix pioneer Robert Crumb illustrates poet Charles Bukowski’s meditations on the human condition in his signature satirical style.

Hopefully, no one in these carvers’ neighborhoods smashed pumpkins, whose spooky literary depictions will put your jack-o-lantern to shame.