For 40 years my day job has been in an industry that is, by any standard, over-regulated. Regulations change on a daily basis, and I am constantly subject to audits and compliance reviews. I’m the enforcer, too, so I’m the bad guy when it comes to instruction and remanding. When I leave my office for the sanctuary and sanity of my home the last thing I want to think about is rules.

Imagine my dismay, when I entered the world of writers, to discover rules on how and what you should write! This is my relaxation, my hobby, and now you tell me I’ve got to follow rules?  I knew about standard english-language  rules, and the necessity of format and submission rules, but… rules on content?  It made me want to hide under the bed (perhaps to be found with Emily’s shoebox decades later, covered in dust-bunnies).

I began to get discouraged.  I knew when you submitted for publication, you have to follow directions, but I liked writing what I felt like writing.  Maybe I should just stay in my room and scribble.

At conferences, workshops, and different writers’ groups we are told what sells and what doesn’t.  What kind of literature publishers are looking for, and buying, and rejecting.  What we shouldn’t even be bothering with.  Caveats such as don’t write in first person; you can’t kill off your hero; and the greatest taboo –you can’t write from a dead person’s point of view (it’s unbelievable and your reader won’t accept it).

Hmm… So, Sue Grafton and all those other detective novelists can’t possibly find success.  Of course, Message in a Bottle will get laughed out the door.  And works like The Lovely Bones and The Sixth Sense will be dumped in the trash.  Hmph.

J.K.Rowling was told no child would read a book the length of Harry Potter.  Yet her books re-kindled an interest in reading for millions of youngsters around the world, and turned the field of children’s literature on its head.  And those in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Twilight series, and Charlaine Harris’s books are not your grandfather’s vampires.

Everybody in Wonderland scrambled when the Queen of Hearts yelled “Off with their heads!”   But the Queen had no real power. In the end nobody lost their head. Nobody even got hurt. I eventually realized all this writers’ advice was well-meaning, but like the Queen, had no power. After all, if every writer followed the ‘rules’ there would be no innovation. No new and exciting novels. No breakthrough concepts. And everything in the library and on Amazon or in the bookstores would be exactly the same. Yawn…

So I’m back at the beginning and getting excited all over again. It’s a cliché, but …some rules are made to be broken. Writing is about creativity. It is about opening new worlds. It is about imagination. If you’ve got a story, write it.  Nobody will get hurt. Don’t worry if nobody is writing that subject or style. And if it’s similar to something already written, so what? What if Charlaine had thought Vampires have been done.  I’ll think of something else.? ( Hey, did I punctuate that correctly?)

Write what you want.  YOUR voice will make it different.  YOUR idea IS new.