The Rules

"The rules are: there ain't no rules."

Which is a quote from a movie I watched a long, long time ago and I can only vaguely remember that it was in reference to a race. Was it from Grease, maybe? Anyway, it's a true statement, regardless of context.

The context I'm using it in today is writing. Specifically, how you get your writing done.

Unless I'm doing something that requires my full attention, I'm writing. It doesn't necessarily mean I'm dragging a pen over a sheet of paper. Sometimes writing involves imagining a scene or how a character feels when they receive some bad news. It's very amorphous and sometimes I don't remember what I've thought of and it ends up on the paper later looking very different than I originally imagined it, but I'm still always writing.

I don't make rules about how many words I need to finish in a day or how many chapters my stories have to have. The only rule I have is that it is perfectly acceptable to write anywhere and everywhere and all of the time. Sometimes it's in my head. Sometimes I put it on paper. Sometimes I act out a scene to see how it plays out and what it feels like when it's happening. (Yes, when I'm alone. It probably would be a bad idea to hold a knife to my throat when other people are around.)

I've tried making more rules about writing. Know what happens? I stop writing because I get tangled up in the rules. "Oh, I'm not going to get to write today, so I may as well wait until next week to start." And pretty soon I'm not writing at all and this makes for a very unhappy Tracy.

Make rules if you have to, but make rules that work for you rather than against you. There's my gift to you. Don't say I never gave you nothing.