Rules

Seriously, who doesn’t hate this word? Rules! It’s not the word of course we hate –I hate, but the meaning. It is mostly because it creates limits and traps me when all I want to do is spread my wings and fly. But I know, there are limitations. 

Hopefully not in everything. Imagination has no limits and I’m free to create whatever I want. Well, but only if I obey the rules.  You see what is going on, right? It’s an eternal loop and I’m spinning in the middle. But let’s take things from the beginning. Beginning is a good place to start, I think.

When I was writing just for myself, I didn’t care about a thing. It was me, my paper and my thoughts. Simple as that. And it was good, it was so damn good that I enjoyed every minute of it.

Then, I thought I could write something I could share. And Dazed was born. So I wrote. I created a story, built the characters, killed some others, made them run and hide, cry and love and then Dazed was finished. I felt an unbelievable joy. I had made it. I had wrote a book. A whole book 101,741 words.

And then hell started.

It was time to edit.

Since I didn’t know anything about editing I started to look around, and study. I picked up a thing or two but the bigger change came when I joined CC. And here is my point.

There are some rules a writer must obey. Grammar, vocabulary, telling, showing, POV. But is it always necessary? Everyone seems to have a different opinion and sometimes is hard to know what to do. Every book is so. Do the rules really apply to them? What if we could bend the rules a little? Is there really a recipe to write good or bad? Is there really good or bad writing? I believe there are tastes and preferences. I may adore something you hate and vice versa.

For me things aren’t black and white. There are a million colors and we all can find the one we like. Of course the grammar should be correct and the paragraphs too in order to be able to create a story that people can read. But is it too big a sin to have some telling for example? Is it too bad to have long or small sentences?

I don’t know. I’m just wondering and writing my thoughts on the paper. I know I’ll keep editing and writing, trying to apply everything I have already learn, and everything I will learn in the future. But as we grow up, as we practice as we study, we will keep learning. So, we will always make mistakes and we will always have some new rules to follow. If we wait to learn everything in order to start creating … we’ll just run out of time.

What do you think? What rules do you follow? Please share your thoughts with me.