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Wednesday, September 4, 2013

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. 

5 comments:

  1. I'm not a writer but I used to write for fun and like you I hated the rules
    Writing is a way of showing emotions, feelings or just thoughts so why do we have to follow so many rules for it??? Of course you need to write something others can understand and there are minor grammar rules that you must follow but not in an excesive way :)
    Ruty@Reading...Dreaming

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    1. Yes, I agree with you. There seem to be countless rules,but I try to follow up. With time and practice everything will be easier, I guess.

      Thanks for stopping by.

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  2. While certain rules are good to follow, especially for things like grammar, for the most part, I agree, a lot of "do's" and "don'ts" come across more like preferences. Rules can definitely be broken and still lead to an amazing story! (Like, one of my favorite books doesn't use quotations for dialogue at all, which most would likely classify as a DON'T, but this author makes it work.)

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  3. I know exactly what you mean! My finger flew over the keyboard when I first started writing, but the more editing rules I learned the slower I clicked away. Studying visual art is the same way. The more you learn the harder it is to hush all the rules so the creator can take over. I think if you own your style you can break rules. The Night Huntress series is hugely popular but Frost has long sections where she's telling the story in a quick summary of events. The first time I hit one of these sections my mouth dropped because here was this awesome writer and big best seller doing her own thing and doing it well. I love the rules that have improved my writing, but I miss the bliss of writing without all the thinking! Maybe we need to find that head space again. Maybe wine will help. Hmm.

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    1. A friend read The night Huntress series and she said it was amazing. I want to read it too.

      I know. Everytime I uploaded on CC a chapter and I had a part a little summarized, people always pointed it out. I guess since we are not experienced writers, the rules apply to us in a greater percentage.

      You are right. We should only keep the rules that helps us improve our writing. The rest is just style. :)

      Hehe wine is good. :)

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