Writing outside the rules is okay…

I don’t often talk about rules of writing, or my methods of writing. I think there’s already plenty of authors and editors talking about the creative process that new writers can already sort out the basics for themselves. Also, I would never imply that my writing habits should be rules, because a lot of my methods are against other peoples’ established rules. I don’t write every day. I stop in the middle of the story and go back to add chapters. I never met an outline I didn’t fuck up by the middle, so I stopped bothering with trying to make a map and just accepted letting my muse lead me through each world.

These are “deadly sins” to some writers, and they insist that you’ll never get anything done if you don’t follow these rules. They back up their views with quotes from famous writers who also expressed similar views in their time. I’ve seen enough new writers talk about quitting on projects that I know these rules are helpful to keep people motivated. So while I don’t use or need the rules to stay productive, I can see how they might be useful to others.

But what bugs me about writing advice is the way some authors try to make their experience into an all-inclusive statement. For instance, some writers insist that there’s no such thing as a muse, and they suggest that such a thing is a myth concocted by eccentric writers to add mystery to the craft. They’re saying, in short, “I don’t have this kind of experience when I write, and therefore, anyone claiming otherwise is lying.”

I have a muse, and we don’t get along well. We produce a lot of work together, but she often ignores my various requests to instead work on something that I know doesn’t have a hope in hell of selling. We fight and argue constantly, and then she leaves, and I can’t do a damn thing right without her. Almost all my trunk novels have come during the times when she left, and I said, “Well screw her! I can write without her!” And I can’t. I reread those trunk pieces, thinking maybe I can salvage something. But dear lord, they’re awful. I feel embarrassed that I ever committed such literary travesties.

So I believe in muses, but I also believe some authors don’t have one, and they just work off their own ideas. I can accept that mine is not the only method of creative assembly of words.

I don’t write every day for many reasons, not the least of which is my muse getting pissy and wandering off to wherever she goes when we need space. During winter, I always imagine she goes to someplace tropical to blow off steam.

But I also don’t write every day because the demands of writing, both physical and mental, are too taxing for me to handle day in and out. On the days when I write a lot, I crash on the couch for half the day. So after a few days of this, I have to take some days off and let my body recover.

I don’t write in outlines because what I think in an outline is me telling the story where it should go, and does not reflect the input of my muse or my characters. What’s more, I might say, “There is a chase on an office building,” only to learn that my chosen location has no such building. I made an outline for Trail of Madness mentioning a murder in a park with a secluded spot in a jogging trail, but then couldn’t find a location that fit the event as the outline suggested. So the muse mapped out a murder in a parking lot that worked much better.

But the worst sin I commit is going back to edit before I finish a rough draft. I see advice pages say over and over “You’ll never finish if you do this.” And it’s rare that I don’t finish a story. When I do drop something, it’s not because I’ve run out of ideas, or because my back-tracking ways have painted me into a corner. The number one reason why I give up is because both I and my muse cannot feel anything for the story. If I’m not feeling it, the reader won’t either.

I guess what bothers me about giving advice is the way it turns an amorphous creative pursuit into a singular formula. It bugs me when writers who give advice dismiss other methods as unproductive for everyone instead of just admitting it doesn’t work for them. I’ve seen enough writing discussions to know certain writer’s habits, and in the case of these folks who write every day using outlines, I can say they still make good books. But I also know their method don’t work for me, and I think the worst part of their writing advice is that they usually cast my methods in a bad light.

Why does it matter? Because new writers can often lose confidence in their abilities by reading some bad advice (for them) and thinking “Maybe I’m doing this wrong.” So they try writing by the rules, and they’re not happy with what they get out of it. With enough failures, they might even decide to quit instead of going back to what was working for them in the first place.

My methods leave a lot of time unused, and I’m not the most efficient or organized person. I never met a schedule I liked, with the possible exceptions of working night shift jobs, something that didn’t happen too often. Despite my sloppy habits, I can sit down and whip out a book in a few weeks. I write so much, I even have time to make intentionally bad books, just to get my worst ideas out of my system. In the first two months of this year, I’ve already plunked out a short novel and a novella, and when I post my word counts, other writers go, “Whoa, that’s a lot.”

But the way I work is a unique thing, a singular experience that I wouldn’t suggest others duplicate. For all my massive word counts and regular releases, I’m still lacking in the all-important sales numbers. So I can tell you how I pump out many words, but I can’t advise you on how to be a successful writer who makes regular paychecks.

My muse doesn’t really care about paychecks, a fact I cannot change about her, and have only rarely won concessions to for a few projects. My compromise is always the same, that I will agree to write a story she likes in exchange for a story that I think will sell. And, it’s worth noting that the books I ask for do sell better than her more radical ideas. That’s about the closest I can get to “I told you so,” with my muse, but that doesn’t mean she won’t come up with some new idea that makes me ask, “Are you fucking serious?”

I don’t hate her crazy ideas. I just don’t think they’ll sell well, and I’m usually right about this. But after writing them down, I can see why she liked the stories and wanted to relay them to me. Her stories get good reviews, and our characters are often praised for “feeling real” even in the most surreal fictional settings. But those books aren’t for everyone. They’re meant for people who wander off the beaten path just to see what else is out there.

If I have a central theme to my writing, both fiction and non-fiction, it’s the idea that there’s always more than one way to look at the world, and sometimes we ought to try looking from the perspective of people we don’t agree with. My muse and I both enjoy taking on these unconventional perspectives in otherwise familiar tropes, and even if I don’t have sales success, I’m still pulling in good reviews from the few people who regularly buy my new books.

I read a lot of authors from every level of the field, and I read their blogs. I’ve seen every work method laid out in step-by-step tutorials, and almost all of the advice is generally useful to get a new writer started. About the only thing I don’t like is when someone suggests, “But don’t do this because it won’t work.”

And maybe this a minor thing to bitch about, because a lot of writers will grow enough to learn that they can ignore the rules and still finish projects. But this same advice could be discouraging new writers from working in a way that’s comfortable for them. I consider it akin to the days when teachers tried to force left-handed people to write with their right hands for the sake on uniformity. It’s pointless, and it only makes the task harder for people who might otherwise be comfortable doing the same thing their own way.

Writing is not a singular experience, and no one formula works for everyone. It is an art form with many branches, and each branch will have a thousand variant work styles and voices. Many styles will be duplicates of earlier branches, but the most noticeable offspring are those who take what came before them and make it their own creation. Those will be the ones who create the most offspring as other writers try to duplicate that success. Seen this way, writing is a living genealogy, a forward moving evolution always borrowing from the past and infusing a part of the present or a speculation of the future. The process of creation for each of us relies on finding our voice and honing it through regular practice, and through constant reading to see how “the other guy” handles the craft.

On a certain level, all writers have to recognize and respect this reality, and I’m sure they do. Which is why it annoys me to see so many of them dissing on certain work methods just because it doesn’t work for them. Writing advice could do with a bit more “here’s what works for me,” and a bit less, “don’t do this unless you want to fail.”