July 7, 2023

Well, I’ve done it. After traveling far and wide, conversing with many ancient mentors atop treacherous mountains, and spending endless hours in deep contemplation, I have discovered the definitive rule for writing. Curious on how to write? When to write? What to write? Look no further for enlightenment, for I have the answer:

Do whatever works best for you.

No! Wait! Don’t go. I know you feel cheated. You were expecting something more profound to send you on your way, like the word equivalent of “Ride of the Valkyries.” Or maybe you were actually looking for no less than 100 rules that clearly outlined the formatting expectations alongside a step-by-step plot guide.

Neither of those things are here, but just trust me on this. Do whatever works best for you is the definitive writing rule. 

But what about X?

Or what if Y?

How do you do Z?

I don’t believe you, and I’m clicking out of this post!

All fair and valid responses. Let’s all wave good-bye to those that selected the last one and then get into explaining how do whatever works best for you makes you a better writer.

First of all, this is for writers who are not contractually or financially obligated to write specific stories with specific guidelines for specific companies/clients. We’re the creative writers no one is paying to produce our works (although we should be paid). We write for fun, we want our work to someday be published, but we are not yet bound to any specific publication, person, or entity.

With all that in mind: no one can tell you what to write. No one. You get to write whatever you want, and therefore you write whatever works best for you. Do you hate writing romance, but love writing horror? Write horror. Do you want to practice writing sci-fi but wouldn’t touch mysteries with a ten-foot pole? Write sci-fi. Do you want to change what genre you write in every other day because variety is the spice of life? Do that. 

Okay, Jenna, but what if I want to be published with Beneath Ceaseless Skies who only publishes second world fantasy adventure stories? Can’t write whatever I want then. 

Fair point. I also want to be published with Beneath Ceaseless Skies, so you know what that means? That means that what works best for me is to write second world fantasy adventure stories. If I want X, then what works best for me is to do whatever attains me X. Get it?

Sure, sure, Jenna. But what about deadlines? I don’t have control over those, so that means my writing schedule is determined by rules other than what works best for me. 

Not true. You’ve heard the advice to write every day or every other day or for at least 4 hours in a sitting. The answer is whenever works best for you. I have a deadline coming up on the 14th. I chose this magazine, I chose the story for it, and I chose to follow through with submitting the story to the magazine. I want it. So my writing schedule is going to be one that gets the story done and polished in time for the 14th deadline because that’s what works best for me.

All right. Fine. So everyone can write whatever they want on whatever schedule they want based on their wants. We get it. But I can’t use whatever grammar I want. If I write in the English language, I have to follow all the rules of grammar, mechanics, style, and whatever is the current consensus on dialogue tags and adverbs. And what about formatting? Standard Manuscript was invented for a reason. No one will publish something riddled with typos and formatted as chaos on the page! So, I…

Mm-hm.

…wait, so if I want to be published…

Yeah.

…then what’s best for me is…

You’re getting it.

…to follow the grammar and formatting guidelines.

Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?

Wait a second…did you just use a single rule to basically sum up every single rule?

Yeah, kind of. Look, there’s a lot out there we can’t control, and the publishing industry requires writers jump through more hoops than a 3-ring circus. But at the end of the day, you are the one who decides which hoops you’re going to jump through (and hey, if enough of us decide a hoop ain’t working, maybe the hoop goes away for everyone, but that’s a different story). It’s not always fun, and Lord knows it’s not always fair, but forcing yourself to write something you don’t want, when you don’t want, how you don’t want, so you can have it published where you don’t want, is not going to make you a better writer. Explore, experiment, educate yourself on what’s out there and available to you, then figure out what works best for you and do that.

What if nothing out there works best for me?

Then you have three options: 1) quit writing, 2) keep experimenting and educating yourself to see if there is something you missed, or 3) carve out that space that works best for you and claim it. I’ve given up on some stories, spent hours researching better magazines for other stories, and I’ve even written entire novels just for myself and no one else because in every one of those scenarios doing that was what worked best for me.

Now, it must be said that some writers of marginalized communities/identities have extra rules placed unfairly on their shoulders and through no fault of their own are held to a different standard by discriminatory practices in the publishing industry. They don’t always get to do what’s best for them, and when they try they are shut down. That’s happened to me, and I do not even face the worst of it out there in the world. To anyone facing such, know this: it is not your fault, you deserve to have your stories told and to tell them in whatever way works best for you, we all must work to knock down those barriers and banish those unjust rules, and I am so sorry that hasn’t happened yet.

So, if I can do whatever works best for me, and I do do whatever works best for me, and even when I can’t do either I still do my best…I’ll be a good writer?

You know what…yeah. Yeah, I think you will be.

Maybe you agree with this rule and want to try it out. Great. Maybe you are iffy on it, but can see it working in certain circumstances. Fantastic. Maybe you hate everything I just wrote and have spent the entire time finely crafting the perfect loophole, the what-if scenario, the special exception, ready to drag this rule into the dust and destroy it. Well hey…if doing so helps better define your own writing rules and process, then I guess that’s what works best for you.