Because their’s don’t make sense
Everyone thinks they’re a writer. And, really, everyone can be a writer. But to me, a true writer doesn’t impose rules on another writer. At least, not if they are confident in their own skin and their own writing. The only time that someone would feel like they need to impose writing rules on someone else is because they are too insecure in their own writing and feel like the other more talented (or sometimes just better put together or willing to hash it out and WORK) writer will take home the prize.
The prize being their book selling more than 100 copies on Amazon. Unfortunately, I’m not joking about that.
Back in 1934 when William Saroyan got his The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze book published (a work of short stories. Don’t you wish those were still published?) he wrote in his preface about the rules that he created starting when he was 11 for writing.
I can imagine a young boy being very frustrated with the way his teachers and his parents were probably telling him he should write. All the rules that they were saying he was breaking and all the ways they suggested he could get ‘better’. He says that ‘he was pretty sore that day’ when he wrote this first one: “Do not pay attention to the rules other people make. They make them for their own protection, and to hell with them.’
I’m not certain if that final ‘them’ is the rules or the people….
At any rate, he is absolutely right about this. Yes, certainly there are some rules about grammar and spelling. If you type out an entire book like a text message it will just hurt people’s eyes and they might not finish it. But that probably isn’t what he’s talking about with rules. He’s probably talking about the unwritten rules that pop up all of a sudden in society about what you can and cannot write about. How you can and cannot writer. What you should and should not write. There has been talk that people can only write about certain eras of the world if they denounce certain things about that time. There have been Twitter wars fought over who can and cannot writer about slavery (not even about slavery in the States but elsewhere) and how they are allowed to write about it. There is talk in the fantasy world about what color you are allowed to place on the skin of aliens. Green, purple, red, …black? There are rules about who can write a book with a minority main character. Some say only those authors who they themselves are minorities. But then many of those same people complain about authors who are not minorities having only secondary characters as minorities.
And then some people don’t care.
Can a Christian write empathetically about a Muslim? Can a Muslim writer empathetically about a Christian? I think they can. I think it is possible for people to be highly empathetic to all sorts of people who are different from them. Especailly if the book is fiction. Fiction is all about trying to empethizewith someone who is NOT the author.
You can’t please everyone. As the world gets a bit stranger and people start implementing their own rules about everything, writers are going to have to become stronger in their resolve to let everyone who is impletmenting any sort of rule on their writing to got to hell and just write. If you are a writer, then you have stories literally bursting inside of you. And you feel as though you might burst if you don’t get them out. Of course, you won’t burst, but that story never goes away. In fact, it agitates more and more until you type it out-get it out on paper. And you can only write well what you have inside of you. You cannot write well what other people want you to write. End of story.
So to hell with all the rules coming from other people. Write your stories.