The Write Rules!

After reading “Writing Rules? Screw Them” on Rivaflowz.com, I started to think about my own writing rules. I have almost none. I write whenever. I read the books, I get inspired by music, my poems come from broken hearts, rage, words I see in a book that stick to me like a summer afternoon that won’t leave until the evening cools down.

I am trying to have a writing schedule. Not an everyday one. I think I would crack under the pressure of trying to write 365 days straight. I gave myself a schedule of other challenges in chucks. Every couple of months, I will write everyday. One month. I think that’s all my brain can take. OH and sometimes in between, I will write for two weeks. Am I doing it for discipline? Yes, sort of.

I’ve realized that sometimes I try to write more often because I want to up my number of poems written in a lifetime. Recently, I went through my archive. When I actually read my work, knowing what I know now about poetry and writing, I realized that numbers mean shit. It’s about quality at that point. Yes, I have written a lot in the past ten years. But they weren’t all quality.

Quality is important when it comes to hustling your writing in and out of the many literary magazines. You can’t submit poems just because you wrote them. You have to submit them because you know they are about quality. The only problem is that quality is defined differently by every editor. That’s a different entry though.

I am realizing that my quantity has helped me in the most important way: It means that I do love to write. If anyone needed proof, my archive of over 400+ poems would show them. At this point, I don’t know how many poems I have written. I don’t know how much I have written in general. But I do know that I have written a lot. Had I have realized this in high school, when I was applying to colleges, I would have gone straight into a writing major.

This is what I love to do. I think I say this in most entries like this one. But I do that because I have only realized this in the past few years. I wasn’t the kid who said I am going to be a writer. It just happened along the way and now I don’t know what I would do without it. I have so much to live and learn in the writing world. I think that expressing my love for this has been the only thing keeping me afloat as I try to find my way in a post-college world.

What was this entry about again? Oh yeah, my lack of writing rules. I know the basics. I know the important stuff when it comes to journalism and poetry. But my god, the rules drive me crazy sometimes. I wrote before I knew the rules. The rules have made me into a stronger writer, but sometimes I feel like they have slowed down the process. There should only be five rules:

1. Write
2. Write whenever you want
3. Write with abandon (you can revise later)
4. Write for yourself
5. Forget the rules, including these and continue to write

So today I am going to write write write write write because I’m a good girl. I stick to the rules!