Writing Tip- Don't Stress on Rules

At one point in time, writing had no rules. There was no punctuation, or grammar, set spelling, or
even word order. You could write what you wanted, how you wanted, with no barriers in anyway to your creativity. Yet no one could read your work.

Even when translating the Bible, monks would use short hand for words because of the shear amount of handwritten work it was. And each monk had their own short hand. This means that one person might short hand "Thrashing" to "Thra" and another to "Thr". It made everything confusing. Which is why we now have rules to simplify things.

But the rules can feel constricting and stifling. They bind us in the fear of messing up. And then writing becomes more torture than fun.

We are told to not use "ly" words, to only use "said", to never end sentences in  prepositions. "Ing" verbs become our nemesis and pronouns leave us visibly shaken. Editing is a nightmare that keeps us up all hours of the day, and causes us to flee. And it shouldn't be like this.

The stress will eat away at you, and it will be seen in your writing. So step back and take a deep breath. Remember that rules are made to be broken (or at least tell yourself that). Because sometimes, we break a rule, and it's ok. Sometimes it's needed. Just write what you would read, and trust someone else to tell you if something didn't work. You can always fix it then.