I am skipping my birthday this year. 2020 doesn’t deserve to have an anniversary to eat, so I’m going to call it a mulligan and have an UNbirthday instead. I’m even having an UnBirthday sale on my ebooks at Dreamspinner Press.

What’s that you say? “You can’t just skip a birthday, Tamm!”. Well, in the immortal words of me, ‘I do what I want!’.

That and ‘I’m a fecking delight!’ are the words I live by!

Seriously, though, why do I have to admit I’m a year older if I don’t feel like it? Whose business is it? When you think about it, in the majority of your life it doesn’t matter how old you are. It doesn’t matter if your hair is that colour naturally (I, personally, am a natural purplette, of course!). Who is actually going to measure you to find out if you’re five foot five inches or five foot four?

And sure, there’s a social contract between us all that says we tell the truth about stuff. It enables us to actually go about our days without having to consistently fact check every mundane, passing detail that is provided in casual conversation. I do adhere to that. Mostly. Sometimes, though, I throw the head up and do what I like.

The same goes for writing.

Writing rules are there for a reason. They have been developed over years of trial and error by the writers who went before. Not because of elitism or they don’t want their authorial descendents to have fun, but because it was what worked. Honestly, I’ve always rather disliked ‘rules’. It sounds proscriptive, as if the aim is to stop you doing something rather than help you do something right.

If any author sits down, looks seriously at all the rules about how to write a good story, and decides, ‘Nah, going to do my own thing! Why should my story have beginning, middle, and end? I like adverbs! Know what, I’m gonna write it entirely in passive voice!”. Go for it. It might not work, but sometimes the story needs to fail before it finds its way.

It’s kind of like building a house. Everyone says that you need four walls, a roof, and windows. People who are going to buy the house, expect all of that. If what you really want to make is a hobbit hole in the woods lit exclusively by light bounced down through mirrored tubes? Bit odd, but if you really want to do then give it a go. Either it will work, or someone will convince you need a skylight.

Just know the rules you’re going to break, why you shouldn’t break them, and have some idea about why you want to break them. Sometimes it is worth it. Sometimes it is just fun.