Rule Breaking

I started this writing project with a lot of rules, and I’ve broken pretty much all of them.

Yes, there are good rules. There are the laws of the country you live in, and provided they are fair and just then following them makes your home a better place for all. There are ethical rules, standards we’ve decided make us better humans for following them. And there is the social contract, a set of largely unwritten rules and social norms of which following ensure you are less of an asshole when you interact with other people. Good rules all round.

There are also a lot of dumb rules. These are rules I think of that often can be summarized by the idea of one person or group of people trying to control another person or group of people. These rules should be wriggled out of whenever possible.

The third set of rules is the personal kinds of rules we make for ourselves, often little more than mental traps and barriers, and I think it happens to all of us but I find to be especially distinctive personally around creative practice.

For example, I made a bunch of rules for this writing project: these include topics that I write on, posting frequency, length of posts, how many words I use in the titles of my posts, the colours of imagery I use, the placement of imagery, the time of day I share new writing on both the site and on social media… the list goes on, and frankly, they are all pretty dumb rules when it comes right down to it.

Now look, admittedly those rules have kept me focused. I am over two hundred posts into this project as I write this. I have not missed a single weekday post. And while I’m not flooded with traffic I can definitely tell that a few of you have discovered this site and are reading along… thanks.

But those rules have also left me privately agonizing over little tweaks and fine tuning efforts I’ve had to make as I go along. At the outset I had a clear vision of what I wanted to do with all these words I was writing and—bluntly—that has evolved. Some of the new ideas about how I want to shape a project like this have run up against the original project plan.

…and that’s okay.

You’re allowed to break rules. In fact, I would almost encourage you to pause whatever creative activity you are doing (or even just thinking about doing) and visualize that list of rules you’ve made about it. Don’t pretend now: you’ve made rules. You’ve set up tripwires all over that idea you had and you’re following them. They may have come from your head, or they may have come from social expectations or they may just be something you figured would be a smart idea, but you have rules that you are following. I would bet on it.

We’re all allowed to strike stuff from that list that no longer moves things forward. 

I’m allowed to toss plans out the window if they don’t suit the project anymore—and I’m not just thinking of the little formatting and posting rules, either but the big things, too. All of it. Heck, months ago I was writing navel-gazing posts about how this project was about fitting inside a two-hundred word box, and I’m already well over six hundred words on this piece… and the message is better for it, I think.

Rule breaking is not just allowed, it’s vital.

It’s adaptation from learning. I’m not tossing rules for the fun of it, I’m binning plans that after ten months of writing are no longer good plans to help the project. It’s not quitting or failing, it’s learning and adapting. That’s what rule breaking really is after all, understanding that we can change and get better and move past the walls, step out of the box, and navigate a maze of barriers that were originally there to guide us but which are now tripping us up.