Write The Story That You Want To Write

That should really be a no-thinker, right? ‘Write what you want to write’. Seems obvious. 

But you know what? We get a lot of people asking us ‘is it okay?’ ‘do you think it would work to?’ ‘is it bad to?’- stop.
A lot of people seem to wonder ‘will this sell?’ ‘don’t readers/publishers/editors/my mother hate things like this?’- stop.
Sometimes people seem to freeze, exhausted before they start, because they think, ‘this isn’t how it’s supposed to go’ ‘my teacher/friend/guy in the park told me to never’ ‘dammit, this is going to be shit’.  

If you write shit, you write shit.

Go ahead and be authentic with your shit.   

Write something that you love. 
Unless you are writing to pay the rent/buy food/in other words, not starve, it does not matter if nobody likes your writing other than you.
Say your idea is crazy. It will never work. Well, for the sake of all that you would grab if your house was on fire, write the damn thing to check. If it’s terrible, and you can’t save it after twenty rewrites, burn it. Feed it to the dog. In some way hide your shame. But I promise you, you’ll grow as a writer for it. Because taking risks is -good- for you.

So I tell you never to kill everyone off in a big stinking massacre at the end. Pen or C or WriterDog (hi guys, I like you guys) or Stephen King or Neil Gaiman or Sylvia Plath-in-a-letter or Shakespeare-from-the-grave-in-a-dream tell you that a steampunk love story between whales is bullshit, and they don’t wanna see it in your writing.

Whatever. 

This is me, telling you once and forever, that you have permission to write the story that you want to write. 

I’m not telling you to stop taking critique, or to think that you don’t need advice, or to write awfully and never try to improve it because ‘that’s my style.’ Don’t be a brat. Those are still good for you. I want you to know the rules, and then do whatever you want. Even the all-holy Grammar has been trashed successfully in books. So know what you’re doing, and then do it.

Take control of your story. Take those comments and tips and advice that people are giving out, and then make the executive decisions with your vision in mind. 
And the next time somebody gets in your face or is a snob or in some other way wants to specifically alter your writing to fit their vision, my friends, you shout “Evvy said I could (expletives at the end are optional)!” and get on writing what you want to write. 

Now close your internet and write something.

-Evvy
FYCD