When I first decided to pen the next great American novel, I simply sat at my computer and typed. The story played in my head. It wasn’t hard to get it on the page. Once I finished, my novel went off to New York publishers.

It didn’t take many rejections to realize that what I was doing wasn’t working.

Convinced I could author a novel, I searched for the writing rules of famous writers. After all, I’m a rule follower. If I had the rules, I would get my novel published.

Only I discovered every author had a different rule.

W. Somerset Maugham said:

There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

Neil Gaiman disputed Maugham and suggested writing’s main rule:

The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it ­honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

Kurt Vonnegut offered 8 rules for a great story.

Henry Miller offered Eleven commandments  11 commandments

John Steinbeck provided 6 pointers

Confused? I sure was.

All the suggestions made sense. I already followed most of them, yet publisher rejections continued.

What I concluded was I didn’t need rules. I needed HOW TO instructions. That’s when I joined author organizations and took writing classes. I wrote more and sent to agents, publishers, and entered more writing contests.

Suddenly the words I wrote were winning contests and getting positive feedback. It wasn’t a fast or easy journey to publication. It took years before I held that first paperback in my hand.

Today, you can check out my published works here and here. If you have Amazon Prime and a Kindle Unlimited subscription, you can read all my books for free.

If you’re an aspiring writer, my advice is don’t give up.

P.S. This advice works if you want to be a chef or an electrician or a doctor or a merchant chief or whatever. Study and learn. Mostly, don’t give up.