When I began writing fiction, I found “do’s and don’ts” everywhere–and especially on the Internet. Authors, agents, and publishers all have their rules. I discovered things like: never begin a book with the weather, i.e., a dark and stormy night. Never use adverbs, a certain tense, or particular words. Never use long sentences, short sentences, similes or metaphors, or too much or too little description. All these rules discouraged me, but I could not stop writing. Once I developed my own “practice” of writing, these rules enhanced my content. More importantly, [adverb], I learned what rules to break. A friend once told me, “The trouble with anarchists is that they don’t know the rules, so they don’t know how to break them.” If you want to write, write.