The writing profession bristles with arcane rules lurking to trap and limit the unwary writer. No simultaneous submissions. Query first. Query letters of one page only. Use Chicago Style Manual. No gaudy paper. Write what you know. Send entire manuscript. Don't send entire manuscript. No phone calls. Et al. So what's a poor beleaguered writer to do?

To be successful, do what I do: judiciously break the rules.

Your Own Business

Your writing career is your own business, and to make it work properly, it must fit you like a tailor-cut suit, or why abscond the rat-race, anyway? If you don't mold the methods and actions of your career to your own personal wants, needs, and idiosyncrasies, who will do it for you? Nobody, that's who.

Paying the Price

Of course, there's a price to pay for breaking rules. For me, it's a price I willingly pay to conduct my writing career as I want, just as I gladly-- well, grudgingly; well, at least I pay-- ante up the fine when I'm nabbed speeding. It's not fine with me, but hey, I know the rules. As soon as I fractured the speed limit, I risked paying a speeding fine, and I accept that. So if you decide to break the rules of writing, you must be prepared to suffer the consequences when you're caught.

On the other hand, some Writing World rules should never be broken. The key is knowing which rules can be disdained with impunity-- and without penalty-- and which will earn you a swift kick in the pants along with hasty ejection from the writing fraternity, as memoirist James Frey and Harvard novelist Kaavya Viswanathan both discovered, for lying and plagiarism, respectively.

Following are several rules that mustn't ever be broken, followed by those you can crumple in your fist like a manuscript page from a bad novel.

Abandon Hope, Ye Who Enter Here

Don't ever:

Send Inferior Work.

Ernest Hemingway said a good writer needs a built-in, shock-proof, s**t-detector to self-edit and expose your own poor work. Every writer knows, in his or her heart of hearts, when a piece is not ready for the big stage. If you're unpublished or rarely published, don't query Atlantic Monthly or send a piece to The New Yorker. If it isn't good enough, don't send it out. Simple as that.

Ignore Editor Directions.

If your editor suggests quotes from geographically-diverse people for your article, get them. If your editor wants two sidebars, find them. In fact, if your editor wants pink paper, buy it. Your editor-- a.k.a. the boss-- determines whether you get paid or not, and how much, so pay close attention to what she asks you to do. Then do it.

Pad Your Work.

After submitting my book Burma-Shave: The Rhymes, The Signs, The Times, I received a blunt call from my editor. "We have a problem," she said. "Your book is padded."

She was right. While writing it, I feared there wasn't enough material on the roadside jingles used to sell the shaving product ("Past schoolhouses, take it slow. Let the little shavers grow. Burma-Shave") so I kind of said the same thing three different ways. If I had not removed the padding, and made a deeper search to latch onto additional information, the book, now in its 15^th printing, would never have done as well, I'm sure. In fact, it probably wouldn't have been published.

The point is: don't pad. Tighten your writing until you cannot shove a flax seed into each sentence. Even if you're being paid by the word.

Ignore Guidelines.

Your manuscript will be committing hara kiri on your behalf if the magazine wants 1,000-word articles, and yours is 2,000. Or if the editor never buys poetry, and you submit poems. Or if a piece requires quotes from experts, and you figure you don't need any. Just as you subconsciously possess "guidelines" on the kind of person you want for a friend, or how late your children can stay out, your publisher and editor have guidelines. Breaking them is a sign of a writer who doesn't care. News flash: your editor won't care about your manuscript either.

Smash 'Em to Smithereens

Which rules can you smash willy-nilly like useless bad pottery? Senseless rules, out-dated rules, or those which offer every advantage to the editor, for no good reason except to give the editor the advantage.

No Simultaneous Submissions.

Break this rule. I've published 2,700 pieces during 26 years of writing-- and submitted 4,000 queries and items-- and I've been nipped by this rule but once. That makes the odds pretty good.

Here's why I break this rule: I deal with my mail every day. Why can't magazines? They say they're inundated; they're busy. Know what? So am I. But a simple system would solve their mail problems. If they wanted to. Scribble "No thanks" on unacceptables (they're usually obvious); send a pre-printed postcard to possible or definite yes-es. The point is: create a system that works, rather than plump the mail on an increasingly large pile each day. Like brushing your teeth; do it regularly rather than wait for a flurry of cavities.

Plus, "simultaneous submission" on an envelope does not, in my experience, elicit an editor's sudden and undivided attention. If it did, everyone would stamp their envelopes thus to get faster responses. Of course editors don't want to put in work only to discover the piece they covet has been bought by their competitor. So when my bobber is jerked by a bite from an editor, I do one of two things: I withdraw other simultaneous submissions to competing magazines, if any. First come, first served. Or I write an entirely new article for the second acceptance, if it is not a direct competitor of the first. One January a couple of years ago I had a piece on New Year's resolutions in three different magazines. This was highly unusual, because simultaneous acceptances are rare as unicorns. They might exist but are rarely seen.

And really, we writers should suffer the problem of more than one editor at a time desiring the same piece of work.

Write What You Know.

Break this rule. It's balderdash. Most of us know a spittleful of information compared to the heaving ocean of data out there. A better rule for writers would be Research, then write what you learned, or know what you write.

In the process, of course, you will use what you already know. But no matter what you write, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drama, to get it right, you'll have to dig to find out more than you already know.

Let Them Peruse It.

Somehow writers of all stripes believe a meteor will incinerate earth if they allow interviewees to read the written article before it's submitted to an editor. What foolishness. Who knows more of the nuances, intricacies, and facts about what you've written than the subject or expert of your article? Certainly not you, the writer. You might have gleaned most of it and penned it in golden prose, but there will still be dross amongst the lines because it's simply not possible for you to totally understand another person, or their profession, or the fine distinctions that make up their life. If you've ever been interviewed, you know what I mean.

A quick example from my own life: after I wrote Toy Farm Tractors, a reviewer in my quotes had me using the word "author" several times. I never use "author." Instead I say "writer," most especially about myself. This was a minor but telling detail.

Do interviewees want to change what's been written? Sometimes. But I make it clear when I send them a piece that they are to correct errors of fact or places where I've misunderstood them or misconstrued what they meant. They always appreciate the offer, and they always make the article better.

Of course there are exceptions to breaking this rule: the expose, for example. But how many of us write exposes, and how often? And it's easy to make allowances for certain articles. For all the rest, I say: get it writ and then get it right.

Limit query letters to one page.

Why? I was once an editor, and almost always within the first paragraph I could tell if the piece was suitable for my magazine, whether the query was one page or four. Of course, there is something to be said about a writer who can pitch an idea in less than a page because it shows a certain facility for writing. But sometimes even the best writer requires more than one page for a query.

What is a writer to do when confronted with the bottom of the page: write "query letter unfinished" and send it off incomplete? I say no. Write the query as best you can, one page or more than one page, enough to do the job right.

Other Rules to Break.

Smash every writing rule that doesn't work for you, and doesn't harm you. There are tons of writing rules out there, and if you heed every one, you will get nothing but weighted down.

But be smart about it. That's a rule you should never break.

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