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I think it’s appropriate that the first post for 2017 is for IWSG. If you want to know more about this, click the icon below.

January question: What writing rule do you wish you’d never heard?

Easy: write every day.

I heard this rule while still very impressionable and it is enough to produce crippling anxiety when life happens and a day – or even days – is missed.

Some writing rules are just annoying – mostly because these “rules” are just guidelines that work for one writer. Or are twisted versions of actual style rules. As Anne R Allen mentioned in her post about writing rules, anyone can make a meme about their favourite writing rule and spread it across social media – even if it results in the blind leading the blind.

Over the last fortnight or so, I haven’t been able to write. Not because my neighbours decided to sing karaoke to welcome the New Year until after midnight every night or because of the increasing craziness of blowing things up from eight until three – at night! (Yeah, we’re talking fireworks.) I can write through most anything (as I learned last year with the flash floods and scary lightning).

No. A twisted ankle turned out to be the result of something malignant, something hidden, something monstrous. Despite all the tests being negative for anything malignant, it turned out that Emmett had an aggressive form of bone cancer. It had started in the twisted ankle, skipped the bones, metastasised in the lungs and other organs, and returned to eat away the bones. In only four weeks. I had to euthanise him two weeks ago.

emmy-pic-and-words

The only thing I was able to write in all that time was a short story for the blog for Christmas Eve – featuring a Rottweiler.

So, about this whole “write every day” thing… It worked out really well for 2016. Despite the anxiety…

If you’ve read my blogposts in December, you’d have noticed that I had a really great year in my writing career. Though I hadn’t consciously set most of those goals, I’d achieved them anyway.

cher-quote

Does that mean that I have to set goals for 2017?

new-year-words

In the frame of mind I am right now, I’d probably tap into my dark side and take over the world like a Sith Lord.

So setting goals is probably not a good idea right now.

I know that pain is part of life and so is loss. I also know that I’m going to be okay in time – I’ve lost fur-babies before.

cal-and-tony

I think I’ll start with a to-do list for today – which includes doing the IWSG bloghop. And maybe I’ll check in on Twitter and all the other social media I’ve neglected. And if I’m really brave, I’ll write down the outline for a series that has been haunting me. Or I’ll give in to my anxiety and just cuddle with Tony and Cal while binge watching Arrow and then The Vampire Diaries and possibly all the Avengers movies…

Anyhow, I hope that you have a great 2017. Any New Year’s Resolutions you’d like to share? Which writing rules irritate you endlessly?

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