There were two interesting things that I learned from that movie.  As he was finishing up the development of his tour, he had run into a phase of doubt.  Severe doubt.  This is a guy who has an incredible track record of writing good, funny stuff.  He’s written for shows like the Simpsons and Saturday Night Live.  His run on the Late Night with Conan O’Brien from 1993-2009, The Tonight Show from 2009-2010 is nothing to sneeze at either.  So a guy like him, who has a huge fan base, shouldn’t have doubts, right?

And according to Wikipedia, he settled for about 45 million dollars to leave. Doubts?

Yeah.  Doubts.

I was very surprised.

Who among us hasn’t had doubts in any part of our lives?  I know when I sit to write, doubt is something I don’t think about.  Neither is writing a best seller.  Writing the best story that I can is my focus, putting forward my most bestest effort ever.  Afterwards, doubt trickles into my consciousness.  Sometimes heart pounding doubt, in which I go back and revisit what I wrote with a magnifying glass.  But that only makes the words bigger.

But it’s a small comfort that a guy like Conan has doubts.  Yes, he’s human, and it’s human nature to doubt.  But Nicholas Sparks is human.  At least I think so.  From some of his interviews I’ve read, he compares himself to Hemingway.  Now, I ain’t gonna judge, your honor.  You can do whatever you want, but I’ve never liked people who had that mightier than thou attitude.  Get over yourself, dude.

You can’t say that about Conan.  He self deprecates himself on his new show, nightly.  He’s loyal to his crew.  Twelve million of that settlement went to them.  And he has an air of quiet confidence, which allows him to be self deprecating because, for the most part, he knows it ain’t true.

The second thing I learned was  Conan never reads reviews.  Someone off camera had asked if he read reviews of his stage show.  His personal assistant states they’re a waste of time.  I hear that a lot.  From broadway greats such as Lea Salonga, to great romance writer Nora Roberts, and famed Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe don’t read reviews of their work.  Hell.  Johnny Depp doesn’t even watch dailies, which I think are the takes filmed on that day.  And I agree.  I don’t read comments made on my site, nor do I read comments about my writing on other sites, unless they’re  my friends’.

You hear that?  Yes, I’m talking to you select people.  Welcome back and see Blacklisted.

Standing in a room of a hundred people, there can be a hundred varying opinions of me.  I can’t control what they think.  I can’t change what they think.  So why worry about what they think?  Everyone has an opinion, just as they do assholes.

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So why mention this?

Jean’s daughter, Wendy Phillips, had come in one Saturday to give a talk about her experience in Hollywood, where she works as an actress and teaches.  She’d acted with small time actors like Robert Dinero in MIDNIGHT RUN, Sean Penn in I AM SAM (loved that movie), and Warren Beatty in BUGSY.  During a Q & A session, one of the students in the audience asked her what she could do to make it. Make what? Become a movie stah. Sorry foh my Asian accent.

Wendy said something to this extent: Become the best actress. That was the sentiment throughout Jean’s school.  Be the best.  Sounds easy to me.

Problem with that is someone is always going to be better, prettier, taller, buffer, richer, whatever.  Not discounting skill or talent here.

Recently, I had gone to Miami, Florida and decided to read their inflight magazine, Airway. They interviewed lead singer of R.E.M., Michael Stipe.  He said something that struck me in the balls.  ”I never thought I was very good at what I do. That’s why perhaps the most important quality in a person, even beyond curiosity, is humility. Not false humility. Not false modesty, but a real humility. It’s an understanding that you really are no better than anyone else. You’re just fortunate to do something that other people respect or like or can pull something from.”

I’m the worst judge when it comes to comparing music, or even knowing the names to songs.  I hear them on the radio, enjoy them, but since they don’t mention the titles, I don’t learn them.  But the fact that R.E.M. have been around since 1980, they’ve got to be doing something right.

Now, what Stipe said hit me in the balls because I had finished taking a writing class from a reputable school that is known for producing good science fiction and fantasy writers.  Part of the class was critiquing other students’ work, something that I’m not a fan of because writing styles can vary and still be great. When I read everyone’s pieces, I thought to myself, man, none of them are bad, and they all can write pretty well. When I looked at my writing, it didn’t differ much from a technical point of view.  And I felt the same when I read most other published authors. Sometimes I feel there isn’t anything special that sets them apart. Not saying their work isn’t special, but that from a technical standpoint, there wasn’t an awe inspiring light from the heavens or a fire erupting from the cracking earth that showed me THIS IS IT.

Maybe part of the demystifying aspect of my point of view is the amount of thought and work I’ve put into the technical side. Taking a class from beyondstructure.com that broke down storytelling techniques to techniques, not theories, helped immensely as well.  It seemed the writing class I took had 50% theory and 50% what I should include.  Beyond structure broke storytelling down to it’s minute parts, parts that no reader, audience member should ever care about, but can feel when the techniques are used well.

Even though I compared my writing to others in the class, I never thought of myself as being exceptionally great or not.  I took the class for the pure purpose of learning. I knew that in each individual story, different talents, skills, techniques, and tools are used. But a tool chest’s full is never used for a single one. It’s like using every ingredient in the world to make an omelet.

I write with no thought of bestsellers, fame, honor, or magnanimous glory. No plans of world domination. No plans at all. But they do creep in, riddling panic up my spine. So I take a moment and sip my coffee or tea and dive back in. Once I’m done, then my fantasies can fly as they wish.

“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley” -John Steinbeck

The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

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When I started writing, I was very open to learning cool techniques and concepts about storytelling. I read magazines, blogs, talked with other writers, read their recommendations on writing books, taken seminars, and gone to conferences. Almost all talked about theory. Very few talked about actual techniques.

As I checked my emails, I saw one come in. And he, a published author, who mentors other writers, interviewed a woman, who is also published and mentors. She said something interesting:

Beginning writers tend to think of themselves as the center of the universe and expect huge successes. They’re often not open to criticisms. Blah blah blah…

I haven’t encountered that, but I don’t mentor other writers. In taking classes, I am asked to read others writing and comment.  Whether they listen to me or not doesn’t really matter because it’s not my work. Only they can determine whether the criticisms are justified.  I’ve applied many suggestions and criticisms and rejected those that don’t help the story. I don’t make changes from a place of fear. Another words, if I fear that my book won’t sell because I don’t have a certain element, then I’ll probably reject that criticism.

Now going back to the email, here’s an example of taking advice with a grain of salt.  The interviewer asked her why she got into writing.  She said (her exact words):  For me it’s been looking back over my life and seeing all the input I’ve received over the years. Folks told me I could write when I wrote Christmas letters. My teachers saw the gift. And, yes, mentors have helped me hone the gift and encouraged me to continue.

Paraphrasing:  Praise the Lord, for He hath layeth on me a gifteth!

Did you read that?  She, in her head, is the center of the universe. She thinks she’s special after she just said beginning writers think they’re special. She ain’t no beginner, so does that mean you don’t have the right to feel special unless you’ve acquired a certain level of success?

In every moment of life, people should feel special about themselves. Who else, besides our doting parents, is going to feel that way about us?  Everyone has the right to exist. Everyone has the right to follow their passions, to explore their lives in different ways, and to live it as they wish, barring hurting anyone outside of themselves.

And the interviewer went along with it.  And this guy is reputable!

There’s some good advice out there. But when it comes to a story that is close to your heart, trust that that story will come out well, use actual writing techniques that will help tell your story (don’t use a flat head screwdriver on a phillips screw), and be clear about where your story and characters are heading.  That way when people give you suggestions or criticisms, you’ll know what to implement and what to throw out.

I usually use Steven King’s method.  Pay attention to the most common critiques. It’s a good sign you may need to fix it. But I had a friend point out my character’s reaction to a tragedy felt false to her. She explained why and I immediately took her suggestion and made the change. No one else pointed it out, but it matched exactly where the character was headed.  This same friend made a similar suggestion farther down the story, but to change it would flatten the overall character arch.  So I rejected it.

No one knows your story better than you. So be confident in it. And be open to learn and see what others see. Sometimes we writers are too close to see the forest.

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I then calmly asked him, “What the hell is perfect practice?”

To me, it sounded like you couldn’t make mistakes while practicing when it’s really the best time to make mistakes. It’s those mistakes that we make in practice or immersed in our work that can give us some of the most profound insights. I told him there’s no one correct way of doing anything well.

It’s the geniuses, the innovators that create the rule, the market. Just look at the world of media. We have books and TV shows about wizards and vampires and wolves.

When I had my teaching and mentoring business, I was all about changing behavior. Shit. I was one of the laziest people I knew. I watched TV to no end. I had little passion for anything, or at least I thought I had little passion for anything. I slept for most of the day when I could. That was the life! Then something changed. A yearning grew. Not that yearning. Well…not the place to discuss.

I started to think about the things I wanted. Things I wished to accomplish. And somehow I was disciplined enough to go to the gym, write, have a social life, teach, and still have free time to just chill. How did I become disciplined? Hell if I know.

Actually, they were things that I wanted to do. Loved to do. I mean going to the gym was easy. There’s a lot of hot chicks there.

During the years that I taught, I made a slow discovery. As awesome a teacher as I was, I couldn’t make my students do anything. Yes, they listened to me. Yes, they behaved when I shushed them. But they eventually fell back to their shenanigans.

What I could do was listen to them, guide them toward their own well being, help them realize their own potential in real time physical exercises, and help them realize what they truly wanted in life. Their behavior was outside of my reach, outside of anyone’s reach, except their own.

One parent came up to me and was extremely concerned about her child’s time management skills. He loved to procrastinate. She was my client, so I did my best to try and change that behavior, asked him why he procrastinated, gave him specific things to do to swerve him from waiting till the last minute.

He made the changes for a day. Then he reverted back to his old ways. His grades never improved from the mostly A’s and B’s he already received. I know, I know.

Now in college, I asked him how school was going. He loved it, tried a slew of different things, as I suggested, so he could have a better idea of what he might love to do in life. I asked him how his grades were. Mostly A’s and B’s.

I asked him if he was ok with that. Totally fine, he answered.

Do you still procrastinate, I asked. He reluctantly nodded.

I laughed, told him that this was his method and that it seemed to work. If he felt bad about his grades, that he wanted to improve, then changes may need to be made (depending on why he felt bad). Since everything was fine, there was nothing to do but catch up on old times.

I had told my best friend this story, as he’s also close to this family, and the silence on the phone meant he didn’t agree.

He has his way toward excellence. I have mine. And as long as those methods work for us without any feelings of guilt or anxiousness, but with peace of mind, then whose to say that were wrong?

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Feelings of being the geeky, nerdy, lone Chinese kid, who people thought was smart, cheating off his paper (big mistake) came flooding back into my barreled chest. Too much? All I ever wanted in high school was to be the big man on campus. Not be smart. Psh.

Delving into the victim mindset was something I grew up with, so I knew it was just a reactionary moment of despair. Then I kinda laughed about it after drying my tears because I was meeting my mother later, and remembered that a five-year-old girl can hold her liquor better than I could. I wish I was joking. This leads me to my first point. Don’t cheat off my paper. My book smarts is limited.

One of my friends graduated from the university with a Theater Arts degree. She had showcases in New York and Los Angeles and felt she belonged in LA. She had an offer from an agent to represent her, but she declined because she didn’t feel connected to this person.

Now. To get an agent in Holli’s wood is probably just as hard for an author in Litty’s (literary) world. So I have to applaud her. In a world where the talent, yup, I’m part o’dat group, can be desperate to get representation, they’d take whoever shows a little leg. But the power comes back to the talent, still part o’dat group, when we choose who we want to be represented by. Because the whoever represents us talented must at the least love work.

This brings me to my second point. Know you’re talented.

When I researched agents, I read their blogs to find the one thing I could relate myself or my book in my query letters to them. I had found one that I liked with similar humor to me. I was like, ommahgawd, were made to be. Then I read one of his posts, which went something like this: Many people play the piano for fun and never want to play in an orchestra. Why is it that people can’t write for the pure joy of it without wanting to be published?

This guy’s world must be really small. Most of the people that I know who write, write for pure joy in journals, twitter, blogs, and have no want to be published in the traditional sense. I know very few who would venture into the publishing world. Hmm. Maybe my world is small. For some reason his comment turned me off.

Why?

Maybe because I wanted to be that popular guy who everyone looks up at. Which is hard since I’m not that tall.

“Hey. That’s Jimmy Ng! He wrote NIGHTFALL. He’s like the J.K. Rowling of fantasy.”

“Dude, man. J.K. Rowling is the J.K. Rowling of fantasy.”

“Oh, yeah,” I thought, while tapping my bottom lip.

Do I want to become popular in the high school sense? No. Do I want everyone to read NIGHTFALL? Totally. It’s a dream of mine.

But it’s an important question to ask. I wanted to write it because I thought it would be fun. It was. I want the world to read it and just enjoy the exhilaration I felt writing the book. I serve so people may have a little bit of escapism.

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And it pained me to do so for several years.

But something great came out of it. I had sunk myself into my new found passion, writing. Actually, it wasn’t writing as much as book one of the 7th Province: NIGHTFALL.

Thousands of my heart wrenching emotions helped fuel my main character’s emotions on paper. Losses that he goes through were better felt, understood. Of course, what I went through is nothing compared to his emotions, but without the breakup, I couldn’t have delved as deeply as I did. Tears was always a sign I was heading in the right direction.

Writing, however, requires some level of consistency. I have to sit down somewhere and write, be it on paper, computer, or imagination. Unfortunately, I’m a lazy person.

In my emotional turmoil, I had found a home away from home.

Borders café had become a place I could sit down from all the things that would tear me away from writing my book: TV, Internet, refrigerator, bed, couch, HGTV. OK. I was watching a lot of HGTV. OK. I still do. So to help focus myself and give me little excuse to do anything else, I bought a coffee or tea, glued myself to a small wooden table in the dark corner of the bookstore, and dove into the world of NIGHTFALL. Despite the babies crying, college kids laughing, soccer moms arguing, coffee beans grinding, and the constant frothing of lattes, I was totally undisturbed.

Time flowed by like a bunch of kids playing in the field with the warm sun shining.

I had spent thousands upon thousands of hours writing at Borders. People knew my name. I had seen cycles of baristas drift through like ghosts. Specialty drinks changed with the seasons. It was a safe haven for me to call upon my tormenting muse and write. My bliss.

Then there was a disturbance in the force, more aptly called, the Internet. Rumblings of Border’s financial troubles sounded through the grape vines. Months went by with nothing happening. Barnes and Noble fell into a similar predicament. They came up with a simple solution. They saw what Amazon was doing with the Kindle and created the Nook. It was a brilliant move and probably saved Barnes and Noble from bankruptcy.

Borders wasn’t so fortunate. They ignored the potential of e-readers. Their predicament became worse. They had dug themselves into a black hole by acquiring too many stores. Cut back their closing time from eleven PM to ten to nine. This forced me to change my schedule so I could still write. Reducing the hours did nothing to save them. So they heeded their competitors and came up with their own e-reader, the Kobo. Did it work? Kobo is a monetary unit of Nigeria. Not sure if that was a great choice.

News ebbed that Borders was going to close down low performing stores. I had no problems with this. I doubted my Borders would be closed. Border’s parking lot was always full. Except after closing but that’s obvious.

One day I had walked in and I saw this:

A few days later, I’d found out my Borders was closing and they had let go of all their baristas. An era had ended for me. My home away from home was leaving. My tormenting muse had no use for me. Simply put, I had gotten over my old flame. With it the completion of NIGHTFALL, four years in the making.

Borders may have been a conglomerate, but this Borders became my refuge. I, for one, am grateful. Thank you.

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I love it when I spend days upon days on a couple of chapters only to finally admit to myself that I need to rewrite the whole thing. It’s a good thing and a bad thing. It’s good because I realize I have to rewrite it. It’s bad because I kept on ignoring that realization. Cest la vie.

When I think about a scene and the characters involved, I think a lot about their actions. Their actions, more than what they say, tell a deeper story. If someone slams their hand on the table and says, “I’m calm,” we know that’s not true. If a character does something meaningless with no foreseeable goal, then it’s possible they’re there to just eaves drop without appearing to be, for example.

I learned from my days in acting that drawing from life and putting them in art is a great resource of inspiration.

My nephew had interviewed for a job where I work, the glorious corporate world. He’d been working through college at Home Depot. After being called back for a second interview, I had inquired what the managers had thought about my nephew. Unfortunately for him, I have no pull. Their main concern was he seemed desperate to leave Home Depot.

From what my nephew had told me, it didn’t sound like it. Now, if someone worked through college at a retail store, graduate, and then looks for a job, they’re looking to move on. Right? I mean, is it a sin to go out and use your college degree to get a better job?

I had just watched an episode of Bones, and the psychologist talked about self-projection. An example of this is when we hate something about another person; it’s really something we hate about ourselves. I tend to find this true more often than not, especially within me.

It’s amazing how much some of the people at work complain. How some of them feel imprisoned. How they yearn for the weekend, look forward to vacations, but can’t leave their jobs because they have to pay for their Bimmers or Luis Vuittons. Are they projecting themselves onto my nephew, desperate to leave?

I’ve been keeping an eye on how AT&T reacted once Verizon had gotten the right to sell the famed iPhone 4.  A little history. Verizon had been on a successful ad campaign against AT&T. So when AT&T started selling the iPhone 4, they got rid of their unlimited data plan, something that pissed off a lot of customers. Instead of improving their network to handle all of their customers thanks to Apple’s iPhone exclusivity, they limited new customers’ usage:  We have the fastest network.  Just don’t use it that much. Here’s what AT&T did once Verizon iPhone 4 went on sale:

First AT&T said they weren’t worried.

Then they touted their one advantage over Verizon.

Next, CEO of AT&T hates on Apple’s app store.

Oh, hey. Since we at AT&T love our customers so much we decided to give you 1,000 minutes for free…if you have an iPhone.

Last but not least, AT&T quietly matched Verizon’s unlimited data plan, since Verizon offered it to new iPhone 4 customers.

What does all this say about AT&T? They’re worried.

Actions do speak much louder than words.

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When reading people’s writing, published or not, I suspend any criticism about writing style. It’s kinda like saying someone is rich and stating it’s a good or a bad thing. Or saying someone is short or tall and placing a judgment on it.

Part of the writing class is reading and critiquing other people’s writing. I did my best to avoid talking about writing style, but I’m not sure I was successful. Other’s had commented on my writing style that ranged from good to not so good.

So the question becomes, who do I listen to?

I’d recently read Orson Scott Card’s response to criticism of his book, Ender’s Game. Ender’s Game has won Hugo and Nebula awards, which is really no small feat. But that’s not the interesting part. The main criticism is his writing style and how he doesn’t provide enough detail in a science fiction book. You’d imagine that that genre would require a lot of detail since the technology, cultures, etc would require it.

In my opinion, Ender’s Game provides enough for any reader to form pictures, unless they have no imagination.

Who’s right? Card or the readers who’ve complained? (Shit. Fragment)

One person in class said that my dialogue was filled with fragments. How dare I! People talking in fragments and not in correct college level grammar? Blasphemy!

Another person said that I had too much background information. And yet another said they wanted to know more about a deceased person my character referred to. What do I do?

But wait. Do these people have a right to their opinion? Of course. Does it mean it’s right? Not in this particular situation. For example, people don’t always talk in complete sentences. People also stutter, say um’s and uh’s, but that doesn’t mean I have to write that in. As writers, the dialogue has to be as clear as possible without sounding like an English professor wrote it. There’s gotta be some grounding (fragments) with clarity (eliminate stutter). Stuttering, um’s, and uh’s should be reserved for cases where we want to indicate something really important.

And, now we round back to the first question.

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Just watched Black Swan this weekend, starring Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis. The movie is about the character’s psychological breakdown, which parallels Swan Lake’s story between the dark and light side of the Swan Queen (and no, I’m not familiar with the story). A subplot in the movie is Portman’s character’s struggle of technical perfection in ballet versus artistic expression.

Good Girl

When I started to write consistently, I had struggled with wanting to be the good girl versus the bad girl (not sure I’m doing myself any favors here). The good girl is being technically good at writing, and the bad girl is allowing myself to suck and the freedom to just write whatever comes out.

Which is better?

Bad Girl

So I started with the bad girl (yes!). I started to write Nightfall, and allowed whatever to come out, come out. I wrote sixty pages worth of material.

Then I talked to my friend who’s constantly working on being a technically perfect writer. He turned me to books and seminars that taught me how to be a good girl, how to write well technically. They focused on structure, emotional techniques, how to build depth in character, scenes, overall story, and provided a mechanic’s dream full of tools. More than what any writer would use in any single work.

But deep in my heart, I felt the bad girl pounding, wanting to get out and expose herself.

I’d talked to a friend recently, and she told me she wrote a book with her eyes closed. As far as I could tell, she’d done little research on writing technique or structure but was inspired to write. I haven’t read it so I’m not sure of the quality. However, when I was listening to her talk, the good girl inside shook me and said, “She’s crazy!”

Was my friend unconsciously incompetent (the individual neither understands nor knows how to do something, nor recognizes the deficit, nor has a desire to address it)? Google the four stages of competence and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

To be fair, my technically induced friend does allow for inspiration, and my crazy friend could be a great writer. But these two people showed up in my life as symbols of two extremes because I asked the question:

Which is better?

Choose me. No! Choose me.

In life, too much of anything isn’t good.

Humans can’t live more than a few days without water. But drink too much of it and people can die of water intoxication. Take in what you need. Leave the rest.

Today, I’ve used very little of what I had written during my purely bad girl days. But I learned what not to do, and in the process of my redemption, I had taken the time to learn. In doing so, I found out something interesting about myself that is the fundamental philosophy behind Bruce Lee: When one has reached maturity in the art, one will have a formless form. It is like ice dissolving in water. When one has no form, one can be all forms; when one has not style, he can fit in with any style.

What?

Learn what you need to learn. Leave the rest. You don’t and can’t know everything. Just make sure what you’ve learned doesn’t imprison your soul, that you can still express yourself wholly. Another words, forget what you’ve learned and just go with it.

As renowned photographer, Rodney Lough has said, “Art is the language of the soul.”

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She looked plainly at me and said, “Okay.”

“Really?” I was shocked.

We stood. She closed my door. Unconsciously, I backed into my desk at the opposite side of the room. It was like the Old West. Dust swirled everywhere. A tumble weed scurried across my room. Wind creaked the saloon doors.

“Ready?” she said. She undid the top button of her jeans.

I did nothing.

She pulled down her zipper.

I did nothing.

Her thumbs snuck under the waist band and wormed their way to her hips.

I still did nothing. “Wait! Let’s not do this.”

She dropped her jeans.

My eyes shut like a jail door and my hands clamped over them.

That’s showing, in writing terms, versus…

I wasn’t sure if she knew I had a crush on her. Hell, I wasn’t sure what I would do if she did know. One day I challenged her to a game of chicken: pulling our pants down. She did it. I chickened out.

Obviously, the first version is more interesting. There’s a bit of suspense, a bit of tension. Writing 101, right?

Show. Don’t tell.

A couple years ago, one of my student’s parents gave me a book by Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game. I was on his site and read an article explaining show versus tell. He said you have to show, but you’ll also have to tell. You can’t exclusively do one or the other. I can’t agree more. Within important scenes showing is the way to go, but when we’re summarizing or in a character’s thoughts, telling seemed to be the better tool. But not many teachers or writing gurus explained it this way. So when I read that article by Card, a published and New York Times Bestselling writer, I was elated.

There are so many writing do’s and don’t's  out there that it seems to stifle the art of expression rather than help it. And when I talk to certain writers who are rigid technically, it’s like talking to a born-again-Christian.

“God will punish you if you use a fragment!” (Must be why McCarthy won a Pulitzer for The Road)

“You wrote ‘asked’ instead of ‘said’?” (Guilty)

“Oh my Lord. Adverbs!” (Yeah, Rowling.  What’re ya thinkin’?”

Like all arts, there’s a level of technical proficiency and structural guidelines that should be followed. I ain’t no architect, but all buildings from homes to skyscrapers are boxes. A home may have a box for the family room, three boxes for bedrooms, two boxes for bathrooms, etc. Skyscrapers are just thousands of boxes stacked high. That’s the underlying structure. Outside of that, architects can express themselves by creating visually (adverb!) spectacular buildings.

All stories tend to have a similar structure. There’s a beginning, then an event (inciting incident) that throws things off balance, followed by conflict and tension to recover that balance, and a climax that leads to an end. Outside of that, stories can be told in a million different ways, with unique backdrops, story arcs, perspectives, etc.

In the Bruce Lee Lost Interview, he discusses naturalness versus unnaturalness in terms of acting and martial arts. Relying purely (another adverb!) on instinct is “unscientific”, as Lee put it. Unscientific means it’s not repeatable. We tend to see this in one hit wonders, and I often think of Stephanie Meyers and her Twilight series. Her novel, Host, wasn’t widely accepted but sold well because she had a strong base of fans. Since then, a sequel to the book hasn’t been mentioned, only follow ups to the vampire series. But being too technical, you become a “mechanical man”. In terms of story, you’re writing according to formula, or that your story becomes formulaic. (George Lucas anyone?)

So don’t let the do’s and don’t's stifle creativity. See them as guidelines.

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