How to write what you write depends on what and who you're writing
for. If you're writing for yourself, there only exist the rules you set for
yourself.
Romance writing rules are far different than are children's books; biographies; scientific studies, all sorts of fiction and non-fiction.
To someone who aspires to pen the Great American Novel, I suggest you write what you know and write it well.
Single out your audience and write to
them.
If you admire Robert Frost, Emily Dickenson and their poetry, study them and get to "know" them--how they thought, lived and dreamed.
Dickenson was agoraphobic, you know, and rarely left her home during her brief life. She rarely entertained visitors from the same room, she would converse with them from an adjacent room. Robert Louis Stevenson was sickly and drew his inspiration from what he would liked to have done had he been healthy. His body was weak, but his imagination was as strong as any I've seen.
Henry David Thoreau is amongst my favourites to read by a crackling fire in a big chair near my front windows under a soft light when it's snowing against the panes. A cup of hot, lemon tea and a dish of ginger snaps sends me to Heaven until it's time to start supper.
Different audiences require different writing "rules," however, you may break as many of those rules as you choose as long as you do it well.
You do not always have to "colour between the lines."
Remember, there is an enormous difference between a writer and an author. You
CAN be both, you know.
Mo
