How brave are you?

You need courage to submit your work to potential buyers, but you also need courage to get creative with your career. To get creative, you may need to break a few rules.

There are hundreds of rules around writing. The rules give you basic information, such as -- how to format a manuscript, how to contact editors, how to find and interview sources, and more.

The danger is that you may come to look on these rules as "musts". Not so. These rules are merely guides. They're NOT written down in stone. You can flout the rules if you wish. There are no publishing-police, who will drag you into publishing court and charge you with the horrendous crime of submitting your manuscript in 12-point Times New Roman, rather than in Courier New, for example.

=> Get creative: do it your way

Like the immortal Chairman of the Board, you can do it your way. I was interested this morning to read a message from a much-published friend, telling me that she'd decided to take a new tactic with a novel she was working on. She has almost completed the novel, and rather than shipping off the completed novel to her agent, she decided to send the first half of the book to fifteen agents, to see what the response would be.

Here's how my thoughts ran when I read this message: Whoa! She's breaking all the rules. She has an agent. She should offer it to him. If she wants to contact other agents, she should send them a letter first, and -- I was indulging in a wonderful round of "musts". I do know better, but since this was my initial reaction, it shows you how firmly the rules hold us in their grasp.

Don't buy into the rules. There are no rules.

More power to my friend. Her intuition told her that this was the right procedure for her on this book at this time, and she went ahead and did it.

I've told you this little story to show you that you can do as you think best, always. Others may not agree with you. That's fine. You don