Writing Rules

We hear a lot of rules of "good writing," and while grammar is important...

I'd argue that flow is even more important.  

In other words, if you can read your writing easily without tripping over any phrases, it's likely better than writing something that's technically correct but unnatural to the ear.

As Clarence Darrow says, "Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?"

My favorite writers tend to favor the stream-of-consciousness style: William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce...  I've heard that rambling isn't fashionable now-- people want minimal, clean prose, like Ernest Hemingway.  But if you don't naturally talk and think like Ernest Hemingway, isn't it a lie to try to suddenly write like him?  Or would you argue that that is the whole point of writing?  To experiment, like acting, with different voices, different lives and experiences?

And this is exactly what differentiates writing and acting in my mind and why I prefer the former to the latter.  I feel you have to write your own truth in your own voice, and that will be the strongest piece of art you will be able to create as a crafter of words.  An actor's job is to take those dry black-and-white scratches on paper and infuse them with life-- and each actor will bring a different feel to the words, even if they say the same things verbatim.

So, what's the point?  Basically: to disregard the rules, unless they are necessary for clarity (see: grandpa example above) and just write write write.  If writing at 7am every morning works for you, great.  If you're a spurt worker that does well writing 6000 words one day and nothing the next, that's fine, too.   

In the same way good teaching is so personal-- you can't teach someone to be a good teacher; they have to find their own teaching personality and method-- good writing is just a reflection of you, how you see the world and an indirect way of showing either what you love or hate in the world.

And how can anyone impose their rules on that?