Do it this way

Don't end your sentences with prepositions. Subject and object alone are not complete statements. Be formal and polite and direct and grammatically sound.

 Everyone's trying to tell you the rules. About how it all works.

 The way they see the world, the lines they've laid down, it's the right way to do it.

 Me though? I'm a troublemaker. If I'm not going to do what you tell me, what makes you think I'm going to adhere to my own rules? I made 'em, I'll break 'em. That's why I'm always committing word crimes through a vocabulary salad.

 I am divinely human in that I am hypocritical.

Use nouns as verbs, give objects the power to punch, not just stand in place and statue. Use run on sentences, for the minds that handle a torrent of consciousness because they might enjoy being lost in the slipstream of mentality, letting one thought flow into another, connecting worlds unseen one term at a time.

 Overdo your lists: exhaust your audience with tiring, grating, exhausting, extensive, gasping, series of adjectives that keep on going and going. Play practical jokes on your audience, delivering paragraphs that once the point clicks, they cheer, gasp, groan, or sob. Challenge your readers the way you would yourself.

 All these, they're suggestions. Things I do, the ways I play. Mileage may vary.

Don't let the book bury the story. Waxing poetic can be fun for the pen but tiresome for the eye.

 Don't break tenses or shift perspective in narration within scenes, or introduce elements without making them relevant. Consistency and perspective and the shotgun above the fireplace and all that jargon.

 More things I'm not supposed to do, yet some of the greatest stories I've devoured told their editors to shove it.

 Though on that note about burying the point, you can get it across in the fewest words: "write value."

You can curve the path to expand on it: "one should always aim for their words to deliver value."

And you can refine and replace, make superfluous and flowery, bringing in metaphors or that word you learned the other day, sometimes go for the simple one: "aim for words that punch above their weight."

You think through it and thumb the thesaurus and struggle to recall the idiom or the phrase and eventually you end up with something like:

"I am no mere speaker, but pugilist. Prose as my fists, leaden with meaning, will punch holes in your psyche and understanding, until you're not just seeing stars, but the stars of a new way of living."

It's the ego stroking itself, sure. Excessive and tiring when overused. But where's the fun in it if you can't have a go with your own pride once in a while? Do you want to follow the rules of your MLA English course and end up with the same tired structure that's so cookie cutter that you won't even want to read your own work?

 Your words should do the following:

1. Deliver your message
2. Carry their own texture and flavor
3. Change how your readers think, or how they feel

 The real artists made the work that they wanted to devour, because nobody else would make it. They took formulas and broke them by horseplay. Molded language into their own shape and gave it breath.

 When the world is filled with readers who, forget the same language, don't even see the same world as you, you've got bridges to cross in your communication. Our languages are rivers that run opposite. Our minds are often fortresses molded by experience and guarded by political philosophy. You're not just speaking an idea to another, you're penning a telegram that other country of a person might not even be able to read.

Make words so beautiful that people who speak in different tongues struggle as much as you to translate your point to others, that you made to even put it to paper.

 Everyone can write.

 But can you articulate?

 Can you fill a canvas not with letters, but with profundity?

 Can you change not just what someone's eyes scan across, but send a signal from their pupils to their neurons that fundamentally shifts how they navigate the world?

 Don't just lay words down, rule by rule.

 Play with it until you make them sing. A breathless ballad, ever inaudible, until another finds the stars in your words, and speaks them from their heart.

Language is a playground, and brethren, I am always ready to play.

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This post was written as a metric, a staple to measure my writing against before and after completing the final Write of Passage Cohort.

Here's to more work, more ideas made language, more rulebreaking.