I have to put a post up… actually I have 3 posts to put up, of the 22 that hold the house up. I did concrete in 2 more today, so feel a bit like Lady Godiva seeing the edge of the town: “At last I near my close.” It’s quite a physical pastime, and exhaustion doesn’t help my writing. I’m creeping towards the close in the current book, where the biology is delighting me. I… um confess. I do pants a bit on biological details, and sometimes they overtake the entire story and change it.

I’m kind of breaking my own rule here of not pantsing. I hope it works out. The point I want to make is even the most widespread ‘rules’ can be broken – and still have a successful book, popular with readers. Yes, I have been listening to the start of PROJECT HAIL MARY on the way in, to ambulance training. Weir IS breaking many of the ‘rules’. He plainly has the skill to get away with it – and be popular.

There is no inviolate writing rule: except the reader must not hate it… Because if they do, you write for an audience of one.