Writing as the School Year Starts

 Please don't groan - I know it may not be the school year yet for you, but it is for me, because I live in the South, where everything wants to kill you (especially in summer), and starting school a month early is actually a pretty good idea.

Writing during the school year doesn't have to be confined to compositions meant to show off your grammar and spelling skills. Keep on with your big lovely projects, by all means! You still have evenings and weekends, after all. 

Also, those school assignments don't have to be so bad. As writers, we know we can do so much better than we do in our essays. But that odd quirk of human nature, the unwillingness to throw ourselves whole-heartedly into something we've been told to do, prevents us. Maybe it's all the rules - minimum and maximum word counts, requirements on form and content, questions that have to be answered and statements that have to be made and opinions that have to presented (all without saying I!) The results? Dead boredom, for the writer and whatever unfortunate teacher or parent is grading you.

Here's a different take: add more rules. (And now everyone stops reading. Sorry. Please do go on, though.) Here's a few rules-about-the-rules that maybe will ease everyone's composition-writing and -reading pains:

1. Even firm rules were made to be broken. Sometimes slang or a comma splice is just what you need. Sometimes. Don't give this rule a bad name by abusing it. 
2. Not all rules apply at all times. For example, in dialogue (unfortunately used precious little in essays), you can pretty much throw them out the window, because no one actually uses perfect grammar and pronunciation.
3. Less-firm rules were meant to be broken, too, because it turns out they're not rules at all. I speak of two rules in particular: the split infinitive (who knows what that means, raise your hand?) and the dangling preposition. There is no reason these rules should apply in English. We only have them because in Latin, it was impossible to do these things, and someone got it in their head that we shouldn't insert an adverb into infinitives such as to slap (to soundly slap), or end a sentence in a preposition, which everyone does. ("Let the dog in.") Ignore these rules if you like. They make no sense.
4. As Scott Adams once said in the guise of Dogbert, "Rules were made to be broken, therefore suggestions were made to be ignored." This is lovely advice for writers of anything, compositions included. Sometimes we need the passive voice, which is often frowned upon. Every structure in grammar exists for a reason, which means nothing is out of bounds.
5. Write from your true self, not your boring school-self. Be the animated, concrete-noun-spouting person you really are. Use colorful language, comparisons, examples, things you understand and everyone else understands, things from your life, anecdotes you've heard and facts you know. You are writing, not some computerized essay machine.
6. Finally, the same Golden Rule of Writing applies to compositions as it does to fiction: Be vivid and specific. Your teacher will thank you for it, and you will stand out.

Remember, rule-followers are not the ones who make it into the history books. It's the daring ones, who try something new and risqué and scary, that go places in life.