Books are Guidelines, Not Rules

The Rule: You must Follow Self Help Books to the T.

Okay for the past several weeks I have been agonizing over my story's characters' development by writing out the smallest detail of their lives all because a book told me to. I wrote their physical and inner life as the author suggested in the order he presented. It worked wonderfully until I started getting board and the creativity was getting repetitious, even though they were different characters. I was hating this idea of writing such detail, in precisely the order he had suggested. Then as I leaned back in my chair today sitting quietly in the El Segundo library, I came across the thought, "who says I must do exactly what this guys says to do? He never even said in the book to follow everything exactly."

I think I did this because the author has remarkable credentials: own his own publishing company, has propelled great and gifted authors to prestigious heights and has written books that college professors use in their classes (so the reviews says). When we put people on a pedestal, we take everything they say as gospel truth and we follow them through our own insanity, after all I was pretty miserable following the author's order of things.

Most rules we follow, that this blog hopes to destroy, are due to people with authority setting our own limitations, our own creative guidelines, and spiritual development. "Since he said it, it must be true," kind of statements.

We need to take what they say and apply it to our lives accordingly and not jump into their words with a absolute devotion. Doesn't the Bible have something to say about devoting one's self fully to something other than God? If we do this, we become slaves to that authoritarian.

We want books and authority figures to be our rule setter because we are afraid of making desions by ourselves. We are afraid of being all alone in a world of so much uncertainty. Our passions, or dreams are being killed by the very people who give steps on how to be passionate.

So if I am ever someone with tremednious authrority, don't be devoted to what I say. I am not right all the time.