Stories have the mission of taking readers to other worlds, be they in a different time, galaxy or just down the block. A writer’s burden is to create these worlds, fill them with characters and prod them into life.

Easier said than done.

If you have read a book and thought that if was something that can easily been created, heck you can do it better! Well, yeah maybe. No one is going to tell you not to try, but as soon as you decide to take that route, you will learn how easy it really is.

A mind massacre comes to mind.

You see, creating a world is pretty basic. You can set something in your very own house, in your very own town, ten days ago. The characters, they could be your very best friends – with different names. Simple. But giving them life beyond their name? A character’s voice and actions within the world of your pages. That’s where the difficulty beings.

And now I get to ‘Peet’.

What is a peet? Peet are feet with a ‘P’ in front, of course!

And why not just write feet then, Ann? Why must I complicate the blog, have you pull out a dictionary, search through urban dictionary, question your English major (or your friends with English majors) and all for a spelling error?

Not a spelling error! A character voice! Peet, is what my niece calls feet. (Or at least she did for a few months before she got the ‘F’ down.) And if she was a character in my story of ten days ago, she wouldn’t be saying feet, because that’s not how she talks.

My point? Peet goes against grammar, dictionary and your English teacher. It contradicts what you understand and makes you scratch your head until you realize it’s a two year old talking. Then, it’s kind of cute.

That’s the difference between your English essay writing and your stories. One has so many rules that you spend years going through the formats, headings, spacings, grammar, dictionaries, thesauruses, the correct way to quote a newspaper clipping versus a webpage versus a book.

Stories need worlds, and they need characters. They need conflicts and resolutions and if they have some morale at the end, so be it. There are rules, if you want to go looking for them. Someone will always think that they have the ‘IT’ formula for a good story, and they might. But that’s their story.

In conclusion(see what I did there?), lose the rules. Get your butt to a chair. Take your laptop or go old-fashioned paper and pencil. Scratch it out in the sand if you want to (but take a picture at least). And writeyour story. Peets and all.