I am pleased to report that I once shared Heinlein’s Rules (let’s capitalize them now, like the Ten Commandments) with a creatively inclined patient and the effect has been (*crosses fingers*) transformative. The patient has described them as “beautiful” and is applying them to a medium other than writing; it seems like there’s no reason to think they wouldn’t work just as well for that. I guess we will see. One of the aspects of the rules that my patient found especially instructive was the idea that in a world of talkative aspirants, you’re really only ever competing with the people who actually follow all the rules. I like to reflect on that, too. It doesn’t matter what r/Writing is babbling about, for example. The vast majority of people there are not my competition, which means there is more room for me than I think there is.
An exercise I read about once was to take a genre you like to write in and look up its top 100 best-sellers on Amazon, then preview any of the ones starting at #90. What will probably happen is that you will discover that those books’ writing are not especially more magical than yours, and indeed may be less. That’s because being some amazing writer isn’t the most important thing in the world when it comes to making a job out of it. Following the rules and getting your work out there is much more important.
I’m very much looking forward to the day, and it will no doubt be soon, where I can tell you that a patient of mine has made something by following Heinlein’s Rules.