It is done.

The decision has been made.

You're going to write a book and there's no doubt it's going to be great.

And so you saunter downstairs to the family computer a little bit later, after everyone else has gone to bed, notebook tucked under your arm, questions zipping about to and fro in your head.

What will you write? What sort of story? How many fans will you have? Who will publish you? How rich will you be?

Each one leaves the forefront of your mind before it can be properly answered. The only thing you know is that you're going to write a book.

And it's going to be great.

Because of course it's going to be great. You've found a new hobby, a new way to spend some spare time, something to do that will help you think, maybe, and you're going to make some money off it, too. How could it not be great?

And, as you sit there, a fresh blank page suspended inside your monitor, wreathed in a pure white glow, the answer to that question comes: because you don't know how to write.

You think back to the days you spent in high school taking creative writing classes, but that doesn't help. You try to remember how many books you've read and realize you haven't read a new book in years.

Without quite realizing it, you expected something to just come to you, as you sat there, a great and romantic epic, perhaps, or a dark and gritty tale of an alternate-history World War I, told with a ambiguously Wild West/Cyberpunk aesthetic.

But the truth of the matter is, over two thirds of Americans—that's two hundred million—try at least once to write a book in their lifetime, and of those two hundred million books, only about a million are finished, and of those million books, only a few hundred thousand are published.

And, of those few hundred thousand books, fewer than a hundred make it on any bestseller lists.

The simple truth is, you are enormously insignificant.

Armed with this information, what do you do? Well, the way I see it, you've two choices: you can give up, or you can continue.

And if this is your first book, or even your first story, the numbers are daunting.

But it gets worse. Not only do only a small fraction of books get published and even a smaller fraction become successful by any definition of the word, but you still don't know what to write, or how to.

If you've decided to continue on in spite of these hideous numbers, I commend you; that was brave.

But now what? Well, you might think, even if so few writers become authors, those few must have some advice for me.

And they do.

Stephen King wrote a great book, On Writing, a book which I have read three times since I've owned it. E.B. White and William Strunk Jr. collaborated on a legendary piece called The Elements of Style.

They'll all say the same thing: write concise sentences, don't use long words, avoid adverbs and adjectives, etc, etc.

All solid advice, worthy of adherence, but it's just that: advice.

There are no rules for writing. Not really.

After all, I'm certain someone told David Foster Wallace that footnotes have no place in fiction, but Infinite Jest remains one of the most (in)famous works of literature in the entirety of the English language.

Of all the things that the great authors can tell you, all but one is but a guideline, and that one real rule is this: write.

That's it.

There are addons to that rule that make things a little easier, such as, "write every day," and "read, at least as much as you write," but beyond that, there's nothing else.

No real, clear-cut rules, no how-to handbooks, and no mentors.

Those numbers are looking steeper all the time, aren't they?

But that's okay. You may not know how to write, and no one can tell you how to write, but really, that's fine. All you have to do is: write.