The "Write Without Permission" course of writing

Unearthing the Wild Writer: Was It Really All Rules Before?

Point 1: Writers of Old: Architects or Explorers?

The answer is: explorers, and often, rebels.

There were no "creative writing manuals" like we know today. Learning happened through imitation, intuition, and trial-and-error. They read the classics (Greeks, Romans) and tried to emulate their spirit, not a checklist of techniques.

The "rules" were more about format than creation. In 17th-century French classical theater, strict rules like the three unities (action, time, place) did exist, but they were more a trend of a specific time and place than a universal law. Writers like Shakespeare in England ignored them completely with brilliant results.

They were freer in form. Miguel de Cervantes, in Don Quixote (1605), mixes genres (novel, short story, poetry), plays with reality and fiction, interrupts the narrative... He breaks all the "rules" of the modern novel before they even existed! He did it out of expressive necessity, not a technical plan.

They wrote from obsession, not from "should." Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein because of a nightmare and a challenge among friends. She didn't make a "character arc" outline for the monster. Franz Kafka wrote from an internal compulsion, and his manuscripts weren't even meant to be published as we know them.

Interim Conclusion: The great pillars of literature didn't build their works following an IKEA manual. They improvised, broke molds, and found their voice along the way. The rules came later, when academics and critics took their works apart to understand them and, sometimes, to try and turn them into a formula.

Point 2: Publishing Back Then: A Path of Patrons, Patience, and (Sometimes) Ruin.

Publishing a book before the 20th century was a radically different process, and in many ways, more human and harder.

· The Patronage Model (Old School): To publish, you often needed the financial backing of a noble or wealthy person (a patron). In return, the work was dedicated to them. This meant the "gatekeeper" wasn't the market, but the taste (or political interests) of one person.

· Subscription (18th-19th Century): The author got a list of people who promised to buy the book in advance. That money financed the printing. It was primitive, very social crowdfunding.

· Modern Publishers (19th Century Onward): With industrialization, professional editors appeared. The process became more like today's, BUT:

  · Literary agents weren't really a thing until well into the 20th century.

  · The author negotiated directly with the editor, often from a much weaker position.

  · Guidelines were minimal: You handed in a manuscript (sometimes handwritten). The decision was based almost purely on the editor's subjective taste and commercial potential. There were no standardized "submission guides" with specific fonts and margins.

  · The risk was huge. An author like Charles Dickens published in serials in magazines. If readers didn't like a chapter, the work could fail. There were no big market studies; it was pure trial and error with the public.

Final Takeaway for Your Talk:

"What does this tell us? That the obsession with technical rules and rigid formats is a modern invention—a well-meaning but often suffocating attempt to systematize magic. And that the path to publication, though it may seem full of locked doors today, was once a labyrinth without a map.

This course isn't another labyrinth. It's a workshop to forge your own compass.

Let's do as the ancients did: read voraciously to discover what moves us. Write from obsession, not from duty. Understand technique not as law, but as a toolbox you can use, modify, or throw out the window if it doesn't serve you. Because the only rules that matter are the ones your story demands from within.

Let's write, first and foremost, for ourselves. To understand something, to exorcise something, to play. The rest—style, voice, publication—comes later, and it comes from authenticity."

So, let's start. See you on fist theme...