I do get so tired of “absolute” rules. Don’t do this, never do that, Stephen King said blah blah blah and therefore it’s sacrosanct. Chuck Wendig nails it with this rant—okay, gentle disquisition—on the “sacred cows” of writing advice.
Visit from the Writing Police!
Just Can't Help Writing 
There is one unbreakable rule: finish it!
Everything else can be flexed and strained to suit the purpose of the story, but if there’s no finished story, what’s the point to all the other stuff?
Finish it, start again with the knowledge gained from the one before; finish it, start again, etc.
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So right! I see a lot of people (and remember myself doing it) getting bogged down trying to make first chapters perfect, with the result that the energy gets spent there and the rest dies. You don’t even know what your first chapter really has to do until you know what your book does. IMHO, anyway! Thanks!
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Amen. I bought and tried to read Mr. Kings book on writing horror. It was filled with a bunch of generalities, rules, and inane must do’s and can’t do’s. And here’s the thing, he’s broken every one of his bits of advice.
He must have been making stuff up.
And that’s my favorite
bit of advice from this piece: Make stuff up.
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In my view, anytime you decide you *can’t* do something with language, ever, you’re throwing away a tool of your craft. Tools have their purposes. I was inspired recently by a particular prohibition to post about the ways that fear of “to be” robs you of a writing friend: https://justcanthelpwriting.wordpress.com/2018/04/24/the-verb-to-be-is-your-friend/
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