I heard a writing teacher on a podcast say once that limits actually free you up because you stop wasting energy on decisions, and that stuck with me. Like if someone tells you the story has to be under 500 words and end on a question, your brain just starts solving that instead of staring at a blank page. But three vague words like broken compass, Tuesday? That is almost worse because your options are endless and endless is scary. In my experience the sweet spot is a couple rules, not zero and not six. Too many rules and yeah, everything starts to feel like the same story in a different coat.

So now Marlene is running a book cult and you all drank the punch.

Wait, your first boss told you that too? Mine swore up and down that a fat hinge was the only way to keep a tree from kicking back, and I believed it for years. Once I started leaving closer to 10 percent my cuts got so much cleaner, it honestly felt like cheating.