Try being an obscure author and do the following:
1) Write the first 10K of a novel.
2) Include NO action and NO plot progression.
3) Submit to publisher/peer review/alpha readers etc.
What’s next? You’ll be flattened with cries of “but nothing happens!” Guaranteed.
Try the same exercise again, only as an award-winning novelist.
Step 2: Accept the Booker Prize.
We all know this goes on. Reviewers herd for safety and corral themselves into impossibly tight spaces irrespective of the objective “merits” of the writing they are reviewing. The public feel completely free to pronounce doom or greatness on any book at all, sans trammels of having to read the work or even know what it’s about. The only One Rule for writing that holds in the least true is that as long as you get the marketing right you can churn out any old monkey-type and be a hit. All that stuff about plot and adjectives and characterization and empathy and reader engagement and dialogue and… Forget it. Just do the marketing if you want to be “successful”.
And then remove all mirrors in your house because you’ll never be able to look at yourself again.
Or, there is an alternative One Rule. Write what you would like to read. Oh, I know. Anarchy.
Oh well, misrule it is, then!