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Writing Is Easy!
Writing is one of the most easy, pain free, and happy ways to pass the time in all the arts. For example, right now I am sitting in my rose garden and typing on my new computer. Each rose represents a story, so I’m never at a loss for what to write. I just look deep into the heart of the rose and read its story and write it down through typing, which I enjoy anyway. I could be typing “ldgvkur ljshkug jiw” and would enjoy it as much as typing words that actually make sense. I simply relish the movement of my fingers on the keys. Sometimes, it is true, agony visits the head of the writer. At these moments, I stop writing and relax with a coffee at my favorite restaurant, knowing that words can be changed, rethought, fiddled with, and, of course, ultimately denied. Painters don’t have that luxury. If they go to a coffee shop, their paint dries into a hard mass.
Location, Location, Location
I would recommend to writers that they live in California, because here they can look up at the blue sky in between these moments of looking into the heart of a rose. I feel sorry for writers -- and there are some pretty famous ones -- who live in places like South Africa and Czechoslovakia, where I imagine it gets pretty dreary. These writers are easy to spot. Their books are often depressing and filled with disease and negativity. If you’re going to write about disease, I would suggest that California is the place to do it. Dwarfism is never funny, but look at the result when it was dealt with out here in California. Seven happy dwarfs. Can you imagine seven dwarfs in Czechoslovakia? You would get seven melancholic dwarfs at best, seven melancholic dwarfs with no handicapped-parking spaces.
Love in the Time of Cholera: why it’s a bad title
I admit that “Love in the time . . .” is a great title, so far. You’re reading along, you’re happy, it’s about love, I like the way the word time comes in there, something nice in the association of love and time, like a new word almost, lovetime: nice, nice feeling. Suddenly, the morbid Cholera appears. I was happy till then. “Love in the Time of the Oozing Sores and Pustules” is probably an earlier, rejected title of this book, written in a rat-infested tree house on an old Smith-Corona. This writer, whoever he is, could have used a couple of weeks in Pacific Daylight Time.
Writer’s Block: A Myth
Writer’s block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol. Sure a writer can get stuck for a while, but when that happens to real authors, they simply go out and get an “as told to.” The alternative is to hire yourself out as an “as heard from,” thus taking all the credit. It is also much easier to write when you have someone to “bounce” with. This is someone to sit in the room with and exchange ideas. It is good if the last name of the person is Salinger. I know a certain early-twentieth-century French writer, whose initials were M.P., who could have used a good bounce person. If he had, his title might have been the more correct “Remembering Past Things” instead of the clumsy one he used. The other trick I use when I have a momentary stoppage is virtually foolproof, and I’m happy to pass it along. Go to an already published novel and find a sentence you absolutely adore. Copy it down in your manuscript. Usually that sentence will lead you naturally to another sentence; pretty soon your own ideas will start to flow. If they don’t, copy down the next sentence. You can safely use up to three sentences of someone else’s work -- unless they’re friends; then you can use two. The odds of being found out are very slim, and even if you are, there’s no jail time.
Creating Memorable Characters
Nothing will make your writing soar more than a memorable character. If there is a memorable character, the reader will keep going back to the book, picking it up, turning it over in his hands, hefting it, and tossing it into the air. Here is an example of the jazzy uplift that vivid characters can offer:
Some guys were standing around when in came this guy.
You are now on your way to creating a memorable character. You have set him set him up as being a guy, and with that come all the reader’s ideas of what a guy is. Soon you will liven your character by using an adjective:
But this guy was no ordinary guy, he was a red guy.
This character, the red guy, has now popped into the reader’s imagination. He is a full-blown person, with hopes and dreams, just like the reader. Especially if the reader is a red guy. Now you might want to give the character a trait. You can inform the reader of the character trait in one of two ways. First, simply say what that trait is -- for example, “but this red guy was different from most red guys, this red guy liked frappes.” The other is rooted in action -- have the red guy walk up to the bar and order a frappe, as in:
“What’ll you have, red guy?”
“I’ll have a frappe.”
Once you have mastered these two concepts, vivid character writing combined with adjectives, you are on your way to becoming the next Shakespeare’s brother.
Writing Dialogue
Many very fine writers are intimidated when they have to write the way people really talk. Actually it’s quite easy. Simply lower your IQ by fifty and start typing!
A Demonstration of Actual Writing
It is easy to talk about writing and even easier to do it. Watch:
Call me Ishmael. It was cold, very cold, here in the mountain town of Kilimanjaroville. I could hear a bell. It was tolling. I knew exactly for who it was tolling, too. It was tolling for me, Ishmael Twist, a red guy who likes frappe. [Author’s note: I am now stuck. I walk over to a rose and look into its heart.] That’s right, Ismael Twist.
Finally, I can’t overstress the importance of having a powerful closing sentence.
--“Pure Drivel” as written by Steve Martin
Until next time,
billwilcox
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Comedy: July 27, 2005 Issue [#517]
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