Sloppy Collusions

It’s hard not to think of things to write about. In fact, it’s my dilemma. A boring dilemma, indeed. So when I sit at/with my Hermes Baby the question is never where/how to start but when/how to stop. I’ve read that W. Burroughs’ biggest problem was that he wrote so unconsciously. That is, he never wrote thinking about what he wrote. No. Maybe that’s wrong. I think what I’m trying to say is that W. Burroughs had a hard time getting published on account when he wrote he didn’t really care to make what he wrote… readable. Does that make any sense? Anyway. Writing and coming up with things to write about is never a problem. It’s doing it all so that one can meet the requirements of another. OK. This is going no where. And, as usual, I might be way off base here with Mr. Burroughs. The thing is, if only I could somehow put all these thoughts down in some kind of order then maybe…

Anywho.

The twins mentioned here (above) were/are almost as real as it gets. I did get to share some of their sloppy seconds once. The perfect world mentioned is real fiction.

Rant on.

-tgs-

Birch in Oorty

Some will say that wanting to own wood is wrong. And perhaps it is. But the thought of continuing on this path… It’s too much for me. And so earth day passes just like every other day. I’ve tried to make the claim that truth is but the first casualty. Yet all is hidden in the fun of a holiday-like day. So what audience do I deserve if the truth is desperately trying to get out? We do not need such a day, you know. If we could only be a bit more responsible. Yes. There. I’ve said it. The truth is about responsible. Not so much responsible in the morale sense of right and wrong. But in the lateral movement of evolution. I mean, come on, is there really a difference between looking up to the sky directly or looking for it at the end of a horizon? No matter. Most of the/our attention goes to some form of fictional characterization – like the cuteness offered by Hobbits or forgotten unicorns and let’s not misplace big eared mice that have a political agenda. No. I won’t forget yesterday because it didn’t really happen – although we think/imagine it did. How can it happen with all those big bad wolfs in the desert that used to be our forest?

Just some after thoughts. After writing. Typing. Dreaming. Searching out (my) pickled brain.

Rant on.

-tgs-

How Not To Be (Worst)

Some pretty good advice from the horror master Stephen King. Even though I’ve only read about 2.5 (out of how many?) of his books I really admire this guy. Well, actually, I admire anyone that can get published these days. Anywho. Here’s Kings list of How-To regarding gettin’ published:

1. Be talentedThis, of course, is the killer. What is talent? I can hear someone shouting, and here we are, ready to get into a discussion right up there with “what is the meaning of life?” for weighty pronouncements and total uselessness. For the purposes of the beginning writer, talent may as well be defined as eventual success – publication and money. If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn’t bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.

   Now some of you are really hollering. Some of you are calling me one crass money-fixated creep. And some of you are calling me bad names. Are you calling Harold Robbins talented? someone in one of the Great English Departments of America is screeching. V.C. Andrews? Theodore Dreiser? Or what about you, you dyslexic moron?

   Nonsense. Worse than nonsense, off the subject. We’re not talking about good or bad here. I’m interested in telling you how to get your stuff published, not in critical judgments of who’s good or bad. As a rule the critical judgments come after the check’s been spent, anyway. I have my own opinions, but most times I keep them to myself. People who are published steadily and are paid for what they are writing may be either saints or trollops, but they are clearly reaching a great many someones who want what they have. Ergo, they are communicating. Ergo, they are talented. The biggest part of writing successfully is being talented, and in the context of marketing, the only bad writer is one who doesn’t get paid. If you’re not talented, you won’t succeed. And if you’re not succeeding, you should know when to quit.

   When is that? I don’t know. It’s different for each writer. Not after six rejection slips, certainly, nor after sixty. But after six hundred? Maybe. After six thousand? My friend, after six thousand pinks, it’s time you tried painting or computer programming.

   Further, almost every aspiring writer knows when he is getting warmer – you start getting little jotted notes on your rejection slips, or personal letters . . . maybe a commiserating phone call. It’s lonely out there in the cold, but there are encouraging voices … unless there is nothing in your words which warrants encouragement. I think you owe it to yourself to skip as much of the self-illusion as possible. If your eyes are open, you’ll know which way to go … or when to turn back.

2. Be neatType. Double-space. Use a nice heavy white paper, never that erasable onion-skin stuff. If you’ve marked up your manuscript a lot, do another draft.
3. Be self-criticalIf you haven’t marked up your manuscript a lot, you did a lazy job. Only God gets things right the first time. Don’t be a slob.
4. Remove every extraneous wordYou want to get up on a soapbox and preach? Fine. Get one and try your local park. You want to write for money? Get to the point. And if you remove all the excess garbage and discover you can’t find the point, tear up what you wrote and start all over again . . . or try something new.
5. Never look at a reference book while doing a first draftYou want to write a story? Fine. Put away your dictionary, your encyclopedias, your World Almanac, and your thesaurus. Better yet, throw your thesaurus into the wastebasket. The only things creepier than a thesaurus are those little paperbacks college students too lazy to read the assigned novels buy around exam time. Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule. You think you might have misspelled a word? O.K., so here is your choice: either look it up in the dictionary, thereby making sure you have it right – and breaking your train of thought and the writer’s trance in the bargain – or just spell it phonetically and correct it later. Why not? Did you think it was going to go somewhere? And if you need to know the largest city in Brazil and you find you don’t have it in your head, why not write in Miami, or Cleveland? You can check it … but later. When you sit down to write, write. Don’t do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.
6. Know the marketsOnly a dimwit would send a story about giant vampire bats surrounding a high school to McCall’s. Only a dimwit would send a tender story about a mother and daughter making up their differences on Christmas Eve to Playboy … but people do it all the time. I’m not exaggerating; I have seen such stories in the slush piles of the actual magazines. If you write a good story, why send it out in an ignorant fashion? Would you send your kid out in a snowstorm dressed in Bermuda shorts and a tank top? If you like science fiction, read the magazines. If you want to write confession stories, read the magazines. And so on. It isn’t just a matter of knowing what’s right for the present story; you can begin to catch on, after awhile, to overall rhythms, editorial likes and dislikes, a magazine’s entire slant. Sometimes your reading can influence the next story, and create a sale.
7. Write to entertainDoes this mean you can’t write “serious fiction”? It does not. Somewhere along the line pernicious critics have invested the American reading and writing public with the idea that entertaining fiction and serious ideas do not overlap. This would have surprised Charles Dickens, not to mention Jane Austen, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Bernard Malamud, and hundreds of others. But your serious ideas must always serve your story, not the other way around. I repeat: if you want to preach, get a soapbox.
8. Ask yourself frequently, “Am I having fun?”The answer needn’t always be yes. But if it’s always no, it’s time for a new project or a new career.
9. How to evaluate criticismShow your piece to a number of people – ten, let us say. Listen carefully to what they tell you. Smile and nod a lot. Then review what was said very carefully. If your critics are all telling you the same thing about some facet of your story – a plot twist that doesn’t work, a character who rings false, stilted narrative, or half a dozen other possibles – change that facet. It doesn’t matter if you really liked that twist of that character; if a lot of people are telling you something is wrong with you piece, it is. If seven or eight of them are hitting on that same thing, I’d still suggest changing it. But if everyone – or even most everyone – is criticizing something different, you can safely disregard what all of them say.
10. Observe all rules for proper submissionReturn postage, self-addressed envelope, all of that.
11. An agent? Forget it. For nowAgents get 10% of monies earned by their clients. 10% of nothing is nothing. Agents also have to pay the rent. Beginning writers do not contribute to that or any other necessity of life. Flog your stories around yourself. If you’ve done a novel, send around query letters to publishers, one by one, and follow up with sample chapters and/or the manuscript complete. And remember Stephen King’s First Rule of Writers and Agents, learned by bitter personal experience: You don’t need one until you’re making enough for someone to steal … and if you’re making that much, you’ll be able to take your pick of good agents.
12. If it’s bad, kill itWhen it comes to people, mercy killing is against the law. When it comes to fiction, it is the law.

Source: http://mikeshea.net/Everything_You_Need_to_Kn.html

Rant on,

-tgs-

Crisis & Heroes

Perhaps I should title this post: My Confusion. Here we have two completely opposing thoughts that have busied my morning. Oh, the waste-of-time.

There is a certain amount of desperation in the air these days. I can feel it from my homeland to this side of the pond. Thick it is, and only slightly different from that which I ran from. But like the word “hero” now the word “crisis” must be abused. Obviously there are many who are falling through the cracks these days – but where do they fall is all I ponder as the heroes and the crisis dance? It doesn’t matter if someone stands up and tries to explain anything that is going on. Perhaps that’s due to the fact that it’s been so…

PERFECTLY IN THE MAKING.

It reminds me of an old man I once knew. He was missing two fingers. When asked he said that the fingers were taken from him and ever since he wished he would have not given them up so easily. Then he added that their loss did find vengeance.  He admitted it was all due to a stupid mistake on his part. A very stupid mistake. And then he added:

“And these days we give up so much and we do it so with so little apprehension. Mistakes aren’t what they used to be. Isn’t that right young fellow?”

The truth is, he lost those fingers just after he hit the ground and found himself buried under his parachute. That’s one of the things you learn when you are drafted as a paratrooper.

“Don’t get buried under the parachute!”

I think he said that he landed somewhere in Belgium. It wasn’t very windy but a gust must have caught him. It was the early spring of ‘45. Two jump-mates tried to help him and one fell before he could even clear away the parachute. The other man took a bullet, as well, but it was only a flesh wound. At that point he had no idea that he was bleeding. In fact, about fifty yards away from his landing site he hit the ground and recalled his training and, along with all his comrades, prepared to fire his government issued rifle. As he began to find a target in the midst of the hell-fire that ensued from the invasion he noticed the two missing fingers that failed to cup the bottom of the forestock of his rifle.

“The fingers must have been shot away,” he said. “That’s the only thing I could figure out about how it happened.” And then he said: “A crisis situation can really influence how you judge things. Luckily my training kicked in and I got over my mistake. Of course, I caused the death of a mate and almost lost another. But later I was told that it was a gust of wind and it blew me way off course. The Krauts would have got me clean if it weren’t for being covered by the parachute. Anyway. I wrapped those two slaughtered fingers in a rip of my undershirt and went about my duty. Now let me tell what it’s like to kill three Krauts…”

Yes, indeed, confusion is rampant this morn. And so…

Rant on,

-tgs-