Don't drink & post.... An object lesson.

New rule for myself, & I have to scribble it out on a Post It note & plaster it to the bottom of my computer monitor with all of the others. "If you are going to write while drinking, don't post until you've read it in the morning!"
There's a newspaper at my school that just started up. I'm currently taking every opportunity I can find to increase my body of work outside of poetry. I was in a class last quarter with almost the whole editorial staff, & while I do not think any of them particularly like me,(persona, you'll see what I mean in a moment) there can't be that many writers at our community college. I figured my chances were pretty good.
 So I inquired about submitting some work. The A&E editor got back to me & said yes I can submit, but they're coming up on their next deadline. I say no problem...I'll write something tonight. I had just got off of work & was looking forward to the chance to drink some beers & watch some movies, a luxury I haven't had much lately.
 I sat down at my desk with my 12 pack. I had an idea of what I wanted to do. Tips for future writers, not the usual "write what you know" stuff, but some witty & pertinent advice. Take it off the beaten... Be creative with it. So I started.
When my 12 pack was done, so was I, sort of... I didn't end it, I just stopped writing because I was about to pass out. I read over it chuckling to myself... I thought the intro sounded condescending which I wanted to write over, & I needed to finish it, but other than that I thought it was good.... Mailed it off right then, proud of myself for working so quickly.    I remember the very first thought I had when I woke up for school a few hours later... I mailed that? Oops.
I got up to re-read it. I honestly don't know who would publish it. But it's certainly not appropriate for a school newspaper. I'm basically telling college kids to cultivate a crack addiction to be authentic, & advising them to be ready to commit suicide if they become successful with their writing.   The wit I had foreshadowed was overlapped by the mean spirit of the piece. 
Needless to say, I need a good relationship with the people at the paper. I'm reworking the piece right now but I'm probably not going to make deadline. 3 1/2 hours sleep after my night of writing it & 4 hours last night after rewriting it... I just need to go to bed.
Because I have an obligation to post new things on here regularly, I'm going to let ya'll read it. Hopefully by Sunday I will have a moment to get back to the band narrative, I miss it.  
Without any further ado...







     So you want to be a writer?
  5 points to master/consider in your new career.



  You're in college. You're idealistic, unique, and a little bit angry. You've read Ham On Rye and Tortilla Flat. You've got things to say. you want to add to the American zeitgeist of popular culture but you suck at playing the guitar.  You want to be a writer. Pull beautiful words out of the soft ceiling of the night, write the quintessential experience, that elusive Great American Novel. Here are a few tips to help you on your way.

1:  Create a Persona.
  More than a mere "nom de plume" or character in your story. You are going to need to create your first person persona. This voice is the narrative vehicle that guides the prose along it's path. Supplies reason and motive to your text. It is your emotional current, a point of entry for the pathos that's so important to every good story.
 A persona is especially necessary if you plan to write non fiction pieces. This is going to essentially be your voice. Airing your dirty laundry so to speak. So unless you are an extremely well adjusted individual that has no problem with always speaking the absolute truth, you are going to need a persona. No extremely well adjusted person would ever choose to be a writer in the first place.
 There is one simple suggestion for creating a persona. Write yourself as you would like to be. Do you have trouble expressing yourself verbally in real life(most writers do)? Then your persona always has the slick retort, the perfect timing.  Many writers have issues being confronted with what they have written when something smacks a little bit too close to real life. This persona is your escape route. You're persona said it, not you. You're persona is your voice.

2: Befriend other writers.

  These are the people who will understand you when you feel no one else can. Writing is a very solitary art. A stark procession of black on white. Where most visual artists have many different colors on their palette of which to choose from, a writer deals in the tones of the absolute. Black. White. The writer is expected to make color appear from this crude cuneiform. only other writers understand that. The lonely nature of the writers craft almost guarantees that there will be times in your career where you feel like you cannot connect to a single other person on the planet. If you manage to convey these moments on the page when they arrive, they will stand as some of your more poignant and transcendental pieces. However, when you're in that moment, you won't be concerned with any of that. You will most likely only be concerned with getting down off of the ledge you find yourself perched on. Only other writers can help you with that. They might be the only people that even understand why you're doing what you are.
 Besides that, writers are going to be broke most of the time. It's the other artists and the patrons of the arts who will pick up the bar tab when you need it most. Valuable contacts.

3: Find a vice.

 Seriously. The importance of this one cannot be overstated. Cocaine, heroin, alcohol, sex, booze, pills. Whatever you prefer. Don't be a tourist about it either. Live there. Take notes. You're probably still young enough to recover from it afterwards, and for some reason, people refuse to take younger writers seriously. Delve deep into the hallowed halls of addiction, not as any means of nepenthe, but for credibility. One of the common currencies of a good writer.
 The trick is to bang around down there in the bilge for about a decade, right when things are about to get seriously real. Like prison or death. Pull yourself out, brush your shoulders off and get your shit together. Reminisce about it when you write. It takes about ten years, but it also saves about ten years in the experience points too. Look at James Frey, the man sniffed glue for Christ's sake, yet he still managed to turn his rehab memoir into a bestseller.
Of course Mr. Frey is probably back on the glue these days. He didn't refer to tip #1, Create a Persona.

4: Succumb to Libel.
 Yet another reason to follow Tip #1. And this is especially true for the writer of non fiction. If you worry about upsetting someone when you sit down to write, chances are you will never write a thing worth reading. People react strangely to how they are written. POV is a tricky thing, you are telling your perspective. What you may see in a particular interaction, may not be what was intended. then there's the convenience of hindsight. These are very real issues to a serious writer. There comes a point where the author has to go ahead and commit to the prose. A writer that doesn't take a chance. That has never submitted something without some little bit of trepidation about how it might be received by peers, is probably not creating lasting literature.
 A writer is a voyeur. Always residing somewhere just outside the moment & peeking in. Like the sweating pervert imagined looking through the one way mirror at a peep show, the best writers live just outside the boundary of good taste. They steal every sacred moment of their life and transcribe it to the page. It's a very heavy responsibility to consider. Yet this is where the good stuff comes from. Real life. Your life.

5: Prepare to kill yourself.

 The destiny of your esteemed peers. A suicide writer. The surest way to cement your status onto high school level advanced English reading lists forevermore. It would be almost funny if it wasn't true.
 While doing research for a paper on the suffering of writers(see where I like to dwell?) I found some surprising statistics. While it wasn't alarming for me to find that writers led the way in celebrity suicides, what was shocking was that of all of the other disciplines, artists who killed themselves after they were considered "washed up".
Writers tended to take their own lives not only while they were still producing work, but while they still had critical acclaim. The list is literally hundreds long. Followed by musicians, then actors, then visual artists.



See... I just stopped typing. Not even an ending. While some of the points aren't bad & I do subscribe to some of what I said, I don't know how I thought it was going to fit in the Central Circuit.