Everybody loves good writing and, by extension, the writer of good writing. Good writers are given license to utter just about anything, to hand-pick shaggable specimens from the filthy-rich entourage that follows them, and to take the moral high-ground on pretty much any issue presented by anyone in any situation in any given land at any given time. All of this, because they write well. It’s not a bad life.
So it stands to reason that if what you seek in life is to be loved by everyone, that becoming a good writer would be at the forefront of your tactical plan, right?
Wrong. The fact is that becoming a good writer is much, much harder than you think. Just ask Harold Pinter. You will spend twice as long, exert twice as much energy, enjoy half the success, and end up twice as ugly as Mr. Pinter. And nobody wants to see that happen. Nobody. Luckily, your membership in this exclusive circle entitles you to a corner-cutting tips and Strategies-For-Deception-And-Getting-Ahead that are not widely available to the general public.
Writing professors may encourage you to envision your own personal path through the art of writing. I’m going to encourage you to realize that your relationship with the craft may actually lead you to boundless poverty, never-ending self-doubt, and zero recognition. Who loves you?
If you’re serious about writing – and I know some of you are – you might think about mimicking and rehearsing (until they seem almost genuine) some of the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of the bona-fide good writer. That is to say: sometimes the easiest way of BEING a good writer is, plain and simply, to ACT like one.
Every day of every year of your life, this is what you shall do:
• Carry a journal.
This is wildly different from “keeping a journal”. The main difference is that you don’t actually have to write anything of importance in your journal . You can use it to make grocery lists, pick apart people you hate, or make nasty drawings of people you’d love to fuck. What’s important is that you freak out and feel lost whenever you’re separated from your journal. Always say that you would prefer to be writing in it to doing whatever it is that you are actually doing. Journals should look somber and serious and should feature at least one major tear in the spine or cover. Design-oriented ledgers and leather padfolios are both no-nos. Remember: you’re poor and suffering. Think more along the lines of black-and-white marble-pattern Mead composition notebook. Name the journal as if it were your only friend. When talking about the journal, point to it and refer to it as a place rather than a thing: “When I’m in there, I’m truly happy.”
• Establish a private writing space.
Now that you have a journal, you need a Room Of Your Own (ROYO). You may only need to add a few things to your existing room and desk set-up to make a ROYO. Take some loose-leaf pages, scribble on them, tear them to bits so that their falsity can never be established, and scatter your fake-pain onto the floor. Next, take some tissue or toilet paper, squirt hairspray into it, and crumple it into balls that look like they’ve been made by sickly hands. Throw them across the desktop and onto the floor. If you have a red ball-point pen handy, remove the cap and wrap a tissue around it’s tip. Fasten the tissue with a rubber band and let it sit for half an hour. Remove, and sprinkle a little water to promote ink gain and place the tissue in plain view. Good writers don’t know how to stop writing – even when they’re hemorrhaging.
• Establish a public writing space.
Once you’ve established your creative cocoon and shag-pad, you’re ready to venture out. There are two types of places you can go: cafés and coffee shops. Both are good, but for different reasons. Coffee shops, particularly those in which one-handed one-eyed men play chess all day long and are frequented by big-haired foul-mouthed Cuban exiles, are great places for gathering material. It is highly unlikely that you have the creativity to come up with crazy characters and zany situations on your own, so develop a habit of eavesdropping on the crazies who go to these coffee shops. Your local coffee house is your portal to the sin, desolation, and failure that readers will be wanting to hear about – so choose well. Now… everybody knows that coffee shops are the graveyards of talent, so once you’ve jotted a couple of condescending comments down and observed at a least a couple of pathetically dysfunctional behaviors, get out and go to a café. Your career depends on it. Aim high: Italian or French, but Greek or Middle-Eastern will do in a bind. What’s important is that the tables be spaced out far enough to accommodate your frantic page-flipping and angsty hair-chewing. Take out your journal and start writing sentences about how your entire life is a farce and then laugh out loud a couple of times, shaking your head in disbelief that you’re even able to write such meta-level drivel. Act like there’s no forgiveness for what you’re doing.
• Make comparisons that no one can possibly understand.
Using metaphor, metonymy, and simile takes skill – skill you simply don’t have. What you should wield instead is good, old-fashioned obscurity. Nothing masks ignorance and talentlessness like enigma. Nothing. When asked by a friend to talk about a character’s motivation – a character you haven’t really thought through – you may elect to say something like, “Shit, man… getting inside of his head is like asking a one-handed blind man to tell you if I’m still a virgin.” Then shake your head like you are struggling to emotionally digest what you’ve just said. If asked to clarify what you mean, simply reply with a, “Nevermind,” puff your cheeks out slightly, shake your head, put your hands in your pockets, and walk away misunderstood.
• Use violence strategically.
A great writer knows how to let irrational emotions boil over the lip of the mundane, most notably by using offensive language or throwing things. If asked to “tone it down,” mutter or yell something about “not being in The Box.”
• Don’t lose the feeling.
Remember that what you’ve just written has hurt you. Deeply so. Don’t lose that. Let your audience know that you are genuinely injured and exhausted by shaking out your arms and cracking your neck after birthing yet another painfully bland paragraph. Close the cover of your journal – no, put the lid on your pain – close your eyes and do something believably buddhist like putting your palms, open and upward, on your thighs and breathing deeply. Act like you’ve just finished having a conversation with God, one in which even he had to admit that he didn’t know. Always put pen caps back on during this stage. When you come out of your trance, squint a lot and act disoriented, as if you had just climbed out of a sick world that only you can imagine. Look like you’re having post-partum depression. If you don’t know what that might feel like, just picture yourself being alone, unhappy, and dickless for the rest of your life sad, miserable life.
• Sacrifice for success.
Turn people down for amazing and fantastic social opportunities in order to “Get a little writing in – yeah…”. Try to make a pinched-face look when you say this and trail-off after your “yeah.”. Delivery is important here. Your audience should believe that you are doing something as selfless and beautiful as going home to wipe-down your paralyzed mother with rosewater while you sing opera to her. Have a good Netflix buffer ready for your evening home alone.
• Care about other people’s writing, if only superficially.
Subscribe to literary journals, preferably ones that are obscure or in another language. If you are too cheap to get your own, but frequent a psychotherapist, steal theirs.
• Don’t whore yourself.
Do not attempt spoken word – under any circumstance or blood-alchohol level. This will completely undermine everything you’ve ever done to seem like a serious writer, especially if you end up speaking in that stupid cadence or if you end up speaking breathlessly about how you were “running and running and running.”
• Be known as the writer.
Own the “writer” label in your circle of friends: this is low-hanging fruit. Make sure that you have talked about writing until it makes every one of your friends want to throw up. Always give notebooks, books, or pens as gifts. Acquire pieces of wall art that reference writing in some way, or collect writing instruments from other cultures and historic periods. Develop inattentiveness to all music EXCEPT for Aimee Mann and Mozart. Grow inflamed when anything else is played, going so far as to talk about how it’s dismantling your creativity, note by note. Hate your nationality and threaten the world with your expatriation.
• Exist on the periphery, but come in for the right reasons.
Always choose to sit on the edge of circles, stand when others are sitting, and sit when others are kneeling. The only exception is when children are at the center of all the attention. Move inward for the kill in this scenario. Talk to children as if you believe them to be “little people” and pretend to be consumed by their nonsensical drivel. Do this until you can’t do it anymore. Going that extra mile to show that you are still in touch with innocence and that, in some ways, only the innocent understand what your work in this world is all about, will help to excuse some of the obviousness, simplicity and flat-out banality of your work.
This is dedicated to Harold Pinter and Alison Hart. Thanks for being good writers.
