What Becomes a Writer Most?

Delirium tremens.

How to Becalm a Writer.

Knock the wind out of them.

Writers are obeyed, not borne.

Stop tapping your Birkenstock, I’ll get on with it.

How to Be a Writer

(In 464 Words or Less)

You wanna be a writer, you got to read.

A lot.

You got to read newspapers, you got to read magazines, you got to set up an account with Daedalus Books and buy books because they’re cheap and you never heard of the author.

You got to discover the showoffs and drunks and card players at the Algonquin Hotel and figure out which one is your spirit animal or as Dottie would say, your ‘Pousse Café’ and read every dam’ thing they wrote until you know how they think and you don’t like it one little bit because you made the mistake of digesting a couple of biographies and now you know what a shit they were in real life and how they cheated on their spouses and turned their kids into junkies and kleptos and bitter old men of 27.

You got to sneak into Wodehouse World, measuring his perfect sentences with a plum(b) line. That’s a literary pun and as Sam (that’s Mark, to you) would say, I don’t endorse it even on a good day with a collar and cuffs that don’t fight and a whore that does.

Of course he didn’t say that but he might have and who are you to throw your betters under a twuck when a twain is right at hand?

You wanna be a writer or you wanna write? Which is it? If you wanna be a writer you want the dollars and the agents and your photo on the back of a dustcover with a kitten or a meerschaum or a raised eyebrow or whatever the hell some P.R. genius thinks will sell. You think all you gotta do is plunk out The Great American Navel and you’ll be the next J.K. Robbins or Jim Clancy.

Good luck with that.

You say you wanna write?

No?

You say you HAVE to write?

Ah.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

A better title would be:

How to Know You’re a Writer

A SHORT COSMO QUIZ TO KEEP YOU FROM MISSING YOUR PERIODS

1. Your significant other just broke up with you. The first thing you do is:

               a.            Spend the night with a pound of cheap chocolates and a bottle of whatever they left

               b.           Call a locksmith

               c.            Plan a festive ‘The Bitch is Back’ party. Invite mutual friends you’ll never see again.

               d.            Put on sweatpants, sit in front of your laptop, crack your knuckles and get busy.

Nope, it’s not working.

The audience is throwing chardonnay bottles at the chicken wire.

So, let’s move on to:

I am Jim’s Colon

A Reader’s Digest Special on Home Remedies for Writer’s Block

-The End-