There are several perspectives I considered for completing this requirement.
All can be true and most may be accurate. There is the I Wonder What They are Looking For classic school of responsiveness which goes something like this:
All my life I have known that I was destined to be a writer. Not only have I read everything I could get my eyes on, including bottles and boxes of various personal health and hygiene products and cleaning supplies while restrained in bathrooms, but also roadside billboards, subway advertisements and upside-down files on my supervisors’ desks. I won contests during elementary school for Most Books Read During Summer Vacation. Some members of my family referred to my speed and ability of consuming books as ‘eating’ instead of reading. They were right: once read, the words and ideas and experiences entered my bloodstream like a thousand malignant viruses, creating fevers I never recovered from.
And I have written. Pages and Post-it Notes and scrolls and letters and emails and lists of characters and lines of dialogue and news stories and ridiculous nonsensical anecdotes for friends going through chemotherapy. I have written Post Sentencing Investigations for a man sentenced to die in the electric chair at Union State Prison in Florida for killing his mother. He hit her on the head with a shovel and left her body in the travel trailer he made her live in. He lived in the large house next to the trailer with the waitress who came up with the idea of murdering Mother so he would quickly inherit the International House of Pancakes instead of just managing it.
See how the original idea has deteriorated? I can’t write what I believe you might be expecting.
And I can’t write that I think I’m the greatest undiscovered writer since Josephine P. Geeley of 82 West Tetley Avenue, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia.
3
(Because I made the name up and there isn’t a roster of eternally anonymous but gifted starving writers whose remains have been tenderly sheltered in cold-water basement apartments. Also, although I didn’t leave my heart in San Francisco I definitely left my ego in Coral Gables. Just outside the plate glass windows of the Anabel Spa where I used to sit inhaling the steam from dried chamomile flowers with a towel over my head. And even though it happened on the Miracle Mile, I’ve exorcised the possibility that anything of a divine nature will pop up to restore my status as a superb accomplished keyboard jockey.)
I won’t write that I know I have so much to give to the World of Letters and only the University of New Orleans Creative Writing Master’s Program faculty can burst the iron fetters that keep my inspired musings earthbound. (Because both of us can spot the undigested corn and peanuts in that type of statement.)
And I probably shouldn’t write that after 65 years of accumulated fits and starts and ragings and ravings, I’m afraid of being remembered not at all. I’m annoyed at very possibly losing the opportunity to save someone a bit of trouble or a few moments of unpleasantness.
It’s the selfish ‘If not now, when?’
I realize that my quilted background (similar to a checkered past except with more stuffing and fewer pawns) may not have the chronological or academic organization and clarity of your usual applicants.
Unfortunately, I can’t change that. I can only explain and provide what scraps I have and hope you see glimmers of a student you think may eventually be a credit to UNO.
Thank you for the time spent reading this and the elements of the included fish stew. My apologies that I am a sprinter and will never be a marathon writer.
Tag: writing-tips
SECRETED AGENTS:
The Story of Why We Live in a World of Prequels, Sequels, Reboots. Spinoffs and Meaningful Gut-Wrenching Personal Reflux
Pink slime. Beige slime. Roy G. Biv slime. No matter what goes into the handcranked sausage machine responsible for this generation’s crop of literary and creative agents; they just don’t make ‘em like they used to.
They’re all looking for dystopian underserved courageous unique mind-bending captivating timely existential timeless flawless breathtaking slabs of fromage du frottage. (I know nothing of French but a quick web search will reward you with a fairly explicit mental image. Bon apetit!)
What the hell happened to movies or television shows or (God forbid) books to absorb in a frenzy of delight and escape? When you didn’t feel the need to use hand sanitizer on your eyes and memory afterward?
As my saintly elder sibling reminded me after each trauma: Everyone Has Something.
I almost remember the psychic bitchslap phrase having been used as a title for some book.
Yeah, so it’s true. And you don’t want my Stuff and I don’t want Yours but that doesn’t mean we’re in a contest for Most Miserable Existence. We deal with things as we can or we die. There’s nothing wrong with a few bouts of depression here and there, a bit of schizophrenia on the side and maybe a cold buffet of Crappy Luck and Worse Choices. Grab the pickle fork and fish around the bottle until you get bored or you’ve had enough pickles. Spoiler: we’re going to die regardless of how we get there.
Back to agents. Literary agents. Do they have training? Uh, no. Do they read? Uh, not really. Most of them give the first page of manuscripts a cursory glance but then there are the established ones who have assistants to get the paper cuts for them. The Devil Used Arial 11.
Take a look at agents’ Wish Lists. When you’re finished, just replace it with the following statement:
Heterosexual Caucasian White Males Need Not Apply. It’s Not Your Turn Anymore.
Hemingway is dead. Wodehouse, Lardner and Perelman forgotten.
The reading list for a graduate Creative Writing course in Contemporary Literature at a groundcover university (meaning never reaching the standards of an Ivy) was stacked with writers the rancid male instructor had either slept with or was friends with someone they’d slept with. The 17 required purchases of their books added to their Amazon double-digit totals.
The Underserved Voices in Print included the Erotic Finger Poundings of High Schoolers. Every page a scratch and sniff parade of conquests not worth the stiff cotton they were built on. Stories of ex-spouses served up as Neo Pilgrim Feasts by Yankee descendants of the boys from Deliverance.
You shore got a purty mouth with yer dingus stuck in it instead of a apple.
The authoress whose book was hailed as a sparkling new literary invention with its fantastical lack of punctuation. The authoress had no problem admitting to the class that she was just too lazy to get spacing and punctuation right. Giggle giggle giggle.
The Mittel European paying homage to his auntie by casting her as a psychotic dominatrix famous for swilling cognac, shooting bears in the head and fornicating with her psychiatrists in uncomfortable corners. Fifty Milligrams of Dreck und Dross.
How do these enrich our lives? Is it your idea of fun? Of escapism? Something you’d like to share with the kids? You in the front row, put your hand down. If you’ve been reading any of those books we don’t want to think about where it’s been.
Here’s a story for you.
Once upon a time there was an adroit young hermaphrodite named Cloud. Cloud belonged to a tribe that believed pronouns were either profound or profane. So no pronouns.
Cloud and his ilk kept their feelings tightly constrained. I guess you could say they were bottled ilk.
Cloud was an intellectual, always floating new ideas like keeping clothes cleaner by getting outside of them. The zippers gave too much trouble for the trend to catch on. Although one trend was so caught that it required minor surgery and forever resembled a short length of H0 gauge railroad track.
How to Become a Writer
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-
Bluntedhedgehog 