writing 1. Easy!

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Writing isone of the mos t easy, painfree, and happy ways topass the time in all the arts. For example, right now I amsitting in my rose garden and typing on my new computer.Eachrose represents a story, so Imnever at a loss for what towrite. I just look deep into the heart of the rose and read itsstory andwrite it down through typing, which I enjoy anyway.I could be typing kjfiu joewmv jiw and would enjoy it asmuch astyping words that actually make sense. I simply rel~ish the movement of my fingers on the keys. Sometimes, it istrue, agony Visits the head of a writer. At these moments, Istop writing and relax with a coffee at my favorite restaurant,knowing that words can bechanged, rethought, fiddled with,and, of course, ultimately denied. Painters dont have thatluxury. If they go to a coffee shop, their paint dries into ahard mass.

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Location,Location, Location

I would recommend to writers that they live in California,because here they can look up at the blue sky in betweenthose moments of looking into the heart of a rose. I feel sorryfor writersand there are some pretty famous oneswholive in places likeSouthAmerica andCzechoslovakia,whereI imagine it gets pretty dreary. These writers are easy to spot.Their books are often depressing and filled with disease andnegativity. If youre going to write about disease, I would sug gest that California is the place to do it. Dwarfism is neverfunny, but look at the result when it was dealt with out herein California. Seven happy dwarfs. Can you imagine sevendwarfs in Czechoslovakia? You would get seven melancholicdwarfs at best, seven melancholic dwarfs with no handircappedvparking spaces.

Love in the Time ofCholera: why its abad title

I admit that Love in the time of . . ." isagreat title, sofar.Youre reading along, youre happy, its about love, I like theway the word time comes in there, something nice in theassociation of love and time, likea newword almost, lovetime:nice, nice feeling. Suddenly, the morbid Cholera appears. Iwas happy till then. Love in the Time of the Oozing Soresand Pustules is probably an earlier, rejected title of thisbook, written in a rat-infested tree house on an old SmithCorona.This writer, whoever he is, could have used acoupleof weeks in Pacific Daylight Time.

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I did a little experiment. I decided to take the follow,ing disheartening passage, which was no doubt written insome depressing place, and attempt to rewrite it under theinfluence of California:

Most people deceive themselves with apair of faiths:they believe in eternal memory (of people, things,deeds, nations) and in redressibility (of deeds,mistakes, sins, wrongs). Both are false faiths. Inreality the opposite is true: everything will beforgotten and nothing will be redressed. (MilanKundera)

Sitting in my garden, asthe bees glide from flower to flower,I let the above paragraphfilter through my mind.The following new paragraph emerged:

I feel pretty,Oh so pretty,I feel pretty and witty and bright.

Kundera was just t o o wordy. Sometimes the delete key isyourgreatest friend.

Writers Block: A Myth

Writers block is a fancy te rm made up by whiners so theycan have an excuse to drink alcohol. Sure a writer can getstuck for awhile, but when that happens to realauthors, they

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simply go out and get an as told to. The alternative is tohire yourself ou t asan as heard from," thus taking all thecredit. It isalso mucheasier to write when you have someoneto bounce with. This issomeone to sit in aroom with andexchange ideas. It is good if the last name of the person youchoose to bounce with is Salinger. I know a certain earlytwentiethcentury French writer, whose initials were M.P.,who could have used a good bounce person. If he had, histitle might have been the more correct Remembering PastThings" instead of the clumsy one he used. The other trick Iuse when l have amomentary stoppage isvirtually foolproof,and Im happy to pass it along. Go to an already publishednoveland find asentence you absolutely adore. Copy it downin your manuscript. Usually that sentence will lead you naturally to another sentence; pretty soon your own ideas willstart to flow. If they dont, copy down the nex t sentence.You can safely use up to three sentences of someone else'sworkunless theyre friends; then you can use two. The oddsof being found ou t are very slim, and even if you are, theresno jail time.

CreatingMemorable Characters

Nothingwill make your writing soar more than amemorablecharacter. If there is a memorable character, the reader willkeep going back to the book, picking it up, turning it over inhis hands, hefting i t , and tossing it into the air. Here is anexample of the jazzy uplift that vivid characters can offer:

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Some guys were standing around when in camethis guy.

You are n o w on your way to creating a memorablecharacter. You have set him up asbeing aguy, and with thatcome all the readers ideas of what a guy is. Soon you willliven your character by using an adjective:

But this guy was no ordinary guy, he was ared guy.

This character, the red guy, has n o w popped into thereaders imagination. He is a fullblown person, with hopesand dreams, just like the reader. Especially if the reader is ared guy. Now you might w a n t to give the character a trait.You can inform the reader of the character trait in one of t w oways. First, simply say what that trait isfor example, butthis red guy was different from most red guys, this red guyliked frapps. The other is rooted in actionhave the redguy walk up to abar and order afrapp, asin:

Whatll you have, red guy?Ill have afrapp.

Once you have mastered these t w o concepts, vividcharacter writing combined with adjectives, you are on yourway to becoming the n e x t Shakespeares brother. And dontforget to copyright any ideas you have that might beoriginal.You dont w a n t to be caught standing by helplessly while

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your familiar red guy steps up to abar in afrapp c o mm e r cial.

WritingDialogue

Many very fine writers are intimidated when they have towrite the way people really talk. Actually it's quite easy. Simvply lower your IQ by fifty and start typing!

Subject Matter

Because topics are in such short supply, I have providedafewfor writers who may be suffering in the darker climes. Filesome of these away, and look through them during the suicidal winter months:

Naked Belligerent Panties:This isagood sexy titlewith a lot of promise.

How about a diet book that suggests your free radicals don't enter ketosis unless your insulin levels have beencarbovcharged.7

Something about how waves at the beach just keepcoming and coming and how amazing it is (I smell a bestseller here).

Visions of Melancholy from aFast-MovingTrain":Some foreign writer is right now rushing to his keyboard,ready to pound on it like Horowitz. However, this title is aphony string of words with no meaning and would send yourpoor book to the Artsy section of Barnes and Noble,

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whereguess what i t would languish, be remaindered, anddie.

A Word to Avoid

Dagnabbit will never get you anywhere with the BookerPrize people. Lose it.

Getting Published

1have t w o observations about publishers:

I. Nowadays, they can be either male or female.2. They love to be referred to by the appropriate

pronoun. If your publisher is male, refer to him ashe. If your publisher is female, she isconsidered more correct. Once you haveestablished arapport, Babe is also acceptablefor either sex.

Once you have determined your pronoun usage, youare ready to schmooze your publisher. Lets say your favorvite author is Dante. Call Dantes publisher and say youd liketo invite them both to lunch. If the assistant says somethinglike But Dantes dead, be sympathetic and say, Please a c ;cept mycondolences. Once at lunch, remember never to bemoody. Publishers like up, happy writers, although its impressive to suddenly sweep your arm slowly across the lunch

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table, dumping all the plates and food on t o the floor, whileshouting Sic Semper Tyrannis!

A Demonstrationof Actual Writing

Itseasy to talk about writing and even easier to do it.Watch:

Call meIshmael. It was cold, very cold, here in themountain t own of Kilimanjaroville. I could hear abell. It was tolling. I knew exactly for who it wastolling, too. It was tolling for me, IshmaelTwist,o ared guy who likes frapp. [Authors no te : I amnowstuck. I walk over to a rose and look into its heart.]Thats right, lshmael Twist.

Finally, I cant overstress the importance of having apowerful closing sentence.