Writes all the things. Most of the things never write back.
I admit: writing advice of “raise the stakes” has led me more than once to want to write this:
“He’d screwed up odd-even parking for the last time. When he found the ticket on his car windshield, he knew he had three days to clear himself, or it would mean the end of the universe, all life on Earth, and it would be impossible for him to keep his date with Cassie this Friday night.
It had taken him a LONG time to get that date.”
Country noir. Life, death, mysterious disappearances, and cows. I like that.
“I was a cow, so I’d seen the pigs come and go. You learned not to get too attached to them, or to the chickens. The chickens had a short attention span anyway, but it was hard to ignore the pigs.
Then, one day, the farmer disappeared. The truck came by to pick up the milk, and the driver discovered the chores hadn’t been done. He called the cops.
“Did you see anything?” they asked me. “Moo,” I said. I wish I could have told them more. The farmer was jake in my book.”
I now want to write about a poetry-manufacturing machine named Robot Frost.
#YouKnowYouAreAWriterWhen you’re watching a movie, and you hear a line, and you think, “No. THAT’S not the next line. THAT’S THE WRONG NEXT LINE.”
And you have a better next line. Heh.
(Shifting in your seat is almost never a good idea if you can help it. The tail gets in the way.)
I’ll give you the sole secret of short-story writing, and here it is: Rule 1. Write stories that please yourself. There is no rule 2. The technical points you can get from Bliss Perry. If you can’t write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.
— O. Henry
I’ve been seeing ads for a course for writers. The ad asks, “Ready to find the audience your writing deserves?”
I’m not sure I am. I’m afraid they’d turn out to be the detainees at Guantanamo, and that my writing was being read to them as punishment.
Camp PA: … that was a lovely song by Barney the Dinosaur. And next, ANOTHER story from Paul Baxter.
Detainees: NO! NO! STOP! WE’VE HAD ENOUGH.
Marry someone you love and who thinks you being a writer’s a good idea.
— Richard Ford
“The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If the stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other’s memory.”
Barry Lopez
The snowflakes have joined
Into big wet shaggy gangs
And splat to the ground.