I'm told I have an active mind, and that I'm a fairly good writer, and I'm flattered by both those compliments. I like to think we never stop learning, so having an active living brain and some facility with words are both fun and useful.
Stephen King is famous not only for his writing, but more recently for a list of some twenty two tips for aspiring writers, the first of which says "Write for yourself, and worry about your audience later." Tell yourself a story, and make it interesting enough so others enjoy it with you.
I don't have Stephen King's fame, fortune, or list, but I do love to write, and for me what works is to simply do it. "Practice makes perfect" applies to more than playing piano, and we learn by doing. When I'm writing, I have a dictionary nearby, and these days the other computer for research, if needed. I'm not as impressed by lists of helpful hints as I am by others who are eyeball-grabbing writers. And it's not what you've got, but how you use it. It's not so much science as art, and entertainment certainly is part of it. If I put you to sleep, I've failed miserably.
Moving along here, I'm standing at the window today, admiring the nearby high rent district, with its fake show of enthusiasm for the Christmas season and things unseen, like the shopkeeper's Swiss bank account, and thinking, "Hey! I'm all alone here, delightfully unencumbered by fawning friends or nagging relatives! I could leave for points unknown or The Great Beyond any old time, and if I disappeared in a cloud of purple smoke in the next thirty seconds, the vast faceless masses out there would never know I'd even been here. Isn't it great, not being a King, nor a President, nor a two-faced lying politician? There's definitely something to be said for being a nearly-invisible double distilled genuine original Nobody!" And all I want for Christmas is the second of January! I got it last year, and it was wonderful - all that orgy of greed and bullshit being a whole year in the future, and real Peace returning to the valley. Wow! Am I the luckiest kid in this half of the galaxy, or what?
"Practice makes perfect" applies to more than playing piano, and we learn by doing.
ReplyDeleteHave you been following my blog on my writing class? I think it takes more than practice. You can practice swinging at a baseball all day long. That doesn't mean you're going to hit it.
its fake show of enthusiasm for the Christmas season and things unseen
It didn't used to be this way Ray. I'm not sure what happened, other than commercialism and greed. Of course they only paid a minor part though...
I can feel the cynicism and Christmas cheer coming my way again..
And no, I'm still not a robot.
Perhaps I insufficiently explained myself in my haste to write something 'cute'... Prectice does make perfect, but only if you study like hell while you're doing it....
ReplyDeleteThat "fake show of enthusiasm" remark was prompted by a look out my north window here, towards Snob Hill, where our resident billionaire lights his whole property like the Second Coming, with an obscenely large version of the Star of Bethlehem above his nearly-block-long abode, the rest of which is illuminated with rows of red lights, reminiscent of Madame Lazonga's Social Club for oversexed and underloved males.
Commercialism, greed and cynicism? Let's hark back to the good old days of the Roman Saturnalia, the original Winter Solstice orgy of drinking and sex for ten days or so around the shortest day and longest night of the year..... The Christians were being persecuted back then, when the dying embers of Isis, Osiris, and Horus still ruled religion instead of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, and so these Christ-ians decided to quietly hold their own celebrations under cover of that louder and wilder event at the Winter Solstice, in hopes of it going unnoticed by the their Roman persecutors. And evidently it worked.
And now we're back to that Roman Orgy Theme... Isn't progress wonderful? Will the real Christ please stand up? We desperately need you!!! It's time to throw the money-lenders out of the Temple once again. And this time, post a guard at the door!