Rasmenia

“They’re fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don’t listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.” –Lillian Hellman

Know when to tune out, if you listen to too much advice you may wind up making other peoples mistakes.  –Ann Landers

“I always advise people never to give advice.” –P.G. Wodehouse

*

I have a lot of pet peeves. Probably more than a reasonable amount. It’s a rare thing when I can watch TV, leave the house, or hop on the Internet without bitching, mocking, making fun of or simply pointing out something that I find annoying or idiotic. (Unless you’re reading this blog for the very first time, you already know this.)

Often, what I have to do is, I have to stop paying attention to whatever it is that bugs the shit out of me. I must ignore it completely. This isn’t always possible. Try ignoring the human race. It’s tough. Betcha can’t do it for very long. (I’ve tried. People start calling & coming to your house in a panic because they think you’re dead. It’s more irritating than just tolerating them.)

What I have to do then to maintain my serenity levels is, I have to filter out the bullshit to the best of my ability. I’m sure everyone does this to some extent. For me, this is especially true with the Internet because as we all know, the Internet is a never ending flood of bullshit.

However, I’ve been spending more time offline lately. Not having an Internet connection for 6 months sort of weaned me from the world wide teat. I check my mail, I make a few snide comments on Facebook or Twitter, like or retweet some shit, then I go about my day. Every now & then, I’ll get some free time & will spend it surfing around or reading a few articles online. Because I’m connected to several writerly type people & websites, I encounter a shit-ton of writer noise. Some of it is very good, very helpful & very interesting. Some of it is just utter crap.

Especially all of the fucking writing advice.

Advice is helpful. If I do not know how to do a thing, I’ll ask a more experienced person – or someone with a different skill set than I possess – how I should go about doing that thing. I will solicit them for advice. If I want to make my writing better — which I always want to do — I will seek out ways to do this.

So far, the ways I have found to do this are by writing… then writing some more & showing it to the members of my writing workshop. (A writing group works for me. It does not work for everyone. That’s okay.) Then I read books… followed by reading more books, then by writing more stuff.

I will seek out advice in one form or another. When I read a book that just blows the top of my fucking head off with its literary awesomeness, I’ll go out of my way to learn more about the author & their writing process.

I’ll read the occasional book, essay or article on craft. I almost always learn something new by reading these. The only catch is: all of this “advice” should come from a writer who has some serious writing chops. A super word-wrangling champ. If this “advice” is coming from someone other than an author I’ve already read & am familiar with, I want to see the proof in their pudding. Their writing advice essay (or blog post or whatever) should be written well enough to reflect that they know what they’re talking about. I don’t want to read some shit parroting some over-used bits of writer wisdom that we’ve all seen hundreds of times. I want to know what they’ve written. I want to know where their work has been published, whether it’s an essay or short story, or a novel.

Otherwise, I’m outta there. I’ll leave their blog or website, never to return again.

There I go. Down the dark, dusty halls of the Internet.

There is a lot of really bad writing advice out there. There’s a lot of advice that tells you that you can’t. Such as, “you can’t edit as you write”. Bullshit. You can if it works for you. Why not?  Some advice tells you that you must. As in, “you must use an outline”. Please. Good books get written with & without outlines. Stuff your can’ts & musts. These are never good, in any situation. Especially anything that tells you that you can’t. Fuck can’t.

I want more than a blog from someone who just decided to open up a Blogger account & call themselves a writer. I want to see some kind of writer cred. It does not have to be great big massive bestseller writer cred. It can be a wee small mostly unknown indie cred. But for fuck’s sake – it’s gotta be something other than the tired old clichés on writing barfed out on a blog post by an “aspiring writer” who wants to talk about writing more than they want to actually write.

Show, don’t tell. Classic writer’s advice. (How’s that for parroting some shit?) Show me, don’t tell me that you’re a writer. Show me how you’re applying your own advice into your own writing. Advise me by example.

It’s not only the bad, over-used advice from “aspiring writers” with blogs who like to talk about writing & being a writer. Although, yes, I do often find talk about being a writer & “the writer’s life” to just be some boring, romanticized shit.

There is also the fact that one person’s ridiculous & useless piece of writing advice is another person’s magical wand of genius inspiration. It works for one person & for another, it does not & may be scoffed at or made fun of. That’s just the way it is. Not everyone has the same writing philosophy.

What I’ve found is that most writing advice is useless.

What I’ve found is, the more you actually write, the more you can filter the useless dung from the genuine gems of word wizards.

What I’ve found is, it’s better to write than it is to talk about writing & that the teaching should be left to the teachers.

But, you shouldn’t take my word for it. I’m just another writer with a blog… & a lot of pet peeves.

If you have a little girl, don’t let her grow up to be a writer. You’ll only regret it.

Here’s what could happen: you could end up with a weirdo. A weirdo who sits alone in her room, scribbling in notebooks. A weirdo who you wish would try a little harder to be “normal”. But instead, you’ve got this strange little shit, sitting in her room, organizing these stacks of notebooks as if they actually meant something.

When her birthday rolls around, or Christmas, you hope that she’ll ask for one of those cute little fluffy whatever-the-hell those things are called because that’s what your friend’s daughter wants & they’re the same age, so… you hope. But, no. Your little freak asks for a typewriter.

Never mind that she doesn’t even know how to type. Whatever. You’ll buy her the damn thing and try not to stare at the awkward, hand-flying, key-banging style that she’s developing as she’s teaching herself to type.

Then you’ll notice she stopped reading those Choose Your Own Adventure books & started swiping your Stephen King books.

Appropriate reading for a 10 year-old? Yes. Yes it is.

You’ll wait for the phase to pass & as you wait, your weirdo is still collecting stacks of notebooks. She just sits on the corner of the couch, brooding & scribbling.

She takes a typing class at school, but continues to type countless pages of who knows what like a baboon having a seizure because it didn’t break her of that awkward style of typing she taught herself. Weirdo.

The worst part is, when she becomes an adult, it won’t stop. No, it only gets worse. She’ll write some more of her bullshit & broadcast it all over the Internet. She’ll write stories & they’ll show up in random places about how you’re a big fat fucking jerk for wanting her to not be such a weirdo & you will absolutely hate everything she writes, especially when there’s profanity or drugs or penises because you taught her better than that.

Why couldn’t she just want one of those cute little fluffy whatever-the-hell those things are called?

What were those things called? Who cares. Normal little girls had them. Yours won’t.

Don’t let your little girl grow up to be a writer. Everything she writes will only be another testament to your failure as a parent.

This could happen to you.

If you think it’ll be okay to get involved with some weirdo woman writer, think again.

Sure, she’ll seem smart enough at first. She’ll probably be pretty entertaining, too. But, trust me… no good can come from this.

It won’t matter how nice you are. It won’t matter how many selfless things you do. After it all falls apart – & it will fall apart – she’ll go from weirdo mode into full-blast, drunken-psycho-wreck mode.

She’ll take fragments of you & weave them into every horrible, despicable, rotten, rodent-faced fictional character that she makes up. She’ll tell everyone how you got so drunk that you licked spilled spaghetti sauce off of the kitchen floor with the dog. Everyone both of you know will find out about the time she caught you picking your nose, flicking it across the room & all of the other disgusting habits you let her see.

They’ll all get to read about all the stupid things you did, that you didn’t mean to do.

They’ll learn about all of the cruel things you said, that you really felt bad about later on.

Whatever you trusted her with, once it’s over, forget it. The weirdo had tucked it away & will use it all as writing fodder for the rest of her life.

But, not all of it. She won’t write anything about the time you showed up with a bottle of her favorite whiskey when she got fired from her job. She won’t mention the time you knocked on her door & surprised her with dinner while wearing a penguin costume.

She won’t say anything positive about you. She won’t write about anything good from your time with her because she’s a total mess who doesn’t find those happy things to be as meaningful. It’s really how bad you made her feel that’s worth remembering & writing about.

And it’s because, well fuck you because you should’ve known better than to get involved with some crazy writer.

If this happens to you, if you decide to ignore my warning, then try not to take it personally. This weirdo, this cannibalistic freak, she’s observing you, feeding off of you & everyone else she comes into contact with because that’s what she’s always done & there’s a stack of notebooks tucked away in her basement that she’s been accumulating for years & years to prove it.

Countless things you did. They're in here... somewhere.

So, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Then again, maybe you’re smart enough to know that being a weirdo isn’t a bad thing.

“What is a teacher? I’ll tell you: it isn’t someone who teaches something, but someone who inspires the student to give of her best in order to discover what she already knows.” -Paulo Coelho

“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” -Albert Einstein

*

I sat perfectly still in my seat at the back of the classroom, listening carefully as our teacher, Mr. O’Donnell, gave us our assignment: write a one-page essay explaining what you would do with only one day left to live.

There, at my desk in the far back corner, next to the little sink & the pencil sharpener, in front of the poster of Prince & the Revolution, I tried to contain my giddiness.  Sure, I had written boring essays for school before.  I had written some stories, too… but no one had ever seen any of those.

Hip, young teacher + 1985 = this hanging in the classroom

“That’s not all,” Mr. O’Donnell said from the front of the room.  “After everyone’s handed in their paper, you’ll come up here & read your story to the class.”

That last bit reigned my giddiness in pretty quick, but I was still excited.

I went home & wrote all about what I would do with my last day on the planet, where I would go & who I would spend it with.

A few days later, I sat in my little desk as my fellow 6th graders approached the front of the room & read their stories, one by one.  Some of them were sad.  Others were boring.  But, when one kid read his hilarious account of trying to commit suicide with a butter knife, I began to feel a little intimidated & a little bummed out that I wasn’t funny.

Then… it was my turn.  I stood in front of everyone & told them how I would fly to Venice, Italy & float alone on a Gondola, reflecting on my life while taking in every detail of the city.  To my surprise, Mr. O’Donnell stopped me every so often, saying things like, “Wow!  What a great line!”, or “Nice phrase!  Sorry, sorry… go on.”

Later, when Mr. O’Donnell returned my essay to me with the big red “A” scribbled across the top, he leaned down on my little desk, looked me right in the eye & said, “You really should think about being a writer, you know.”

Well… I did know, but until that moment, didn’t have anyone else who knew.  I had asked my mother a few months before if I could take a writing class at a local learning center, but was told that it would be a waste of money, as I had no special writing ability.

A couple of months later, it was time for 6th grade graduation, with the big award ceremony in the tiny gymnasium/cafeteria.  I expected nothing as I watched the other kids walking up to meet Mr. O’Donnell as he handed them certificates for perfect attendance & good grades.  I got sick a few times.  My grades were average.  I was just waiting for it to be over.

I was caught completely by surprise when I was called up to accept an award.  I felt special when, from his place at the podium, Mr. O’Donnell said that I was the only person to receive it.  He handed me the certificate with the little blue ribbon stapled to it.  I looked down & read it: demonstrated writing ability.

Artifact from pre-Rasmenian Era, c.1985

The years rolled on.  Somehow, I went from being that dorky 11 year-old kid & became a juvenile delinquent, writing bad poetry, smoking pot & reading Kerouac, taking LSD & listening to The Doors in between arrests & trips to jail or rehab.  From time to time, I’d take out that yellow paper with the blue ribbon stapled to it.  Things were bad, but I was going to be a writer.

Luckily, that was a phase – aside from the Kerouac & The Doors, of course, because they are permanently with me. As I became a mess of an angry, blue collar 20-something, I was writing.  Insecure about it, to be sure, but I was writing.  Was any of it good?  Not really.  At least, not by my current standards.  But, the desire – the need – to write was still there.  And I still had this piece of paper reminding me that I could.

There were long periods when I wrote nothing.  Eventually, I would open a drawer & looking up at me, reminding me that I should have been writing something – anything – was that yellow paper.  Echoing in my head, faintly, I would hear Mr. O’Donnell’s voice telling me again, “You really should think about being a writer, you know.”

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a couple of months, now & just hadn’t gotten around to it for one reason or another.  However, now turned out to be the perfect time.  I’ve had a couple of small publishing successes recently.  One of my stories is scheduled for publication in the latest issue of the literary journal, The Legendary.  Another one is scheduled for publication in Big Pulp in November.

Artistic validation is valuable.  It’s satisfying & is an excellent excuse to drink a lot of champagne.  Having someone read your words is even more valuable, more satisfying & is an even better excuse to drink champagne.

But… sitting here at the desk in my writing space, next to me is this piece of yellow paper that has lived among my most prized possessions for the last 25 years.  The blue ribbon is still stapled to it.  The ink has faded slightly & maybe the paper has gotten a little more yellow than it once was.

It still has just as much power as it did when Mr. O’Donnell handed it to that skinny little kid in the gymnasium.  No… that’s not true.  Its power has definitely grown.  This piece of paper helped to keep me writing & provided me with tangible proof that someone believed in my ability to do something.  All it took was for one person to believe in me.  Later, I eventually believed in myself.  Ok, it was a long while later because I’m fucking slow.  Shut up.

Regardless of how much – or how little – success I have as a writer, it doesn’t matter.  Well, it does… but only to a certain point.  Nothing I get from writing is going to be any cooler than this yellow piece of paper.

But, the more excuses to drink champagne I have, the better.