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

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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.

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.”
- T.S. Eliot

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The year of 2010 just didn’t go according to plan.

Then again, looking back, I can’t recall a single year of my life yet that has.  That’d just be spooky & weird if nothing unexpected happened.  Not to mention boring, eh?

For the two residents of the Rasmenian Nation, the year of 2010 began with chaos, anger & the frustration of international & cross country travel in the dead of winter.  Indeed, our last days of 2009 & first few days of 2010 were spent engaged in family squabbles, re-routed Greyhound buses & bumming around airports.  Oh… & I was fucking sick, choking on & snorting my own phlegm, which is just as sexy as it sounds.

But, we summoned every bit of patience we had & made our way There & Back Again.

So, we eventually made our way back home, back to land of baguettes & stinky cheese.  Things began to calm down, but I found myself dealing with the pissing & moaning of the occasional reader whose delicate sensibilities cause their rectum to tighten up & cause pain at any mention of the word “fuck”.  I don’t fucking get what the fuck that is all about, but in February, I found myself touting the benefits of the F-Bomb & taking Pride in my Profanity.

In March, we went Storming the Beaches of Normandy, taking a somber yet enlightening look at some of the WWII memorials & the Mémorial de Caen.

In April, we took a brief tour of the Mont Saint Michel & because it was absolutely necessary, I called Bullshit on Your Writer’s Block & no, I still don’t believe it exists.

In May, while Olivier & I were actually enduring some chaos from outside forces & that annoying thing people refer to as “real life”, there was still plenty of good shit happening – the number of rejection letters I was receiving was beginning to decrease, while the acceptances were increasing.  I owed a great deal of that to a teacher of mine from elementary school, so I decided to tell you all about how Mr. O’Donnell & the Old Yellow Paper helped to make a goofy little kid into a grown-up writer.

Okay, maybe "goofy, grown-up writer" would be more accurate.

As it does every year, June eventually came along & that’s when I went off on my tangent about how a couple of years spent living in Paris helped me to become a bit of germaphobe.

I got pissed off in July.  Right around the 4th of July, I saw a few Americans who were ignorant enough to mistake xenophobia & French bashing for patriotism.  Of course, this started me off on a lengthy & colorful rant directed at the French Bashers & their exposed ignorance.

The month of August is a time to slow down.  The entire country of France relaxes, most people are off on vacations & I was no exception.  But I did get to thinking about the real & surreal aspects of Paris.

September took a bit of a somber turn, but it was necessary.  It was time to purge all of the bullshit & bad times that had been smacking Olivier & me down.  It was time for me to vent a little bit about how 2010 wasn’t this fun & amazing year that we had planned it to be.  The year got off to a turbulent start, but it was the Cruel Summer that really knocked us down.

But staying down is for saps & cowards.  So we got back up & analyzed the Science of Dry Humping.

Then it was time for more ranting & finger pointing about my Misanthropic Expat Syndrome.

Before we knew it, it was December again.  As is now the custom, I was fucking sick, choking on & snorting my own phlegm.  Rather than making the big travel plans, hanging around airports & sleeping in bus stations, we stayed home in France.  Oh, & we finally published that book I’d been writing.

So… now what?

Even though the year of 2010 has been put behind all of us, its detritus still lingers.  I suppose that it will for quite some time to come.  While it’s fun to look back on some of it, I don’t want to dwell in it.  There are new stories to write, new books to get cracking on, new places to go, new things to make fun of & whole slew of pet peeves & bits of jackassery that I have yet to address.

If you’ve missed any fragments of the previous year, have fun going back & having a look.  If you’d rather read some of the fiction, then maybe you’d prefer to check out the book.

Otherwise, stick around. Even though the chances of my plans for 2011 going awry are rather high, I still plan on posting here with a bit more frequency.  No, not every single day, because… well, fuck that.  Seriously.

I’m sure that in many ways, this year will be much like last year – some of it will be good & some of it will be a bitch.  There will be the expected & the unexpected; more of the same & a bit of the new.  But the stories we’ll tell & look back on at the end of it all will be different…  those bits of detritus that stick to us that we’ll carry with us into the next one.  The real fun is in gathering those bits up.

Giddy-Up.

“I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.” -Albert Einstein

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Ok, here’s the thing about me & blog tags: I usually ignore them.  On the rare occasion that another blogger writes a post about something & then “tags” me to tackle the same topic, my normal response is to read it, possibly comment on it & then go about with my daily scowling & mocking.

However, I have been known to play along when the topic is interesting enough, if I think that I might be able to have fun with it, the planets are in the proper alignment… & it also helps if I’m kind of drunk.

So it was that my friend Stephanie, on her blog, called me out when she wrote a rather cool post in the form of 3 letters – to her past, present & future selves.

So I said, “giddy up”.

The thing is, if I could go back in time & say something to that dumber, younger me, at which point in time do I have a chat with her?

Maybe I could go back to see her at age 7.  Then I could tell her:

“Don’t put that in your nose.  Yes, I’m serious.  I know it looks neat, but this will not end well.”

Right… perhaps that wasn’t such a crucial moment.  Might be better to visit her at age 12, right when that awkward, terrible insecure shit was starting.  Perhaps I would have been able to provide some sort of comfort.  I might have told her:  “I know it’s embarrassing… & I know that it’s unfair, but kids are shits & they’re cruel.  But, it isn’t going to stop anytime soon, so you’re going to have to suck it up.  Besides, you won’t mind being called “weirdo” later on.  In fact, I promise that you’ll be wearing it like a badge of honor very soon.

As for that other shit that they’re saying, you know it’s not true & when you’re me… well, let’s just say that when you’re me, people will be a little more careful about how they speak to you.

Oh, yeah… & there are those assholes now.  See that one?  Yeah, the one who threw that balloon filled with shaving cream at you.  Well, he’s going to try to hit on you at a party in a few years.  He’ll be drunk & well… you’ll see, but trust me – it’s pretty funny.  And the one standing next to him?  He’ll be dead soon.  And the one over there?  Well, he gets it the worst.  That one, he’s average.”

Ah… fuck it.  Here’s a pen.  Grab that paper over there.  Write it down.”

Then again, what I know now might be a bit more useful to that juvenile delinquent, 16 year-old me…

“Here’s the thing about jail cells, rehabs & whatnot: you’re not going to be spending much more time in them after a while.  Really, it’s not your fault that you keep ending up in situations like this.  You’ll rise above it.  I wish I could tell you how – I really do, but see… it’s complicated & you probably shouldn’t know too much right now.  Something about stepping on butterfly wings – anyway, I think you’re better off not knowing too much.

Well… except that you’re stupid, but you’ll get smarter.  What?  Yeah, fuck you, too.  Anyway, it’s too bad that they don’t let you have a pen & paper in here.  At least you have plenty of books to read.  Steinbeck.  Nice.  Good choice.”

Maybe it’d be easier to have a sit down with me at 19…

“Ok… so, it seems that you’re still a bit of a mess.  But, you’re getting smarter.  That’s a good thing.  Wow… look at that.  I’ve had the scar for so long that I had forgotten what the wound looked like when it was new.

Well… it’s not so bad.  I mean, it’s hell now, I know… but, wounds heal & scars are important.  You’ll be freaked out about knives for… well, at least the next 20 years or so, but you’ll be like the phoenix, rising from ashes & all that triumphant shit.  Actually, you’re going to get really good at that.  Trust me on this one.

I’d almost forgotten how hard it is to be you.  It gets easier & I wish I could help you with all of this, but… I’m afraid that I can’t.  I can’t rescue you, or provide warnings & sage advice.  See, I kind of need you to suffer through this.  It sounds selfish, sure.  But, the thing is, your suffering makes me what I am & well… I’m just not willing to change that.  But, you know this already… don’t you?”

Ah, fuck it.  Younger me never listened to anyone, anyway.  I could just fast forward in time to present me, but that would just turn into a lecture on why she shouldn’t have eaten an entire Domino’s pizza for lunch because now I’m suffering for it.

That really leaves me with only future me & all I can really say to her is, “I can’t believe that you’ve managed to put up with us for all this time.

Oh… & please don’t put that in your nose.  This never ends well.”

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