How to Write in 125,000 Easy Steps!

Yes, it's true, and I should know; nobody never wrote a book on "How to Write Creatively" that ever did anybody a damn bit of good. Never. I'm sorry of your aunt found out you were a beginning writer and bought you Become the Next Hemingway Overnight for your Bah Mitzvah, Birthday, or Getting out of Rehab party, or whatever, but it ain't gonaa do you no good, as they say at Oxford.

There is a secret to writing, though, and none of the money grubbing bastards who write those "How to Write" books will ever tell you. Some of them are bitter. Some are, perhaps, deranged. But they are all wrong. If there is a "secret" to writing, it is this: there is no 'secret.'

Writing is a lonely task. It is a sometimes painful and irritating undertaking. No one wants to hear about what you are writing, except perhaps other writers, for validation. And if you know other real writers, you are lucky.

The only way to write is to sit down and do it. Cut the bullshit, and sit down and do it. If you have an idea worth a shit, get after writing it down. As Tom Waits sings, you gotta get behind the mule. Equip yourself with a thesaurus, a dictionary, and maybe some strong coffee (or, hey, bourbon, if that's you thing.)
and write.

That's the only way I know how to do it. If you have discovered another way, write it on a fifty dollar bill and mail it to me. But you haven't. Luck to you all. And keep writing. Don't let some dead-end asshole who thinks he's a writer and never writes anything fill you full of bullshit. Put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, and let your muse speak to you.

Strange Days

"Pas le moindre envol

Ma vie barque abandonnée

Sur la rive sombre" (Philippe Quinta)

While a sense of foreboding from events near and far pervades, still chances present themselves. A friend at work, who hails from Seattle, has hooked me up with another lierary magazine, after he read some of my poems. This is getting weird...I never intended to become known as a poet; but I'll take it, of course. I submitted four pieces. Update on acceptance/rejection later...hopefully the former, not the latter...but one never knows. Ah, but as they say, essai, essai, encore....

It's a Cold Hard World/Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin

Yeah it's been a couple of dog-eat-dog type of years. Here it is February of 2007, and all those days of the future I wondered about as a kid back inthe 1970s have, alas, come and gone. I know that there's still hope out there somewhere; I still see a spark in some, even now.

With a certain sense of ambivalence I have tried to make logic apply to all the events that have led up to my being where I am, at this moment in time. Of course, I know that this is folly; logic doesn't not, cannot be applied, to life.

I had to postpone my Mobile trip for a couple fo weeks, but that's OK, as it will be warmer when I do, eventually, go down. Winter is no season to be caught old in. Somehow or the other, that dashing young man about town that once I was, has survived four trying decades. I hope that I am a bit wiser for having done; and, sad to say, but I think I have lost a step or two along the way, and many many other things besides. Ah, but not to digress; the business of life, as Jonson noted, is to go forward.

***

"Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin"

I think that the rest of the world is finally waking up to the Bush nightmare. Congress is trying to put forth a fight against more money and troops for the Bush meatgrinder in Iraq. Not that I'm proud of that bunch of second-rate humanity, who only react to public opinion after they have no choice. At last, we begin to hear mutterings that maybe the war in Iraq was illegal. MAYBE? Give me a break! Where was all this valorous talk when Bush sought a vote to go into Iraq...I wonder how many of these self-righteous morons voted in favor of this trumped-up resolution then...along with John Kerry and Hilary Clinton. I've said it before and I'll say it again: nothing like "hypocrite" writ large, O my readers and only friends.

In any case, my prediction is, muddle muddle, toil and trouble. Sanctimonious Democrats will sieze the elections in faraway November; the rotten to the core bastards of the GOP will be ousted, and the poor USA will continue down the road to becoming a second rate, friendless, bankrupt nation because the vast majority of its supersized, selfish, illiterate populace cannot be bothered to give a damn! I could be wrong, mind you. But my every day experience is filled with a barrage of evidence that the citizens of the USA are the most deluded and clueless people on the face of this earth.

Pseudo-events and hyper-reality take away every genuine sensation, and distance us from our priveged access to the truth and the real. Britney shaves her head, and it is reported by every network; the announcement that five other Arab nations will soon be starting nuclear programs goes unnoticed by these "journalists." We drink "Extreme Chillberry" drinks or chew "Wild Ice" flavored gum. These things do not exist, except in Marketing. Marketing and advertising fill our heads with jarring, repetative, and ultimately pointless images every day; we do not protest.

Corporations every day take a bit more of your privacy from you, your ability to choose from you, by offering you the illusion of choice. Every day, the most gullible and partisan of news services since Joseph Goebbels held sway report radically different versions of the same set of "facts." And underneath all that felgercarb, that empty preening, those hollow and utterly valueless assessments, lurks the hard, cold truth.

We have lost our moral base as a nation, because morality has always proceeded from a spiritual connection--a real, viable link with a divine presence, a reverential connection, a fullfilling one--and the loss of God has left the land empty of a sense of itself. The people cry out for a savior, and none appears, because they have rebuked Him and his institutions, his message and its purpose. And yet He is right beside them.

Every day we continue our moral slide, and our myopic would-be leaders do nothing, because they are perhaps the most lost of us all. This paradox has symptoms that manifest themselves in economic slowdown, currency devaluation, and rampant crime. Oh yes; and a pointless, self-involved rush to war. A little man one-ups his father; Bush beats Saddam where dad could not. For this self-aggrandizement, thousands have died, are dying, will go on dying. But it is time to call the prophet to the wall, and read the words there written: your Kingdom is divided, and cannot stand ; Lo, I say unto you, your houses are built upon the sand.

Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting; thy kingdom is divided, and cannot stand

--Daniel, 5:27

Poet By Rote

Well, now I am officially a published poet...in no less an august magazine than Modern Drunkard. I have joined ranks with Poe, Bukowski and Ferlinghetti...er, and maybe some other, rather more unsavory characters. I really fucking hope so. Hey, maybe I am a rather unsavory character, come to think of it. (Is there a yourrapsheet.com? internet entrepeneurs, awaken!)
Amyway. I can add "published poet" to my list of accomplishments; of course, there will be autographed copies to go around...I get a free t-shirt and one ish, and like $25 bucks, still though, it's so cool since my publisher is taking so long to come out with my first two books. Of course you will all get signed copies.

God is Great.

Laissez le Bon Temps Roullez

Soon, I will be taking a trip South, to one of my favorite places on earth, Mobile, to see one of my favorite people on earth, my dear friend Mike. Mike's the King of men in my book, a well-rounded person and all around capaple and smart guy. He has turned me on to oodles of coolness in the fifteen (!) years I have known him. I can't wait to see him and his ever-growing family in the city by the sea.