Nobody Cares About Your Grandmother
Bad news for young writers
I am the angry writing teacher. I’ve been reading stories for more than twenty years. About your grandmothers. And trust me…your grandmother wasn’t all that. I’m sorry she’s dead. Really sorry. But does that mean you need to inflict that mess on the rest of the class? What do we care that this was your first real experience of what it’s like to lose a loved one? Who ever said that writing was supposed to be about losing loved ones?
What is writing supposed to be about?
Not our dead grandmother.
That is what I have learned from my years of experience. And that is what I transmit here to you. You should write about absolutely anything except your dead grandparents.
You should write about paint drying.
That’s more interesting than hearing about a dead old person, trust me.
Or grass growing.
“There in my backyard, grows the grass.”
That is already more interesting than “My Grandma died boo hoo.”
You know why? I inverted the sentence, in kind of Yoda speak. Instead of the grass grows I did “grows the grass.” This is a neat trick. However, it does not work for grandparents:
“Died my grandmother.”
No, that’s just as dull as “My grandmother died.”
So there you have it. Lesson number one about writing. Good luck in your career.
