How I wrote 400 best sellers last year: Red Bull, A Scanner and Plagiarism
But Holden Caulfield wasn’t stranded on a desert island, trying to save the family plantation, before invading Russia to tilt at windmills?
When there is no difference between going slowly and going at all
Advice from those who have been to the mountain top of reading aloud in a bookstore to six slightly out-of-focus waning moons of person hood, abounds. There are books, workbooks, software, seminars, webinars, conferences, coaches, editors, writing groups and certain legacies of phrenology and electric shock therapy promising thou shalt not asphyxiate in that particular quicksand of desperation we call writing. And yea, verily, shall ye be actualized and lionized and siteth beside Ellen, blessed be she.
With space on the peak of that mountain coveted at sword point and never relinquished but to litigation, disgrace or demise, why would one conclude that the Ascended Ones would give you any advice worth taking that might reduce their competitive edge? Because their agents, publishers and retainers urge them to do so?
Ask yourself why we are told every story has an arc and six conflicts prior to a semi-denouement following which a penultimate labyrinthian codetta takes place, a single held breath from a variable degree of resolution.
Or, why, instead, every story is a variation of the hero’s journey where the protagonist runs a steeplechase of heightening obstacles, at first alone but soon with an impossibly good looking compatriot who, bored with the subsistence struggles of gorgeous, cannot wait to hideout in a motel AAA has given negative 2 1/2 stars.
But, wait, there are 32 exact and specific stops on that crazy road to prose. Each of these stations of the crossword must build suspense because, without suspense, a reader reaching the bottom of a page would not know what to do next. When in doubt you can rustle up an Enneagram or some such template of the profound, that so accurately describes people in inverse proportion to how well you actually know them.
The Path Forward
There are 45 master plots and 24 master characters. There are 161 back stories for characters who are virgins and 1 for those that are not. There are four facial expressions and body language is a hoax. Nobody whispers. Nobody listens. Nobody is good with names. Never have more than one character with the same color hair. There is only one genre: commodity. An Editor is a chicken plucker who wants you to think he’s a curator. People will do with some description, but never mention bad teeth. The folks who preach, don’t tell — show, told you that. If your book actually ‘shows’ there will be no reason for movie rights. Diffuse a cliche. Deform a cloche. Borrow not one word from French. Alliteration alienates. Omit needless words, only applies to expensively perfumed haiku. Make up a bunch of names and write your own blurbs. Apparently, my neighbor, Tommy is the only person alive who is not a New York Times Bestselling Author. If you insist on real blurbs, don’t bother with praise from writers whose work is even more obscure than yours. Please, if you don’t mention your education, no one can question it. It helps to feature a character who likes to repeat himself. If you must, have a beginning, a middle and an end but don’t be limited to sequence.
Writing prompts are the paregoric of creativity. Anything beyond a first draft is mythological. A second draft is the first draft of a different book. Get Annie Liebovitz to do the Book Jacket photo. That way you won’t have to have your boyfriend’s photo credit all over your face. It’s easier to write what you know about if you really don’t know all that much about it.
