A Writer's Lament

Okay.  I have to think of a good opening sentence for this little essay.  Good opening sentences are vital because they can make a reader want to read further or turn them off.  So I have to think of something that will grab a person and hold their attention.

But what if I have a great opening sentence and the rest of my essay is stupid?  I’ll have to take that chance.  I am not a stupid person.  At least, I’ve been told I’m intelligent, so I have to believe it.  So okay, my essay is not likely to turn out stupid.  Dullness is another thing.  My writing could be dull after I grabbed a person’s attention and made them read more than the opening sentence.  The poor reader will never forgive me for the boredom that ensues.  They will blame me for wasting time out of their life and for the disappointment that comes when my writing doesn’t meet their expectations.

What is a writer to do?  Writing an exciting piece that engages a reader all the way through requires work.  It takes thought, imagination, a good vocabulary, and other writing tools.  A humor writer even needs a good sense of humor, without which you can’t write anything funny.  This is a lot to ask of a person whose only desire is to put words on a computer screen and have people read them and like what they read.  But whoever said life was easy?

So here I am, trying to think of a way to open an essay that will, hopefully, turn out to be something that will give a reader some enjoyment.  If you are reading this, I hope you appreciate me.

Journal Entry for February 24, 2022

 

February 24, 2022

So here I am, sitting at my computer, typing what will probably turn out to be a journal entry.  I don’t know what this will turn out to be, and it probably won’t be a masterpiece, which is disappointing but not unexpected.

I am trying to cure myself of a very long period of writer’s block.  I don’t know if I have real writer’s block or I’m just being lazy and depressed.  If I manage to cut through it here, I’ll be happy.

I turned 76 two days ago.  This is frightening, and it means that I’ll be 80 years old in four years.  Where did my life go?  It didn’t take very long to get to be 76 years old.  Wasn’t it just yesterday when I was walking the campus of Eastern Washington State College, away from home for the first time in my life?  Didn’t I just write a cliché?  Oh well, I’m entitled to one cliché here.  Those are the rules, which I made up myself.

Well, I just managed to stray from the subject.  I am getting older, and this is scary.  My finances are not strong, and I am terrified of ending up old and poor.  My therapist suggested that I take some action now to see if I can apply for Medicaid and other forms of help for seniors.  That’s a good idea.  I think I will call the Riverdale Senior Services center and see if I can talk to the social worker there.

I was right.  This is NOT turning out to be a masterpiece.

Why do I care about having my writing be correct and polished the first time around?  The thing is to WRITE.  I can edit later if I want to.  In the meantime, most likely, nobody else will read this, so my reputation as a writer is safe.

It isn’t as if I haven’t accomplished anything in the last few days and weeks.  I put in an application for food stamps, complete with documentation.  I did my taxes (hooray!), and I will get a substantial refund from the federal government and a little one from the State of New York.  I am not missing any good television programs.  I brought an empty box downstairs for disposal.  I sang at a funeral on my birthday, two days ago.  March’s Corlear Gardens Newsletter is ready to go.  I’m still bored as hell, with time on my hands.

I will try to get out of the apartment for at least a little while today, and maybe that will help.

In the meantime, I can always sit and write.

 

The Ancient Deities Support Society and Dysfunctional Family Primal Therapy Group REDUX

I am in the process of writing a funny novel about a university professor and a group of ancient Greek gods and goddesses still living, now, in the 21^st Century.  I thought it would be nice to have some fun here with the premise that a bunch of REALLY old Greeks with magical powers are still living in the 21^st Century and fitting pretty well into modern society.

The Jolly Green Giant as Athena

The scene is a large room in a luxury penthouse in Manhattan, which appears to be made of nothing but windows and spare, modern furnishings.  The room is full of people, none of whom appear to be any older than about 25 – 30.  They are all drop-dead gorgeous, some more than others.  They are dressed in various styles, from designer clothes to jeans and sweats, depending on profession, personality and financial status.  They are sitting wherever they can find something to sit on.

A tall woman wearing a Dolce and Cabbana outfit is standing at one end of the room.  She is HERA, the wife of ZEUS.  She and ZEUS live in London and have become very British.  ZEUS is the founder and CEO of a multi-national, multi-layered corporation that produces airplanes, raincoats, umbrellas, waterproof boots, movies, videos, CDs and toys.  The room is part of ZEUS’s and HERA’s New York luxury condo.

HERA:  May I have everyone’s attention, please.

Everybody stops talking and looks at HERA.

HERA:  Thank you.  As you know, the first meeting of The Ancient Deities Support Society and Dysfunctional Family Primal Therapy Group ended rather abruptly when my dear daughter HEBE was grossly insulted by DIONYSUS, who is sitting over there.  HEBE suffered a breakdown and left to go across the street for a beer.  I am sad to say that she will not be here tonight.  She is resting in our country home in England.  I have bought a lovely and quite expensive card, which I have placed on the desk in the vestibule.  Please sign it and include your good wishes.  DIONYSUS, this includes you.

DIONYSUS:  What?  You talk-a to me?  (He has an Italian accent, having been living in Tuscany for a couple of thousand years.  He is bleary-eyed and a little bit sick looking.)

ARES:  That must have been a great party last night.

POSEIDON:  He saves a lot of money.  He never needs to hire wine tasters for his vineyards.

APOLLO:  He has wine in his bloodstream.  The only reason it doesn’t petrify him is because he keeps it flowing!

ARES, POSEIDON and APOLLO fall back laughing.  Everyone else, except HERA, smiles and giggles.

DIONYSUS:  Eh, stronsi!  Shut up!

HERA:  Stop it this instant!  All of you!

ATHENA:  Oh, HERA, don’t get your underwear in a knot!

ARTEMIS:  I don’t think she’s wearing any.  It makes panty lines.

APHRODITE:  I say always commando is best.  (Although she has been living in New York City for about 100 years, APHRODITE has never learned to speak English correctly, and she has a strong Greek accent.)

ATHENA:  Well, she always tries to command us, so she might as well go commando!

All the attendees are now laughing, not at the witticisms but at the look on HERA’s face.

HERA:  If you are finished, we shall continue with the meeting.  DIONYSUS, don’t you dare say a thing!

DIONYSUS:  Me?  I don’t say nothing!  Everybody else is-a talking!

HERA:  Well, just don’t!

DIONYSUS throws up his hands and shoulders in a gesture of frustration from having been blamed for something he hasn’t done this time.

APHRODITE (to DIONYSUS):  Ah, do not pay attention to her.  ARES and I, we know how to solve all problems.  You need a sexy girlfriend.

APHRODITE gets up and crosses to DIONYSUS.  She begins to massage his shoulders and neck.

ARES:  What are you doing?  Get over here!

APHRODITE:  ARES!  You are jealous!

She gets up, sashays over to ARES, sits in his lap and begins to stroke his head and bite his ear.

HERA:  Is this a support group or Sex in the City?  Everybody, shut up!

None of the attendees like being told to shut up.  The meeting dissolves into a verbal free-for-all, with everyone talking and arguing, all at once, including HERA.  Suddenly, there is a loud clap of thunder that shakes the walls and windows of the apartment.  Everyone is shocked into silence.  There is a two-second blackout.  When the lights come back on, a tall man with thick black hair and a well-trimmed beard is standing next to HERA.  It is ZEUS.

ZEUS:  What the bloody hell is going on here?

HERA:  I am trying to conduct a meeting and nobody is co-operating.

ZEUS:  Well, I told you it was a f***ing bad idea, but you insisted on going ahead with it.

HERA:  I expected civility, even from a room full of your bastard children.

ZEUS:  So we’re back on that topic now, are we?

HERA:  I shall retire to my room and lock my door.  If you need me, have the maid ring me on the intercom.

HERA strides from the room with a look of supreme injured dignity, giving ZEUS a backhand slap on his back as she passes him.

ZEUS (grabbing his back -- to himself and to everyone in the room):  Ow!  She’s exciting when she gets like this!

ZEUS exits the room in the direction HERA has taken.  POSEIDON, HADES, HESTIA and DEMETER giggle to themselves.  APHRODITE smiles.  Everyone else has the look of children who have just walked in on their parents having sex.

ATHENA:  That went well!

POSEIDON:  We all need a drink after that.  Come on, everyone.  I’m buying.

They all get up, grab their coats, purses, laptops and whatever else they brought in with them and get out of there as fast as they can.

Dionysus (a/k/a Bacchus) With Grapes on His Head

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For more of my humor, go here.

Reading for Writers

Cute Cat Picture.  Cats can't read.

There are two things that budding writers hear all the time: (1) Write what you know;* and (2) You have to do a lot of reading.  To most of us, reading is enjoyable.  There are, however, ways to make reading even more fun than it already is.  Here are some suggestions.

1.    Start a drinking game:  one swallow of beer for every cliché you come across.  It is considered cheating if you are unsure if a phrase or sentence is a cliché or not and you take a swallow, anyway, without looking it up.  You have to raise your glass or the bottle/can of beer and shout, “Shame!” before you take a sip.

 
2.       Make a list of every cliché that causes you to take a sip of beer.  When your list is long enough, write a short story or a novella, incorporating every one of those clichés.  See if you can get it published – under a pseudonym, of course.  You don’t want to be blamed for that one.
 
3.       Put 50 cents into a jar every time you read the latest bestselling novel before you start reading the work of your unknown author friends.  When the jar is full, use the funds to throw a party.
 
4.       Get up and do a victory dance whenever you come across something that you KNOW you could have written better.
 
5.       Count the number of old “New Yorker” magazines on your bookshelves in which you have been reading nothing but “Shouts and Murmurs,” and the cartoons, with the intention of reading the Fiction sections someday.
 
6.       Challenge yourself to read a book that has been turned into a popular movie without automatically picturing the stars of the movie in their respective parts. 
 
7.       Read a book that has been turned into a movie that you have seen, and eat a cookie every time you want to say, “The movie was better” or “That wasn’t in the movie.”
 
8.       Go around talking like one of the characters in a book you are reading and watch the looks that people give you.  Give yourself extra points if people step away from you.
 

9.       Go through all the books in your house.  Classify them into (A) Real Literature - Boring, (B) Real Literature – Fun, (C) Trashy Airplane Reading, and (D) Toss.  Donate the “Toss” books to your local thrift shop or church flea market.  Marvel at how neat your bookcases look and how much space you now have on them.  Buy new books to fill up the space (and maybe some nice knickknacks or real-looking silk plants, or whatever).
 
10.   Make up new lyrics to a familiar song using nothing but the names of famous authors.  Example:  To the tune of “I’m a Little Teapot,” sing “Stephen King Jane Austen Danielle Steele, Shakespeare Dan Brown George Eliot ….”
 
11.   Reward yourself with chocolate every time you are able to sit in a recliner chair and read anything without falling asleep.

If anyone has any other suggestions, please feel free to post them in the Comments section below.

 

Writer Reading

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*This is either good advice or a crock of shit, depending on the situation.

For more of my humor, go to Humor Outcasts.

Writing a Perfect Funny Piece if You Are a Slow Writer with ADD

Writers are ALWAYS publishing essays, and even books, about how to write.  I’m not going to do that – well, at least not this time.  I don’t know what I might do tomorrow, let alone a year or two from now.

Instead, I would like to share with you my own personal habits when writing a short piece, such as a humor essay or a short-short story.  I am not about to advise anyone else to do things this way.  You see, I am not what you would call a naturally prolific writer.  I write the same way I read – slowly.  And oh yes, I have a mild case of Attention Deficit Disorder, in addition to genetically inherited long-term low-grade Depression.  These things make trying to do anything complicated even more complicated, if you know what I mean.  So please don’t use me as a literary role model.

This is what usually happens with me when I’m trying to write a short piece, in more or less this order.  By the way, I love to exaggerate when I write humor.  Just saying.

My Ideal Reader

Get a good idea

Decide the idea is stupid.  Try to think of another idea.

Go out for a walk and pay attention to everything around you, hoping something interesting will happen and that it will be something you can write about.

Surf the Internet for ideas.

Give up for now, sit down, put your feet up on an ottoman and close your eyes.

A brilliant idea pops into your head.

Spend the next hour thinking of ways to make that idea really funny, while watching TV at the same time.

The next day, think about it again several times and come up with more funny stuff.

Sit down at the computer.  Start to write.  After a few paragraphs, stop and think up a title.  Try a few titles.  Find one that would attract YOU if you were a reader.  Use it.

Write some more.

Read what you have written.  Yuck!  It’s awful.  So is the title, which you immediately scrap, even though you have saved the piece on your computer under that title.

Do some severe cutting, pasting, adding and editing.  Take a couple of hours to do this, even though the piece is only supposed to be about 500 words long.  Make up a new, much funnier title.

Get tired of doing this.  Save your work and set it aside.

The next day, read it again.  It’s better than it was, but still not the Thurber Prize material you hoped for.

Do some more cutting, pasting, adding and editing.

Read it again.  Decide that’s as good as it’s going to get.

Look in the ever growing stash of stock photos on your portable hard drive.  Choose one that more or less illustrates the masterpiece you have just written, or that at least would be a funny addition.

Post your masterpiece, with the illustration, online.  Post links on Facebook, Twitter and every other place you can think of, and hope you get some readers.  If anyone likes your work, feel flattered.  If it doesn’t get much attention, threaten your computer with a fist, mutter a few words your mother never taught you and eat two double-chocolate muffins.

8 Things I Will Not Do Today

1    I will not poke fun of Donald Trump.  It’s too easy to poke fun of a vain, vulgar, stupid, racist narcissist whose mental and emotional development probably ended in the fifth grade and who has all the physical attractiveness of a slug.  When it’s too easy, it isn’t fun.  Besides, he isn’t funny.  He’s America’s worst nightmare.

Worse than this one!  (I think that's him on the right.)

2.     I will not complain about having Writer’s Block.  I’m sitting down right now and I’m writing.  Words are coming out of my head and onto my computer.  Therefore, I will shut up and write something and stop whining.

3.     I will not sell my apartment and move to the farthest reaches of Outer Mongolia.  Donald Trump has not yet been elected President.  (Sorry.  I couldn’t pass that one up.)

4.     I will not go ice skating.  It isn’t that I don’t think it would be fun.  I think it would be great fun.  I just can’t ice skate.  That’s pretty important if you plan to go ice skating.

5.      I won’t win a Pulitzer Prize for my fiction.  I’ll wait a couple of years for that one.  I have to write a novel first.[*]

6.     I will not walk to Boston.  I will walk to the supermarket and back.  That’s all.  The only reason I will walk to the supermarket is that I live in New York City, where almost everybody walks because operating a car in this city is like trying to steer an ice cube through a glacier.

7.     I will not do my laundry.  I haven’t done it for a couple of weeks.  Why should today be different?

8.     I will not make Donald Trump jokes … OOPS!  I already said that.  Sorry.

Kathy Minicozzi is the author of Opera for People Who Don't Like It, available on Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

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[*] And it has to be a good one.  That might be a problem.

So Write, Already!

For most of the past week, I have been stuck at home, courtesy of a big arthritis flare-up in my right knee that turned me into a temporary cripple.  A great chance to sit down and write, right?

It would be if I knew what to write about and how to write it.  But I don’t.  I have a disease called Writer’s Block.  It attacks the brain cells.  The patient becomes terminally bored with every single possible topic and unable to come up with an opening sentence.  As the disease progresses, the brain becomes more and more paralyzed, until all the patient can do is try to hold a ballpoint pen with his nose and toss crumpled paper at the cat.

Two Writers

The only thing I have written all week is this thing..

Words come and go, in no particular order.  Amanuensis.  I haven’t thought of that word in months!  Serial.  Horticulture. Hairy.  Hairy horticulture.  Meravigliosa.  Voleva una vita meravigliosa!  Sheeeeesh!  I can put together a halfway decent opening sentence in Italian, but not in English!  What’s wrong with me?

I need a subject.  What do they always say?  “Write what you know.”  I can’t do that.  My life is boring, even to me, and I’m the one living it.

I could make stuff up and write a fantasy.  I did that recently, and got more hits on that short-short story than on any of my others.  On the other hand, that story wasn’t completely made up, because I was envisioning my own apartment, I made myself the narrator and I used an old legend that I had already read about.  In other words, I took elements of my life and exaggerated them to the point where they were unrecognizable as anything human.  If I keep doing that, people will think I’m batshit crazy.

Actually, I am batshit crazy.  That’s why I became a writer.  It shouldn’t matter if people think I am batshit crazy when I AM batshit crazy, because something like that is bound to show, anyway, right?

I know.  I’ll write something about what it’s like to have Writer’s Block!

Problem solved.