How to Write Anything Braless

When I’m asked on an application about my profession I always fill in writer/author/illustrator and Dazzle Queen of the Universe. No one ever comments. I’m not sure anyone reads anything these days, especially applications.  Even so, I still keep writing, because like it says on those applications I am a writer, and real writers write, regardless of what the universe is or is not reading. 

If I’m ever invited to discuss my creative process I know exactly the kind of advice I’m going to share with other budding wordsmiths.     

Ditch the Bra: Writing is a sedentary process, preformed while sitting in a chair or, in my case, while sitting in bed. Either way you’ll spend your day almost bent in half and will probably, at some point, slip into a much worse if not retched posture. And when the story really gets cooking you may wind up hunched over the keyboard like a deflated balloon. Save yourself time, pain, and distraction and take your bra off before it cuts you in half.    

 Weed the Garden: Typing is stressful and repetitive. Fingers get tired, stiff, and lumpy. Pulling weeds is a low cost exercise that strengthens typing fingers. It does not require special gym equipment or a personal trainer. Fresh, outside air will blow out all the pointless adverbs and metaphors and the weeding will build finger muscles. The corn will thank you. It’s a win-win. 

 Know Your Writing History: As far as I can tell the best place to write a book is in prison: there’s plenty of personal time, distractions are low, and the atmosphere is full of dramatic tension. Get arrested. Absolutely tons of books have been written in prison. If you behave, you may be allowed to work in the prison garden, pulling weeds. See above.     

Exercise Your Butt: While in prison do a lot of squats and dolphin kicks, otherwise your butt is going to spread and start to resemble the front seat of a minivan from all that sitting and writing. And it’s going to feel like you have two cement blocks taped to your tailbone. Trust me on this.

 Shop Quick: If you aren’t lucky enough to be in prison and have to write on a laptop in your bed make sure that you register on your favorite on-line shopping site so that you don’t have to waste time filling out a lot of applications, and you can buy stuff with one click. You’re going to shop; let’s be honest. Just shop quick, that’s all I’m saying.

This is a preliminary outline I’ve been working on for when I’m asked to speak at retirement homes and special school assemblies all over Osceola county, because I’m able to fill in the “What’s your profession” blank with FAMOUS writer/author/illustrator and Dazzle Queen of the Universe.

Linda (Dazzle Queen) Zern     

How Not to Write Anything

It has cost me tens of thousands of dollars to learn how NOT to write.     

As a student of creative writing I study the fine and gentle art of word mongering. I love mongering the words. It’s important to know that part of learning how to write means learning how NOT to write. There are more rules than you might think when you become a wordmongerer.

To show off  . . . er . . . I mean, for instructive purposes I’ve composed the following improper, shoddy, and incorrect versions of word assembly. Mistakes are typed in red, symbolic of blood and death—also bad writing.

EXCESSIVE USE OF SPICES (ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS)

My happy, humming laptop slid rapidly and quickly off the comfy, cushy bed.  I did not really drop, actually throw, quickly roll, mightily toss, or completely skip the smallish computer off the very tall bed. It really, really just slid.

It really, really slid from a softly puffing pillow top mattress onto an average grade slightly tired and walked on Walmart carpet and actually seized completely up. The thickly thick power cord bent extensively and a lot.

FILTERING (ACCORDING TO JOHN GARDNER FILTERING IS THE NEEDLESS LOOKING THROUGH SOME OBSERVING

CONSCIOUSNESS IN WRITING.) YIKES! SOUNDS SERIOUS!

For Example: Turning, I saw my laptop slide off the bed.

Compare: I turned. The laptop slid off the bed. The screen went black, and I was a dead woman. This was the fifth laptop I’d killed with my bare hands.

TOO MANY HE SAID, SHE SAIDS.

“How could you drop your computer again?” he said, asked, or squalled at me like a wounded cat.

“I didn’t drop it. It slid,” I said.

“I did not drop it. It slid off, by itself,” I said again.

“Linda, laptops do not grow on trees,” he said like a big numb nut.

“Really!” I said, my voice sounding really, really mean. “Since when?”

“Now, you’re just being sarcastic,” he said.

Turning, I gave him my best and most evil eye stare. (Actually, that could be an example of filtering.)

There’s more stuff that I’ve learned, but I’m all tired out. Writing is hard. I need a nap.

Linda (Write Stuff) Zern

COLLEGE DAZE: Quizzical

“And the on-line quiz is going to work every single time, right?” I said with heavy irony, a touch of despair, and hoping that I would not be praying for death when it was over.

 Ms. Koopmann, my composition II teacher replied, “Yes, yes, of course the on-line quiz will work every time.”

She smiled with a confidence that I did not trust or understand.

Ms. Koopmann was my college teacher. She taught creative writing and composition II (a class that I had already taken but in another state and with another course name and another magic class identification number, therefore the computer in Florida did not recognize my perfectly fine efforts, and I was having to take it over. It’s take the class over . . . or, hire a private detective to locate my former composition II professor in North Carolina, obtain a letter stating that I did in fact take composition II, and that I stayed conscious for the class and did not argue unduly with the professor.)

Since I took classes in North Carolina, the world has gone green and all written submissions, quizzes, and tests can now be submitted on-line—as in by computer, through the ether, over the Internet (invented by Al Gore or the government or some guy in a garage.)

“And the on-line quiz malarkey is going to work every single time, right?” My question was intended to receive verbal reassurance from my teacher that the whole techno-mess would, in fact, work as promised.

 It didn’t.

 Half way through my first timed computer quiz, my chubby husband of thirty plus years rolled over in bed onto my computer mouse. His flopping about caused a strange, unrelated “window” to pop up on my computer screen, over the top of my quiz. It was a window offering mandarin Chinese lessons.

 Okay, I was taking my first computer quiz in pajamas, in bed, with snacks.

  I clicked on the window; it disappeared.

  The computer quiz gods decided that I was A) dead B) cheating or C) descending the stairs like a goddess (that’s a quote from the reading I was being quizzed on, and that’s why that’s funny.) The quiz god “locked down” my quiz taking. I choked on a pork rind.

“Sherwood, you just blew my first quiz.” I clicked on boxes, windows, and pictures of a blinking padlock.

“AND I KNEW ALL THE ANSWERS.”

 “Urrrrrrghabloooooolig,” he said, squashing my bag of Bar-B-Q pork rinds.

“Wake up, man. I have eleven minutes to figure this out.” I clicked and cursed. The clock ticked down. “Ugh, I have ten minutes.”

 “Whaaaaaaat?”

“I HAVE EIGHT MINUTES.” I clicked madly. “You rolled over my test, and oddly enough when I asked the Help Desk what to do when a chubby husband rolls over on top of a computer mouse causing the, “Do you want this document translated into Mandarin?” option to pop up, THERE WAS NO ANSWER.”

He fumbled for his glasses. The clock ticked on and on. I balled up my fist, shook it at the sky, and cursed the computer quiz gods.

 “Sherwood, I’m doomed and damned.”

The clock ticked down and a cartoon bomb exploded when my twenty minutes had expired. A cold hard lump formed in my throat, nostrils, and sphincter.

I emailed my teacher to explain my quiz taking failure. Her email “came back” with the computer explanation “no such human being exists on this earth.”

 I have begun to pray for a computer related on-line death for a version of myself that resembles a cartoon. More about avatars at a later date.

Linda (Computers are the devil’s workshop!) Zern