Stop Spreading the News Why did this blog grind t…
Thursday, March 31st, 2005Stop Spreading the News
Why did this blog grind to a halt for several agonizing days?
Was I off murdering Johnnie Cochran?
Did I whack Mitch Hedberg?
Perhaps I won a jujitsu fight to the death with Terri Schiavo?
Actually, I’ve just returned from a whirlwind trip to our nation’s capital, New York City. And, believe it or not, I didn’t kill any famous people. Somehow I conned my way into a gig talking about blogging to some writing students at NYU along with a couple of real, no-foolin’ cewebrities, Alex Balk and Lindsay Robertson.
Lucky for you, I’ll save you the tuition money and share the same wisdom I imparted on the malleable minds of New York University. Here are the three keys to writing:
1. An exclamation point is worth a thousand words! Shakespeare knew it! Hemingway knew it! Foster Wallace knows it! Now you know it! And don’t feel confined by the “rules” that say you can only use one exclamation point at a time or that you can’t insert!!! them in the middle of sentences or even the mi!d!d!!le of words.
2. Fiction or unfiction, always include a character named Pockets O’Flanagan. If you really want to stab your reader in the mind with a knife of brilliance, have two or three or eleven Pockets O’Flanagans. The amount of Pockets O’Flanagans is up to you, so long as it’s a prime number; 36 Pockets O’Flanagans is just fucking hacky.
3. When in doubt, threaten your reader’s furniture. This is perhaps the most important lesson I ever learned about writing, and it was taught to me by my mentor, Rev. Dr. Pockets O’Flanagan. So you tell that rat-bastard loveseat of yours to watch its back. I swear on the grave of my mother, Pockets O’Flanagan, that I will not rest until I have my veng!!ean!!!ce against that little wannabe sofa.
