While we are on Hurricane Hiatus, Geoff Kirsch from Juneau Alaska, will be guest blogging. See last week's post for his bio.
10 Tips for Writing
One of my favorite (and most hated) qualities of pre-school
aged children is their penchant for bluntness.
Over the past year, my daughter and her little parliament of
classmates have called me out on being bald, wearing the same clothes every day
and “having claws” (read: grossly unclipped toenails). More than a few have
asked me why my belly is bigger than their daddies’ bellies. I’m forced to
admit the truth: while their daddies run incredibly long distances for fun—a
pastime I will never understand—my hobbies include laying on the couch, laying
on the reclining chair, laying in bed and working out schematics for the model
log cabin I’m planning to build with all the leftover hotdogs from my son’s
birthday party.
Earlier this week, the apple of my eye point-blankedly told
me I didn’t have a job. I said that wasn’t true, that I was a writer, to which
she responded: “no, I mean a real job.” So I printed her a copy of my curriculum
vitae, which, not to brag (well, okay, maybe a little) has names on it like
“Comedy Central” and “Huffington Post,” as well as a “Published Books” section.
I still don’t think she was impressed—even after she checked my references.
But it made me think. And I mean stop pondering the
feasibility of frankfurter bun roofing panels for a second and really think.
Was my little girl on to something? After all, she was right about the
toenails.
Do I have a job? Can you call it a job if you do it in your
pajamas (and, every once in a while, less than pajamas)? What if you get
paid—as I once did (pretty decently, too, actually)—to write jokes for Michael
Winslow, the noises guy from “Police Academy”?
Here’s the answer I came up with: who cares? The IRS
considers what I do a job, and that’s all that really matters. Plus, I’ve spent
the last 15 years doing it, at the expense of almost every other career I’ve
started and subsequently quit to get back to writing (or unemployment, as I
said, depending on your point of view).
Like it or lump it, I don’t know how to do anything else.
But I do know a thing or two about stringing together words into sentences,
sentences into paragraphs, and paragraphs into pages that elicit a reader’s
response and, most months, cover the two Montessori pre-school tuitions it
takes to get at least a few wakeful, daylight hours in which to do all that
stringing.
Anyway, I was recently asked to share some of this dubious
expertise with students in a high school memoir writing class—an excellent
experience, in all seriousness; those kids produced some surprisingly top-notch
writing.
Those ten tips for writing - both about yourself and in general - coming up next week.
