BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Over the years I’ve made no secret of the fact that I think pedantic books, blogs, and other such aggregations of verbiage on the subject of “How To Write” are the worst kind of ridiculous. This is one of the reasons that whenever I find myself writing a blog of said type, it is far from pedantic and delivered with tongue planted firmly in cheek – even if the advice happens to be sound.

The simple fact of the matter is that once you learn the mechanics of word usage, grammar, etc, you are done. From that point on either you have the talent or you don’t. No set of rules, book, or sage advice from King, Leonard, Sellars, ad nauseum is ever going to turn you into a writer. You can either write, or you can’t. It’s that simple. Other than the basic conventions of grammar – which can be broken when necessary – there are no rules.

This, however, doesn’t stop people from prattling on about such advice and the like. They simply cannot get the idea of “no rules” through their skulls. In fact, the whole “How To Be A Writer” book industry is a big one, filled with charlatans out to make a quick buck. If I was smart I would pen one of these tomes myself and make a million dollars fleecing folks who sincerely believe a book about writing will turn them into a novelist.

But then, I’m a novelist by trade, not a money grubbing asshole. For me, being an asshole is just a hobby and I have no desire to muck about with my amateur status in that department.

So… Why am I going on about this?

Well, you see, I recently ran across a Tweet that contained a link to a blog. Said blog entry that was being touted happened to be “50 Don’ts For Writers.” I followed the link out of curiosity. In reality, the folks behind the blog had 40 rules and they wanted their readers to come up with the other 10.  Sort of a marketing gimmick to get more traffic to their blog.

Ostensibly, these were rules for writers that were created by readers.

Now, some of these rules – a very small percentage of them, mind you – were common sense. Of course, I realize that not everyone has common sense, which in its own way would seem to lend credence to such a list of rules. However, here’s a newsflash: Just like talent, you can’t teach common sense either.

I know. That truly sucks, but it’s a fact of life. You’ve either got common sense, or you don’t. Deal with it.

The majority of these “rules,” however, were the personal pet peeves and whiny demands based upon those pet peeves of the bloggers involved. The only rule that really made an iota of sense – including those few that were common sense to begin with – was something akin to:

“You’re the artist (writer). Ignore these rules and write the book you want to write.”

I’m paraphrasing a bit because I really don’t feel like looking up the link and wading through the whiny drivel all over again, but you get the drift.

At any rate, after reading this lunacy I decided that if readers really felt they had some sort of inalienable right to start issuing sets of rules that writers are supposed to follow, perhaps we writers should do the same – in reverse, of course. Therefore, after thinking long and hard about the subject, I came up with the following “50 Rules For Readers.”

50 Rules For Readers

1. If you don’t like the book you are reading that’s fine. Not every book will appeal to every person. So, your best bet is to quit complaining, put it down, and pick up a different book. There are plenty of them out there from which to choose. If you keep reading a book you don’t like it’s not the  author’s fault, it’s yours. You have nobody to blame but yourself.

2 … 50. See Rule #1

There… I think my set of 50 rules are way easier than theirs. However, I am also the first to admit that mine are also common sense. But hey, at least I didn’t whine…

More to come…

Murv

One of the big stories on the news this morning was about the J. Crew “pink toenail” advertisement.  If you don’t know what I am talking about, go here and have a look:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/crew-ad-boy-painting-toenails-pink-stirs-transgender/story?id=13358903

Since I found the outcry to be utterly ridiculous, I figured I’d write a blog about it – I know, that’s exactly what I am doing right now… Guess maybe I need a scholarship to the “University of Duh.”

But moving right along – Then I thought about the fact that I am deeply embroiled in flinging words for fun and profit (i.e., I have a deadline to meet) at the moment, so I’m short on time. Then I thought about the fact that I had sorta already commented on the subject some time back, in a roundabout way mind you, but commented nonetheless.

Therefore, why be redundant?

Below is a blog I wrote back when Brainpan Leakage was hosted on my now non-existent Myspace page. I’m pretty sure that if a man in his late forties can cope with pink toenails, the kid in the J Crew ad can as well. If that statement was too complex for the folks who have a problem with this particular advertisement to understand, let me see if I can put it another way…

Take your gorram homophobic, bigoted, chicken little asses off to your personal corner of stupid land and get over yourselves…

Now, without further barking from yours truly, here’s the original blog entry…

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PINK TOENAILS – Originally published May 2007

Being the marketing whore I am, I belong to several e-lists, forums, and even social networking sites (other than MySpank here). I would like to point out, however, that I am more along the line of a high-priced call-marketer, rather than the street corner quickie. Why? Because I try to show a little class.

I take great pains to avoid being one of those incredibly ridiculous, in your face authors who twists any and all subjects around to a mention of their latest book. For example, say you have a thread where someone says “I like oranges”…If for some odd reason I was to throw my two cents in there, it would be something along the lines of “Yeah, me too. Especially the navel oranges because I don’t like seeds.” Whereas, some of the cheaper, street corner author-whores might seize upon that opportunity to post something like, “Well, if you like oranges you should read my latest novel because in chapter 15, my protagonist, Buck Naked, eats an orange before going out to track down the bad guy, Chronic Halitosis.”

I know…It sounds utterly ridiculous, doesn’t it? Well, even though I have never seen a post specifically about an orange, I have seen some just as convoluted…Some, even worse. We call this Blatant Shameless Self-Promotion. (BSSP or BSP) While self-promotion is an absolute must for authors, being so completely insane about it is…well…just icky.

What in blue blazes does this have to do with pink toenails? Not a damn thing. I just wanted to make it clear that while I’ll readily admit to being a whore, I’m neither cheap nor easy. And, “I gots class.”

Okay…So now that we have established that, back to the topic at hand. Actually, the above really does have some small amount to do with this– that being the fact that I belong to so many different lists, forums, and social networking interfaces on the web. What it comes down to is that I see a whole mess of discussions on a whole mess of different topics. Some of them so-so, some of them interesting.

And there you have it. One of these topics on a forum recently caught my attention. In fact, it has appeared on several forums, and even as commentary/questions in my personal email. While I didn’t feel a need to toss my two cents in on it at the time (nothing had been mentioned about oranges in any of the threads or emails, so why would I?) events of the last day have led me to blog about this subject…

The topic in question was, “What do authors do in their free time?”

Some of the speculation was interesting. People commented about different authors they had met in person, stating that they seemed like down to earth folks who would fit right in with their personal circle of friends. Some wondered if it was a taboo to offer to buy lunch for an author or would you be seen as a stalker (for the record, we like free lunches…but not stalkers.) Others waxed prophetic about how much fun we must be having in our multi-million dollar homes with the indoor-outdoor pools, and high-caliber celebrities coming over for parties. I am sincerely hoping that those commentaries were tongue in cheek, because I have yet to be issued my mansion and yacht…

So, in addition to the “wonder if authors hang out with their friends who knew them before they were authors” kind of questions (yes, we do, BTW), there were the typical “what’s a day in the life of an author like?”

Well…I could ramble on for hours, boring you with the details of getting up in the morning, getting my wife off to work, my daughter off to school, doing dishes. cleaning up cat barf from a geriatric, diabetic feline, spreading notes out on the table and plotting a chapter. Then, typing for a couple of hours, deciding it isn’t right and cutting and pasting for a while, only to go back and write it all over again. Making a fresh pot of coffee while eating a sandwich over the sink…Answering the phone only to discover that it is a radio interview you forgot you were supposed to do but your mouth is full of braunschwieger and swiss on whole wheat with a bread and butter pickle slice…So you wash it down and get on with the interview only to discover that the interviewer has never read your books, or even a synopsis–just two lines of the press release. Therefore, she has concluded that you must be an FBI agent and you spend 11 minutes of the 15 minute interview fielding questions you can’t possibly answer about the inner workings of Quantico while trying to convince her that you do NOT work for the FBI…Finally, you get that done and say to yourself “now where was I?”. You manage to get back to what you were doing (writing…after all, that’s what we do) and if you are lucky you get your self-imposed quota written for the day just in time to get your happy ass into the kitchen and make dinner before evil wife person and the kid get home…And, you do ALL of this without ever once wearing a tweed jacket with elbow patches. (My preferred mode of dress is much classier. Cargo shorts, a t-shirt, tube socks, and if I have to run out to the post office or something, my tan Crocs…See a previous blog for details on those…)

Not very glamorous, eh? Kind of like going to the office, working on a project only to discover the data you got from Fred is wrong, so you have to redo half of it…however, you get interrupted by the boss because he/she needs you to stop what you are doing and take care of something else, even though it is something you aren’t qualified for and would be better done by Sally in accounting. Only to wind up your day picking up a bucket of chicken on the way home because the spouse has to take the kid to soccer practice. But, when you arrive late you discover the dog couldn’t hold it so he crapped in your living room…

See the parallel’s there?

“But, Murv! What the holy hell does this have to do with pink toenails?” you demand.

That should be obvious from paragraph 10. I have a daughter, and she’s at “that age.” No, not the age where she brings boys home and I sit in the living room cleaning guns. That’s a few years off yet. She’s still a munchkin and she is at that stage where she wants to be a girly girl (which is fine) but she also wants everyone around her to be pretty too.

So…What did this author do with his free time yesterday? After doing the grocery shopping and other exciting crap like that, he let his 7 year old daughter paint his toenails pink (along with a good portion of his toes).

My wife claims there’s no nail polish remover to be had in the house. I’m pretty sure she’s lying. I can tell by the evil grin.

Till the next time…

Murv