BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

…Even if you don’t follow them.

A classic line from a classic bit of spoken word, that being Baz Lurhmann’s “Wear Sunscreen.” (To give credit where due, it was written by Chicago Trib Columnist Mary Schmich, actually, and performed by Lee Perry… Produced by Baz, so he tends to get  all of the kudos…)

Now that we’ve set that record straight, suffice it to say, the advice is sound. Of course, as the song also says, advice is a form of nostalgia. A way of fishing the past from the disposal, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

Problem is, when the recycling center isn’t open, all you can do is lob it over the fence and wait to see if they send you a check. By that I mean, teenagers aren’t all that good at reading directions. Maybe some are, but I can only speak from my own experiences. Hey, even I will admit that as a teen I often experienced DADD – Drooling Attention Deficit Disorder – by the time I reached the third sentence in any given set of directions.

It’s probably a hormonal thing, who knows… (Now that I’ve said that, someone with SDD – Satire Deficit Disorder – will be sure to explain it to me.)

The thing about teens afflicted with DADD is that they will do stuff that you just can’t make up. And, in their defense, I’m more than willing to believe that the advances in technology have contributed to this problem.

Case in point, my niece.

Yes, the one who paid someone to stab a carpet needle through the side of her nose and then plug it with a bejeweled booger cork.

Now, the incident in question occurred a few years before the age of Proboscis Piercing arrived, therefore I know it simply had to be a case of DADD, and not brains accidentally escaping through the third nostril. And, I will give her kudos for actually READING the directions. The problem is, she comes from a different time.

Allow me to explain…

It was Christmas as I recall. But then, I’m old, so maybe I don’t recall properly. What I can say for certain was that the family was all gathered at my mother & father-in-law’s house for some sort of all day celebration. Although we had consumed mass quantities of food at some point during this process, the niece was hungry again and wanted something different than the leftovers. In particular she wanted some manner of carb. My mother-in-law rummaged around and pointed her toward a bag of those frozen biscuit pucks.

All good. A biscuit puck or two should certainly fit the bill where carbs are concerned.

Niece read the directions and then set about puck preparation while the rest of us gathered around the table and talked about the various things that non-teenage folks talk about, which is to say, stuff that bores the living daylights out of the teenage folks. Yeah. Grown ups are mean like that.

Four or five minutes into the conversation an odd smell began wafting over the half-wall from the kitchen and into the dining room. I looked up just in time to see the interior of the microwave burst into flames.

Scrambling occurred, and I don’t mean eggs. In a matter of a few seconds the fire was extinguished before it could spread beyond the confines of the newfangled coffee re-heater. Once the crisis was over and the investigation into the origin of the fire began, we didn’t have to look far. There, smoldering in the center of the Pyrex turntable was a charred disc. Truth is, it looked far more like an actual puck at this point than a biscuit.

As one cohesive unit, the entire forensic investigation team turned to the niece (daughter, granddaughter).

“Wow…” she mumbled. “I wonder why it did that…”

We were dumbfounded. “What do you mean you wonder why it did that?” one of us asked.

She shrugged. “The directions said to cook it for ten minutes. It shouldn’t even be done yet.”

The moral of the story? We need to bring back Home Ec in schools. If for no other reason than to teach these kids the difference between an REGULAR  oven, a TOASTER oven, and a MICROWAVE oven before they burn the planet to a cinder. (We’ll save Infra Red and Convection for the advanced class…)

Just think, it could even count as a History credit…

More to come…

Murv

With thanks (and apologies) to Baz Lurhmann for the original. Wear Sunscreen re-imagined by yours truly for writers everywhere…

This originally appeared in a comment thread on my Facebook wall, 12/12/2010… About 30 minutes ago, as a matter of fact. All because I was bored and felt like entertaining myself.

USE FLASH DRIVES

Writers and wordslingers of the class of 2010…

Use Flash Drives.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, Flash Drives would be it. The non-volatile redundancy benefits of Flash Drives have been proved by cataclysmic hard drive crashes, whereas the rest of my writing advice is really just a bunch of meandering, tongue-in-cheek humor…

I will dispense that advice, now:

Enjoy the power and beauty of the adverb. Oh, never mind, you will not understand the power and beauty of the adverb until you grasp adjectives.

But trust me, in 120,000 words you’ll look back at adjectives you didn’t use and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much descriptiveness lay before you and how great the verb really could have looked… Adding LY is easier than you imagine.

Don’t worry about the optional comma; or em-dash, but know that an ellipsis is as effective for indicating a pause as a semicolon. The real punctuation in your work is apt to be removed and then restored by an editor; the kind that blindsides you with revisions at 4pm on some Saturday when you planned a family outing.

Write one thing every day that makes absolutely no sense.

Spellcheck.

Don’t be reckless with apostrophes, and don’t put up with people who are reckless with colons.

Revise.

Don’t waste your time on head popping POVs. Sometimes you’re in one characters head, sometimes you’re in another… the story is what’s important, and in the end you’ll only confuse your readers.

Remember the good reviews you receive, forget the bad; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how. Keep your old notes, throw away your old rejection slips.

Edit.

Don’t feel guilty if you surf porn for a few hours when you have writer’s block… Some of the most interesting writers I know were kinky at 22. Some of the most interesting 40+ year old writers I know are still kinky.

Do plenty of research. Be kind to your editors, you’ll need them when you’re late on a deadline.

Maybe you’ll get a multi-book deal, maybe you won’t. Maybe your book will get optioned for a movie, maybe it won’t. Maybe you’ll be a mid-lister, maybe you’ll hit the NYT best seller list… whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either – it’s all a matter of luck, for you and everybody else as well.

Enjoy your first novel, and admire it every way you can… Be proud of it, and ignore what other people think of it, it’s the only first novel you’ll ever write.

Read. Even if you have no time to do it but on your lunch break in the bathroom.

Learn the rules of grammar, even if you don’t follow them. Do NOT read “How To Write” books, they will only make you feel inadequate.

Get to know bookstore owners. You never know when you’ll need to book a signing venue. Be nice to other writers; they are your best shot for a cover blurb and the people most likely to chat you up to acquisitions editors.

Understand that readers come and go, but there are those who will stay loyal no matter what the critics say. Work hard to fix your plot holes and make suspension of disbelief as seamless as possible, because the deeper you get into a story, the more you need your readers to follow along.

Write a chase scene once, but don’t let it overwhelm the story.

Write a sex scene once, but don’t let it become the entire focus of the plot.

Double space.

Accept certain inalienable truths: commas generally go before conjunctions, periods end sentences, and interjections don’t always denote excitement, but when they do you should follow them with an exclamation point, not a period or a comma, unless followed by another interjection.

Use interjections.

Don’t quit your day job. Maybe you’ll get an advance, maybe you’ll retain your electronic rights, but you never know when or if a book will earn out and pay royalties.

Don’t mess too much with your arc, or by the time it develops people will be bored. Be careful with your characters, but, be patient with their back stories. Character development is a form of mental masturbation, and nurturing it is a way of creating a personality, giving it legs, breathing life into it, and making readers believe the fictional construct is real.

But trust me on the Flash Drives…

More to come…

Murv