How to write
Being a writer is the easiest thing in the werld. You donot evan hav two spell wright, or kerectley for that mattar. Just like I did.
You don’t even have to know anything about language. That’s an editor’s job.
Writers write.
I was telling my girlfriend about my grandfather. He was Jugoslavian, and he heard words differently than you and I. So when he went to the store to buy some bananas, he wrote down:
BOLANOS
…and he came home with bananas. That’s the whole writing thing, right there. Write down waht you know. Granted, my grandfather was never published in “The Small Press”. But, then too, he never had to face the embarrassment of some publisher taking his cute way of spelling bananas as “BOLANOS” and wrap it up in some ordinary ink and paper and price it as much as a used car you could drive to McDonalds for your swing shift.
And that’s how I write. I think up something which seems interesting to me, in a way I know how to say it; I push little buttons on an electric box, made by some people I don’t know in a factory in some country I’ve never been to. By the time I’ve become bored with what I’m writing I stop. And that’s the end.
BOLANOS
If Gramps also needed napkins he’d write:
NAPNICKS
…then he’d look at his words — maybe doodle a couple of triangles, or a woman with a large butt — and he’d think if there was anything else he wanted.
It usually took him about five seconds to get a thought on paper. A little longer if he was doodling women with big asses.
That’s pretty much how to write. Put down what you’re thinking about, and leave the rest out, or save it for another time.
It’s that easy. I promise.