THE RULES OF DISCIPLINE:
1. take notes - mercilessly
2. sweep the leaves from the concrete at 4:30am
3. hi-five the old lady with the walker. slap her butt and give her a wink
4. get drunk all the time. behave badly.
5. all great writers smoke and do bad things all the time.
6. wear flim noir era clothes, carry a gun
7. the pen you're carrying works well as a bone-crusher in a pinch
8. stab stab stab, and then run, and then blame old lady with walker.

ok... anyhow- little goofy to be trying to be doing this right now-

you can be using the internet to surf porn
or you could be doing something

friend of mine once told me that life, well-
it truly is 'fight or die.'

another one, "if you're not up before dawn, you're lazy"
yup. farm culture ethos. or military. take your pick.

but some of my best notes
just me, coffee, watching the sun rise

pen and paper in places you wouldn't believe

little shanties drinking milk tea watching the little mountain town waking up, listening to the hiss of the kerosine stove, gritty-knuckled men in torn polo shirts, squint-smile. snow. monkeys. wet, rutted concrete. trash. cliffs. vegetable carts. sun peeking over the himalayas- hi five!

it's an opportunity to watch the world waking up- there! every day! and yes- here too is incredible. 10,000 + photos w/ the pub back in 'the city' -
urban photosafari after work. loosten the tie, find good walking shoes.

I like how g says it - mebbe paraphrasing.
'if you want to chase your dreams, you have to wake up early.'

me: dreams aren't wishes. be careful what you wish for. dreams, well- maybe sometimes it's best just to get up early.

those general contractors in the coffee shops, pre-dawn-
surprise them, hippy! take notes on those plastic-looking morning scones!

me? I'm not perfect but I do alright in the sleep/dep/working/productivity dept.

Writing Fiction (6th Edition) (Paperback)
www.amazon.com/Writing-Fiction-6th-Janet-Burroway/dp/0321117956


Sometimes the Magic Works

www.amazon.com/Sometimes-Magic-Works-Les...riting/dp/0345465512


Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within (Paperback)
www.amazon.com/Writing-Down-Bones-Freeing-Writer/dp/0877733759

Peter,

I love your writing primer series. You are doing great things to get people to write and [more so] create.

I'm sure I've mentioned it. You should run this course and then edit it all for a tight package of 'On Writing.' First, keep it humble, as you do, and as genuine.

It's great to see what other writers were taught inside or outside the halls of America's university system. My own spans four universities, and too many books to mention. So I'll mention four at hand that I have considered on and off in the last seven years.

After all this time of "poeting" out an identity, it's good to know I'm not the only one reading "How To." The difference between those that have done their own exploring and those that have not is remarkable. I think the lesson is mostly to DO something outside your own sphere of writing.

I think it's important to mention to anyone getting started, or just plain stubborn like me, that all these books (even the crappy and completely disagreeable ones) help writers become readers become writers become readers that write.

If that's too convoluted: it pays to do your homework on the structures you're looking to rework into your own ideas and dreams.

One last thing: writers read writers. Read, read, read. The rest is invention and . . .




The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing by Richard Hugo

www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=0393309339






The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers
by John Gardner

www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=0679734031





Truth About Fiction (00 Edition)
by Steven Schoen

www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=0130257710







The Current Compilation Granddaddy

Essentials of the Theory of Fiction
Edited by Michael J. Hoffman

www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=9780822335214




Featuring M. M. Bakhtin, John Barth, Roland Barthes, Wayne Booth, John Brenkman, Peter Brooks, Catherine Burgass, Seymour Chatman, J. Yellowlees Douglas, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Wendy B. Faris, Barbara Foley, E. M. Forster, Joseph Frank, Joanne S. Frye, William H. Gass, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Gerard Genette, Ursula K. Heise, Michael J. Hoffman, Linda Hutcheon, Henry James, Susan S. Lanser, Helen Lock, Georg Lukacs, Patrick D. Murphy, Ruth Ronen, Joseph Tabbi, Jon Thiem, Tzvetan Todorov, Virginia Woolf

well said- danke for the vote of suport

to be honest I don't know what the hell I'm doing when I sit down.

help writers become readers become writers become readers that write.

yee! couldn't have said it better.

I remember the first time around college there was this brilliant philosophy major who wrote a play and produced it and we all sat through it and gave our polite/half-hearted enthusiastic applause when it was over. ('cept the girls. dey went apeshit! he *so* got laid!)

had he read/studied more voice. simple construction. narrative flow--his ideas were RAD and it would have ROCKED.

one of the more productive workshops, one of the teachers was just bored by all of it and didn't give a crap. damned good teacher. I embellish the conversation below to make the point sexy:


TEACHER: that's great. ok go back to auto-mechanic mode. concrete detail, tighten up the language, cut these passages I think they're a waste of the reader's time. maybe read *this book* or *that book* because you're doing something similar.

STUDENT: whine whine whine ego ego ego! it's art! that's my soul! my precious soul!!!

TEACHER: that's great but you haven't done the reading. would you take your car to a mechanic that hadn't ever seen a car before...? who said, "I'll make beautiful art with your car!" Get over yourself. Writing is nuts and bolts bitch-work more than anything else.

hoo-dee-hoo. developing a love/passion for bitchwork that generally doesn't PAY. good times.

oh right. a tool... deep inquiry into the "human condition / soul" and all that shit.