I need to be more straightforward. More serious and to the point. Hone in on my message and make is so simple anyone can understand it, rather than rambling and jumping all over the place. I was thinking earlier that I'm a post-9/11 renaissance man: a jack-of-all-trades but master of none. In today's age of specialization, I could be left out because I simply am not great at any one thing. People want to be able to summarize other people in a paragraph or less. They want to say "ok, he's a racist plumber," "she's a black lawyer," "he's the artist who paints butts," "and so on. I don't want to be "the arrogant kid who thinks he knows everything and is better than everyone" anymore. (Mom--I'm growing up. YAY!)
I don't know what my epithet is. Am I really a self-loathing arrogant-asshole? [ed.--Or do I just play one on tv?] Who am I? Geez, I don't even know anymore. I can't say it in a paragraph or less, but I'm trying. I still can't do it now no matter how hard I try. That's why I'm trying to document the process on my blog in the hope that it might help someone someday, even if that person is just my future self.
And then one day I will wake up, and I'll be forty-seven, and I'll stumble on this blog thing I wrote when I was twenty-seven, and I'll have a mid-life crisis. I will re-read this craptastic blog, and have an epiphany that will change my life forever, and I will become the next David Sedaris. The serious writer writing about my generation that I know I can be. But I can't do it now. I'm still telling and not showing. I'm still trying to run before I've learned to crawl. I need to get out and learn the rules, I mean really learn them this time, before I start breaking them. God, I hate to say it, but I need more schoolin'.
Enough! I'll have no more of this talk of returning to school! I don't need no education! I'm not another brick in the wall! School forces you to narrow your mind, focus too much, until you develop tunnel-vision. You become a myopic nerd with glasses like me. Oh, wait........Ehh...I give up. I don't know what's what anymore. I don't know what's real. This writing thing is driving me crazy. I keep going around in circles...Let's see if this helps:
Some ground rules for my writing:
- No more parenthesis, semicolons, dashes, or brackets. Sentences must be simple. No more asides or editorial comments.
- Focus on one medium at a time. If I'm doing a writing piece, no photos, and vice versa. Let each medium speak for itself.
- Outline and plan a course of attack, don't just improvise. Figure out what you're trying to say first, and then find the best way to express it. Don't use the spaghetti method, and just throw a bunch of crap out there and hope it sticks.
- Write several drafts. Don't just assume what comes off the top of my head is pure gold.
- Don't trust my gut. If something sounds funny to me, it probably is just funny to me and no one else.
- Don't be afraid to be unoriginal. Appeal to the lowest common denominator by using cliches that everyone can understand, i.e. KISS. You want your message to reach the widest audience possible, not the narrowest.
- You are not special. Don't think you can break the rules just because you're different. You're not. You're a biological social entity just like everyone else.
- Bad art should not be mixed with good art under any circumstances. Either be good or bad, but not both at the same time. Avoid mixed messages.
- Bad art should not be confused with a personal style, or artistic voice just because it's the easy way out. It' s too hard for most people to know what's good bad, and bad bad. And good bad is almost impossible to do. You have to be bad, then good, then finally good bad, but only a select few reach that point. There are no shortcuts.
- Don't assume people know who you are or what you are talking about. Assume the only thing they will ever know about you is what words you write.
Peace.
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