Writing tip: keeping tabs on your favorite writer can be surprising.
I’m a writer and I don’t get no respect. I went into a bar that caters to well-known writers.
I told the bar tender, “Give me what your best writer has most often in here.”
She promptly handed me the tab.
The photo shot with the blathering idiot and the accordion as the candidate on the Pro-Accordion Party ticket for the highest office in the land was just short of being a disaster.
First, he was not a natural at holding the accordion and wondered if anybody every really was. It seemed an instrument better suited for playing sitting in a chair, or on a bar stool.
Then there was the fingering issue. They wanted him to look like he knew what he was playing and not simply have his fingers splayed across the keys as if he were randomly smashing them.
On top of that was the bellows. He needed to have the bellows open wide on some shorts and closed tight on other photographs.
“Remember our party slogan,” said the consultant with the florid lips. “Say it with me—”
The blathering idiot closed his eyes and said, “We are the party that is wide enough to welcome everybody and small enough to focus on your needs.”
In his imagination, the blathering idiot could picture the consultant made a motion with his hands, opening them wide on the first part and collapsing them together when he said small enough.
“No, no, no,” the consultant said. “The word is broad as in broad enough to welcome everybody but focused enough to understand your individual needs.”
“But I don’t know how to play the accordion,” the blathering idiot said for perhaps the fortieth time since this photography session had started.
“That’s okay,” the consultant said. “I’ve already told you that puts you in touch with most of our potential voters. They don’t know, either. It will give you the common touch.”
The blathering idiot opened his mouth to say something when the consultant said, “ I don’t care about you not wanting to be a common man. Get over it. You are.”
The blathering idiot looked at the door to the studio and willed it to open and for Lydia to walk through it with Xenia. Xenia was in school today, but she would understand all this and explain it to her. But right now she was in class learning to play the recorder. The blathering idiot wished he knew how to play the recorder, wished he was in her class learning right now.
But the door did not budge, and neither did the consultant.
The blathering idiot had a sinking feeling and he felt a little dizzy. He looked at the door again, and it appeared tilted, maybe even spinning.
The blathering idiot had a sinking feeling, as if he might have just crossed over … into The Twilight Zone.
Sometimes not knowing is important … at least to your electability.
“But I don’t know how to play the accordion,” the blathering idiot said once he understood that he would be posing in ads with one.
“That’s okay,” the consultant said. “That will put you in touch with most of our potential voters. They don’t know, either. It will give you the common touch.”
“But I took this position as candidate for the highest office in the land so I wouldn’t be just another common man.”
The consultant looked at the blathering idiot for a moment and then shrugged.
“People want to feel they could sit down and have a beer with you.”
“But I don’t like beer,” the blathering idiot said. “I do like broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels Sprouts.”
The consultant’s nose scrunched up. “Well, we don’t have to let the voters know that.”
“You mean voters don’t like people who eat their vegetables?”
The consultant opened his mouth to say something, paused, and then closed his florid lips.
Let me just preface my remarks by saying I shouldn’t have prefaced my remarks.
My critique group can be rather direct. I turned in the first part of the novel, including the preface. One member said he doesn’t read prefaces or preludes or prologues of any kind.
Another one wrote this on in the margin of her critique: “Your preface states that the characters bear no resemblance to any person living or dead. That’s precisely what’s wrong with this story.”
I guess an epilogue is out of the question.
I stand on the ramparts of tautology
Forever eschewing any hint of scatology.
But don’t ask me this fine day
To bind my obfuscations away.
For where o’ where would I be
If I could not in confidence convolute thee?
Oh, where o’ where, pray tell
Would my alliterations have place to dwell?
I am but a humble servant of words
Trundling through this world of the absurd.
A land of regret full of monsters who fete
On a mind that will now be quiet.
Filed under 2012, Freeform Friday, poetry by author
Some say a million monkeys at a million keyboards would eventually write something equal to Shakespeare’s works. Depends upon the monkeys. They might decide upon the million monkey march, or something a little more at play.
Filed under 2012, cartoon by author, CarToonsday
Giving short (story) shrift to a novel idea.
The other day I overheard two people in my writing workshop group talking about my work. One person said she wasn’t sure why, but she would prefer to read something else.
The other person said, “He’s putting everything he knows into his novel. It’s sure to be a short story.”
“And I probably still won’t like it,” the first person said.
Lydia walked up to the blathering idiot. Her face looked as if had had somebody tugging on it, stretching it out and down.
Everybody else filed out of the small conference room as well. Nobody looked like he or she had had a good time.
Lydia managed a wan smile. There and gone. More a hope of a smile than a real one.
If politics is like this, the blathering idiot thought, why do people go into it?
“We have decided on a Pro-Accordion Party mascot.” She heaved a sigh as if it were the heaviest thing she would ever carry. “We have decided on the armadillo.”
“Armadillo?” the blathering idiot asked.
“Armadillo? Oooh!” Xenia held her nose.
The Pro-Accordion Party selects the armadillo for its mascot, in part because it can collapse into a small space, like an accordion.
Lydia glared at Xenia for a moment, then turned back to the blathering idiot.
“Look at it this way,” she said, “the armadillo has protection like the turtle you were fond of, but can also collapse itself down into a smaller space—”
“Like an accordion,” the blathering idiot said.
“Exactly,” Lydia said.
“Armadillo?” Xenia turned, found a seat, and sat down.
Lydia looked at Xenia. “We did a quick focus group and found there were too many people who had negative connotations associated with a turtle, even one in a red, white, and blue hat. When we asked those same people about armadillos, most had no direct experience with an armadillo and had largely neutral thoughts about the creature. A few even confused with an ant eater. That gives us a chance to clearly define it and why it is our mascot.”
“And how do you intend to define the PAP mascot?” the blathering idiot asked.
“We’re working on that,” Lydia said.
“Who did you focus group?” Xenia asked. “My mom did that for a while.”
“We called up ten people at random from the phone book.”
“Ten people?” The blathering idiot asked.
“Only ten?” Xenia asked.
“They were at random. That was all we had time and money for. We only have a small budget for such things. A big part of the discussion in there was over spending that money on this. Most didn’t want to spend any money on this until I reminded if we didn’t we’d stuck with the turtle.”
Stuck with the turtle. That didn’t set well with the blathering idiot, but before he could say anything, Xenia asked a question.
“So you are picking your mascot because ten random people said so?”
“That’s eight more than you two,” Lydia said.
The blathering idiot couldn’t argue with that. Still, an armadillo?
Filed under blathering idiot, Pro-Accordion Party, Story by author
Will Rogers (November 4, 1879 – August 15, 1935): American humorist, performer, commentator.
“The 1928 Republican Convention opened with a prayer. If the Lord can see His way clear to bless the Republican Party the way it’s been carrying on, then the rest of us ought to get it without even asking.”
Substitute the date “2012” for “1928” and you need change nothing else. Some prospects are not altered by time.
Filed under 2012, Will Rogers
A bird’s eye view of literature.
I’m a writer and I don’t get no respect. Just the other day my mother-in-law came to visit. She asked for one of my stories and I gave her the latest one I had written. The next day I had to go and visit her. I asked her how she liked the story. She said it wasn’t long enough.
“Long enough?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “There weren’t enough pages to line the bottom of my parrot’s cage. He’s not happy.”
