Thanks to Michele Richmond over at Sans Serif for pointing out some of the best writing tips ever. From Frederick Barthelme, The 39 Steps, A Primer on Writing, at the Center for Writers (Mississippi Review) we get such gems as the very first two–which may be my favorite all-time advice:
1) Step one in the great enterprise of a new and preferable you in the house of fiction is: Mean less. That is, don’t mean so much. Make up a story, screw around with it, paste junk on it, needle the characters, make them say queer stuff, go bad places, insert new people at inopportune moments, do some drive-bys. Make it up, please.
2) Don’t let it make too much sense.
I’ve been starting to think this way, and that’s why the onion laughs in one of my most recent pieces.
As a matter of fact, that’s exactly why it laughs.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology