Writing Flights of Fancy
I was surprised by the overwhelming interest from my four readers in the activities of Ethelred from Birkenhead. Those of you keeping up with the fast pace of this blog will remember him from last week. He does not influence the mighty writing thrust of this blog. To be honest, he struggles with the writing requirements of the correspondence writing programme on which I am studying stuff. His lack of writing talent holds him back but he is more hamstrung by the onerous demands of his career as a drag queen and strip artist.
Currently, Ethelred from Birkenhead is on a tour of notorious pubs and burlesque joints in Wales. He regards this toughening-up-tour as a final preparation for his performances on his Far East tour in the autumn. He is still undecided about performing in Bangkok on account of the high level of homegrown talent there. He copied part of his act from The Lady Boys of Bangkok ecdysiastic display (= stripping) he saw in Brighton a few years ago. I told him not to worry about appearing in Bangkok. His hairy legs and back would be a unique experience for the audiences out there. Please encourage him if you come across him on his tour of Wales. He is still somewhat shy and in need of confidence-boosting words of praise.
(Ethelred dressed up before he goes for a large glass of G&T)
Some avid readers of this blog have found themselves accidentally dipping into other pages on this site and have come across some books that the site owner wrote. The books demonstrate limited talent in the writer and were probably put together with the help of some of the students he met while he learned to read and write on the MA Creative Writing course at Warwick University. I might use some of the books occasionally to illustrate various scholarly writing tips what I will give you in the coming weeks.
A few readers asked if they could demonstrate their literary abilities by writing critiques of those books. For the non-literati types among you, critique means writing barbed and vicious attacks on books what others wrote because you are browned off that someone wrote a book when you didn’t. We have to do stuff like that on the correspondence course. It is not only the tutors who write that we are crap, the other students have to do so. It's like a crowd of Russian football fans attacking anyone normal.
After a hastily convened meeting with a pint of Guinness in the Why Not pub, the barperson suggested that I should allow such non-entities to have their little say by offering them a slot each week. We have to say ‘barperson’ because we are not sure which would be more accurate, to say ‘barman’ or ‘barwoman’. That has more to do with appearance rather that with political correctness, if you know what I mean.
While I am encouraging the over-ambitious to dive into the deep end of the pool of writing, I must add that if will not be all plain sailing. The adventures of the wannabe writers may well founder on the rocks and reefs of troubled seas of writerly things.
Look carefully at the skilful way I have used metaphors and similes in those last two sentences. It is part of my charitable effort to share my writing skills with those of you not as blessed as what I am. For the ignorant on these matters, a metaphor is when you present something as something which it is not, in order to clarify something else. A simile is like that but different.
I anticipate that my other readers seeing the pathetic effort of these contributors will be heartened and learn to be at peace with their own sense of failure. As someone or other said, writing is not for everyone, only for born writers. You could say writers make up a sort of third sex – men, women and writers, only I wouldn't put it like that because it would confuse the weaker readers who would wonder who the writers have it off with.
So, send in your contributions and I will publish the less offensive as examples of where writing can go wrong if you are one of those aspiring to literary fame but was not born to write.
Quote of the week
The Seven Dwarves marching song was, “haiku, haiku, as off to work we go…” (Benny Littlebum)
