How to fail at Writing

How to fail at Writing

1. Don't write. If you do write, don't write every day. You are more likely to fail the less you write. If you can squeeze a couple of years in between writing, you will have almost no chance of succeeding.

2. Don't let other people see your work. Don't ask them for advice, certainly don't attend writers groups and accept professional criticism or try to implement the ideas you learn. Much better to write in your room, and hide it under the dresser.

3. Write how you speak. Even throw in "um"s or long "........."s for when you have to think about what you say. Try a funky new type of indentation, capitalization or punctuation. A few seconds of trying to figure that out will make people who accidently find your sporadic work under the dresser raise their eyebrows and put it back, then back slowly away, hands open and slightly away from their sides.

4. Perhaps most importantly, read the greats of your chosen genre, not to learn how to do what they do, but to point out to yourself how you could never do that. Read modern masters and history's legends. Explain to yourself that they probably had inspiration from large amounts of alcohol and drugs. Also imagine that some spent years not writing between producing masterpieces and that sometimes manuscripts were found under their dressers after they died.

5. But above all, if you absolutely refuse to do any of the above, then it is crucial that you follow this last bit of instruction. Show it to your mom, your new girlfriend, get the people at work to promise to read it, and when each of them tell you how wonderful it is, believe them and do not bother editing it. Because they certainly read it and have the skills to critique the work. They would have said something if there was any little thing wrong. Send it in without a single revision. Then you too can achieve the goal I set for you at the top of this page, and you will have learned How to Fail at Writing.