Month: October 2026

Thank God It’s Monday 20

How well I remember the year 2000, and all the fun I had flying!

I could spend the day harassing travelers, engaging in public foreplay, riding the baggage carousel, and violating the airport’s operational security!

Not like flying today, which is dull, slow, and does not count as foreplay:

This card was stamped by the gnarly yet visionary mail artist Rudi Rubberoid. Rudi loved rigid airships: “If I had my way, I’d put blimps on just about everything!”

A century ago, Germany was the leading printer of postcards, but the inconsistent use of color, and the heavy hand of whoever painted that building in the middle, tells me that this card didn’t come from Germany. German colors (all of these old cards were black-and-white photos that were tinted before they went to press) were sharp and correct.

I have several blimp stamps I inherited from Rudi, but not this one. This card was published after 1907 but before the start of the war in 1914. Someone started a message on the back, in English, but never finished. Perhaps it was too beautiful a day.

Fun facts: The U2 video was filmed at the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. Fake Bono was played by a 23-year-old actor named Emmanuel “Mac” Macron, who traded acting for politics and became president of France in 2017.

10 simple things you can do to have more fun as a writer

If you want to read the Wizard of Earthsea, The Lord of the Rings, The Greenlanders, and all 800 Conan books, there are maps to guide you through those worlds. Even Kidnapped has a map—the island Robert Louis Stevenson painted on the wall of his stepson’s nursery.

There’s no such guide to the literary world. I’ve quested there for years, which is why my name tag at the annual convention of the American Association of Writing Programs reads STEVE THE CIMMERIAN. Can I help you navigate this world? Probably not. But I’ll try anyway with 10 simple things you can do etc. I’ll keep them short and expand on some of them in future posts.

1. Read.

Even at my nerdiest, when I was 12 and I devoured the Foundation trilogy in a weekend, I also read other things. I’ve meet too many mystery writers who only read mysteries, too many romance writers who only read romances, and too many writers of mainstream, prestigious, mature novels who wouldn’t be caught dead curled up with a two-fisted Western. Read widely. Don’t limit yourself.

2. Write.

Every day. Of course, you won’t write every day. Life will intervene. Someone will get sick. A crisis will erupt at work. While you’re off having a root canal. Your partner might want to interact with you. Partners always want to interact with you. Some nonsense about relationships.

Don’t despair. Play nice with your lover. Clean up the crisis. Work will always wait, unless you’re the safety director at a nuclear power plant. You’ll write tomorrow. I can’t say this enough: You can write your novel in 15 minutes a day.

3. Music? Silence? Write on your phone? Write on the sidewalk with chalk?

Rudyard Kipling, in his poem “In the Neolithic Age,” wrote, “There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,/And every single one of them is right.” “Tribal lays” means songs. Whatever works for you, works.

Everyone quotes this line. But few mention that in “In the Neolithic Age,” the writer hero deals with his competitors by killing and eating them.

4. Take a class.

Every community college has writing classes. Take a few; find an inspiring teacher. Listen to the experts; listen to your fellow students. Learn how to gratefully receive feedback and how to gracefully dole it out.

Should you go to school to get an MFA? I’m not the person to ask. I don’t have one. The last time I had anything to do with academia, the Berlin Wall was still a wall, phones connected to a wall, Pink Floyd had not yet released The Wall.

If I had had the money and the time back then, and if I had wanted a job teaching writing, I might have gone for an MFA. Looking back, I’m content with attending a writing conference every 20 years and taking the occasional class.

5. Join a writing group.

“To get published, you have to do what every writer in history has done,” Chris Offutt wrote. “You have to sit for thousands of hours and hundreds of days in solitude.”

Many people like that degree of solitude; it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy, and God, I know, I’m one. I’ve even heard the term “desk ecstasy,” which I thought meant having sex on your desk until I was informed I was mistaken.

But many more people don’t like solitude at all.

One thing you can do to alleviate the loneliness is to join a writing group, either in person or virtually. You might find people on your wavelength in one of your classes. You might find them online. Warning: You’ll be critiquing each other’s work. Other people’s reactions to your work are incredibly valuable, but you’ll have to sacrifice many hours to reading and reacting to their work. It’s only fair. But that time will have to come from somewhere.

6. Find someone you trust to read what you write.

Your partner, who is already cheesed off about you spending so much time behind a closed door having sex on your desk, is not always the best choice. Haruki Murakami’s first reader is his wife, but they fight so much about his drafts that he refused to name her in his memoir, Novelist As a Vacation.

My wife is a good critic. No, you can’t borrow her. But last year, in addition to her reading, I gave the first draft of my novel to somebody who didn’t give a shit about me. I hired an editor, who did a wonderful job. I was fortunate to find someone just starting out who was willing to charge less to gain her first paying client. There are plenty of professional freelance editors, if you can afford one. Start saving.

7. Don’t be afraid to rewrite.

Sooner or later, Robert A. Heinlein’s rules for writing show up in lists like this one. Heinlein said you should never rewrite unless an editor tells you to. I’m sure that saves time—for the writer. It makes the editor’s job harder because you end up bombarding him or her with half-baked pastry. Heinlein formulated his rules in 1950, when there were dozens of markets in the science-fiction field and a desperate need for content, most of which was created by amateurs, dolts, subliterates, and people who were happy to perpetuate the racist and sexist stereotypes of the past.

When English critic Kingsley Amis (father of Martin) published his survey of science fiction, New Maps of Hell, in 1960, he said that Jules Verne had established a standard of low-quality writing, which his successors had “reproduced with great fidelity.”

Writing standards are far higher today. You can’t get by with an original idea and a vague gesture at intercourse. Finish a draft. Put it away for a while. Your instincts will tell you if that means a day, a week, a month, or a year. Reread it. Too many glittering sentences? As we say in the writing game, kill your darlings. That glitter might be a stumble for a reader. Maya Angelou said, “Easy reading is damn hard writing.”

Since I mentioned Kingsley Amis, here he is again with one of my favorites: “If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing.”

8. Don’t be afraid to not rewrite.

If you have a story or multiple stories or just a clever opening from earlier in your career that you have never been happy with but can’t part with, don’t rewrite and rewrite and rewrite. Move on. Start fresh. That thing you wrote when the world was new is calling to you out of nostalgia. Or maybe you hate waste. Or it just needs a polish. It’s this close to being done.

I have been in this position too many times. My advice: Give up!

Though John Updike is the only writer who ever died and left a hole in my heart, it was years before I understood what he was trying to tell me: “If a thing goes, it goes for me, and if it doesn’t go, I eventually stop and get off.”

I keep all my fragments and false starts and stories I can’t sell in their own folder. After a few years, I don’t feel like opening them anymore. In the case of one story I couldn’t leave alone, despite the passage of many years, I took drastic action. I deleted it.

You’ll decide for yourself what’s a practical expiration date.

9. Read your work aloud.

A working novelist told me that she read the publisher’s proofs of her latest book to her husband while he was driving them on a long trip, and in so doing she discovered errors and inconsistencies that she had missed—as had her editor, copy editor, and proofreader.

I find that reading my work aloud always gives me a new perspective. At the very least, I hear weak verbs and suboptimal word choices. Reading aloud is the secret weapon in Jack Hart’s A Writer’s Coach: The Complete Guide to Writing Strategies that Work. The book is aimed at journalists, but any writer can profit from it.

Before you start declaiming to an empty room, negotiate non-interruptible time with the rest of your household.

10. Stay off social media.

Do I really have to say this? You will never get anything done if you spend your time trying to go viral or updating the world on the health of your cat or constantly checking your email. Don’t like. Write.

I hope your cat is OK.

Next week: 10 more things you can do to have more fun as a writer!

The first name in crisis is Cornell

I’m back from my trip to the red rock cliffs and dry valleys of southern Utah. As I predicted, I didn’t do any writing. But guess who else didn’t? Cornell University!

Yes, Cornell University, the most prestigious school with the most important graduates and the most disgusting rape scandal, is keeping it real. Quiet. One of their female students was kidnapped and gang-raped by the Chi Phi “Future Male Rulers of America” fraternity, and yet Cornell University’s home page remains a placid pool of faculty achievements and alumni goings-on. Cornell University is following the classic strategy of saying nothing and wishing this wasn’t happening to them.

Last week, Cornell University President Michael Kotlikoff posted a video on the school’s About page in which he promised to work tirelessly to keep his job. I may be misremembering what he said. I can’t check this because Cornell University has removed the video posted by Cornell University President Michael Kotlikoff. I guess an old and privileged white male trying to reassure everyone that everything is fine, we got this, was not reassuring.

Is Cornell University doing something? They’ve had two years to do something. The governor of New York, Cornell University’s HOME FUCKING STATE, has declared war on Cornell University. How will Cornell University respond? Pack the school into a Ford Econoline van and move to the Arizona desert?

A modest proposal for the quagmire that is Cornell University

I found this book at our recent library sale:

Lifetime Encyclopedia of Letters was published in 1991. Check out that informative subhead: 850 model letters for any occasion! Thank yous. Job applications. Dear Grandma and Grandpa. Dear John.

Lifetime Encyclopedia of Letters also tells you how to write an apology letter.

Perhaps, Cornell University, while rebuilding your school into a safe place for students of all genders, you should write an apology letter to the young woman whose life has been changed for the worse because she made the mistake of trusting you. It won’t reverse what happened, but it would be something. Then write an apology to her parents.

OK, you have probably already done that. Proceed then to the next step: Write an apology to every one of the female students currently in your care. Remember them? Your students? Then write to their parents. The ones who send you money to pay for such things as safety.

And now on to all of your female alums. Apologize to them. And to their parents. And while you’re at it, please write an apology to every young woman in the United States and the rest of the world in case they are considering attending your school.

Maybe after you write all of those apologies, and turn your campus into a nexus of learning rather than a crash course in survival, we could collectively hold our nose and readmit you to academia.

Episode 4: A Vacation Hope

This is the first postcard I ever enhanced. I added the ship and the corgi. The ship’s wake turned out well, and I somehow managed to line it up so that the hull seems to reflect off the water. The card is from the 1930s. I attacked it in the 1990s.

As I prepare for yet another awesome vacation, I am reminded of all the bad writing advice that exists in the world, some of it provided by me. This stands out: “Bring your book on vacation with you.” This tidbit comes from Unstuck: A Supportive and Practical Guide to Working Through Writer’s Block by Jane Anne Straw (2003).

After extensive testing, some of it chronicled in this space, I can attest that this advice is nuts. You are far better off bringing your flip-flops.

However, if you’ve established a daily or almost daily writing practice, there’s no reason to abandon this on your vacation. You can always sneak away for 15 or 30 minutes with your laptop or tablet or pad of paper or Olivetti portable typewriter. I like the final page of the benefits statements I receive from my health insurer, the page that’s printed with THIS PAGE LEFT INTENTIONALLY BLANK.

Describe your day or the inside of your head. Try out openings or a big head-butting scene. It’s all practice and if you never keep any of it, you will eventually write something based on your beach-blanket or poolside scribbles. Good luck. Aloha.

Vacation countdown: Reasons to Be Cheerful, Pt. 3

Another find from the library book sale, and another brick in the wall of fiction. Cavalcade of the North, published in 1955, is still an impressive-looking tome. I only just winched it off the bed of a truck, so I can’t tell if I will be as surprised and delighted as I was when I read A Treasury of Short Stories from the same decade.

However, I have owned this book long enough to have uncovered some warning signs.

  • There are only two women in the lineup.
  • There are zero indigenous writers.
  • French Canada has been cordoned off in its own 19-page ghetto (leaving 621 pages French-free).
  • The French stuff was written by Thomas B. Costain, who was a best-selling author but not in any way French.
  • Costain begins his introduction with “I have been convinced that few readers pay much attention to the introductions prepared for volumes of this character” before plowing on for 10,000 words that I know I won’t read.

(I would’ve written, “Here’s why you should read this introduction,” but it’s easy to play the Monday-morning quarterback. It’s hard to write a best-seller.)

I will, as always, report back. If there’s one thing that makes me cheerful, it’s a long book of short fiction.