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It has been a long time, no writing in the Literary Zone, because I have been busy with various writing projects.

Whenever I write, I try to follow to follow these three rules:

Write naturally. In the 1960s, the Beatles covered Buck Owens’ song “Act Naturally”. With writing, I try to write naturally. I don’t write on subjects I know little or nothing about, like calculus, arcane science fiction, Luxembourg politics, the eating habits of hobbits, myxomycetes, Sumerian philosophers, alchemy, and yak ranches. Instead, I just write on subjects that interest me.

The WISDOM (Write Interestingly, Succinctly, Directly, Okay Moron) Principle. Academic writing is notorious for being obtuse and for using incomprehensible jargon; that is why very few people willingly read scholarly journals and dissertations. I try to write simply and clearly. Sometimes, I even prefer using slang words rather than the words used in the National Spelling Bee to get my point across. I know that will make grammar teachers retch, but a good deal of slang words sound cool, dude.

Writer’s Block is common, and I try to cope with it as best as possible. There are some writers who can write a novel at the speed of light. Then are writers like me who become a blockhead when I am unable to write Dick and Jane sentences for hours. I am not a writer who turns to John Barleycorn or Mary Jane to overcome writer’s block. Instead, I eat a few snacks and take a nap.

Of course, I frequently do not follow these rules. Whenever that happens, I carry on writing after a cry and a few dozen temper tantrums.

Thought From This Blog

Be a writer–the more, the merrier, especially if you’re funny.

I could give a long discourse on the significance of the Thanksgiving holiday. But I know probably everyone is more interested celebrating than reading blogs. Consequently, I simply want to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving wonderland!. I hope everyone will have fun, frivolity, food, and more food. And please, try to be civil during discussions of politics, football, and overcooked green bean casseroles at the dinner table.

Weird Fact

A horse named Thanksgiving won the Travers Stakes in 1938. He was trained by Mary Hirsch, who was the first woman in the United States licensed as a Thoroughbred trainer.

The German artist Joseph Beuys once said, “Everyone is an artist”.  However, not everyone is great in every artistic endeavor. 

I tried to be a singer, but I sing like a frog stuck in a rack.  Nowadays whenever I sing the scales, my dog starts howling like a coyote on the lonesome prairie. 

I can’t draw except for Picassoish stick figures and squares that look like blobs of chewing gum.  I could call it “abstract art”, but everyone would know I have less talent than a middle school artiste. 

I played the cymbals in kindergarten, but I couldn’t stand the sound of clanging metal.  Besides, how many cymbalists became rock, rap, or even elevator music stars?  Maybe I should have played a different instrument like the glockenspiel, the bag pipes, or spoons. I might have been a contestant on American Idol. 

I did some acting in junior high school.  However, I didn’t have the movie star good looks, though I could always be a comedian.   Groucho Marx, Jackie Gleason, George Carlin, John Belushi, Rodney Dangerfield, and David Letterman were not exactly handsome, yet they made a fortune telling jokes.   

Yet the allure of Hollywood, Broadway, and the local comedy clubs didn’t allure me.  Maybe because I don’t like being a ham in front of an audience.  

I don’t know how to sculpt, I am not a great photographer, and I dance more like Fred Flintstone than Fred Astaire. 

That is why I write.  It is the one artistic endeavor I can do successfully. 

Writing for me is not easy.  Not only am I not a fast typist, I suffer from that dreadful malady—writers block.  Besides, with the internet, I spend too much time reading news stories and looking at sports scores than writing sentences and paragraphs. 

Besides not being easy, writing can be so exasperating.  I am a perfectionist when it comes to the written word.  I can spend hours writing a simple declarative sentence.  Besides, punctuation can be as nerve wracking as seeing the Greek letters in calculus theorems.  I would like to write something without punctuation, but then my writing would look like incomprehensible streams of consciousness. 

Yet the writer’s life does have its allures.  Even if I don’t write down a single word, I enjoy sitting in front of my trusty computer devising great thoughts.  While I am not a tailor or a tinkerer, I am definitely a great thinker. 

Like every wordsmith, I dream of authoring a New York Times bestseller or winning the Nobel Prize,  But even though I don’t, I will continue writing and writing. 

Weird Fact

When writing, Nobel laureate John Steinbeck used up to 60 pencils a day.