Kesey's Advice

•~•

One of these days you’re going to have a visitation. You’re going to be walking down the street and across the street you’re going to see God standing over there on the corner motioning to you saying, ‘Come here, come to me.’ And you will know it’s God, there will be no doubt in your mind [...] And God will tell you to come to him and sing his praises. And he will promise that if you do, all the muses that ever visited Shakespeare will fly in your ear and out of your mouth like golden pennies. It’s the job of the writer in America to say, ‘Fuck you God, fuck you and the Old Testament you rode in on, fuck you.’ The job of the writer is to kiss no ass, no matter how big and holy and white and tempting and powerful. Anytime anybody says come to me and says, ‘Write my advertisement, be my ad manager,’ tell him, ‘Fuck you.’ The job is always to be exposing God as the crook...

Plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom...

There is evidence of bad shit having been survived before.
Ancient Advice Left in cave by Wise French Caveman:
‘When Bigbad Shit come, no run scream hide.
Try paint picture of it on wall.
Drum to it. Sing to it. Dance to it.
This give you handle on it.’

~•~

Talkin Shop: Lies & Fiction

I never lie about fiction.



~*~

The Basics

And these basics are severely overlooked in BFA/MFA Writing Programs:

Prose Fiction * Imaginative prose narratives that focus on one or more characters who undergo a change or development as they interact with other characters and deal with their problems.

The essence of fiction is narration, the relating or recounting of a sequence of events or actions.  Imaginative literature, although grounded in facts, is less concerned with the factual record than with the revelation of truths about life and human nature.

Writing About Literature, 11th ed.

Edgar V. Roberts

~*~