A Gift To Remind You Why

Never Publish First Drafts — An Aged Writer’s Word To The Virgin Writer.

If You Could Strip Back All These Experiences That Has Made You — What Would You Utter Back There?

INTRODUCTION

WHY.

Ah! — the word Why:

’Tis the abrasive current within the English Language:

Why! Why? Why Is It Thus and Why For Such Thusness?

The bane of so many — such goes to the impaired and anguished folks. Why too, am I the same — why is it empty and without blame? ’Tis a word — amalgamated with ideas behind it, I am too well acquainted with too — though not as blind as some when I Utter it; the subtle daring, the sly it may contain whilst it moistens the rafters of its ideas — I feel as though I am being led down some furlough and empty valley whenever it draws itself near.

I impart upon you firstly with the Whys: The crux and crucible of the English Language; along with Nothing and Tomorrow. Oblivion and Hope captivated in briefly said but dearly believed words — Like it. When you write, Why becomes a beating shame of any reason why you do — Why, To What Ends? — Why so? — Why Cannot It be? — Why Can’t It Be? — Why am I to Write — or Why I Write. Thanks, MR. Blair.

In estranging ramblings cut on by the slide of minced ham, Why can be the most potent of words to ask yourself — Why is he there — Why does he need to be there? And on and on, and believe me-true it can go on and on if left untempered. It can disparage you to give it up. Or, it can reveal so much, in shades and contrasts that goes out your unaged and hinging method of reason; Perhaps becoming very aged indeed!

Never mind all these vapid goals one sets out to do; Never mind all those useless chants too — those excuses in need of a classroom. If you haven’t got your bearings altogether by the stark reasoning done by the word Why. Honeychild, no amount of papers justified by the expanses examined will ever bring you forthrightly to the ends you seek.

Concluding down with Whys and the oblique Wherefores at times, I’d like to start with a Question I received in conversation with one of my favorite Writers or In-Being-Writers as I like to fondly adorn. Estella Rua ’tis her, frankly brilliant name — someone who gives off such a glorious aura, especially for any aborning writers. Luving the energies you imbibe! But the question in portent is this:

J.A.: “If I could broach to you this Question: What is it that you would’ve loved to have known when you began as a writer? What would they be?”

E.R.: “Hmm, I think it comes down to plotting scenes rather than overarching plots. The nuts and bolts rather than the lofty ideas and themes. But I wouldn’t have listened.”

Substance, dear Estella, I could distill it down to. The Thematics and the Grand Visions are all wonderful, but like a mattress without springs, it goes nowhere — nowhere, anywhere good; especially in a flux that would discourage most birds.

Giving the stretch for Substance, and the Manner a scene may be progressed thence — briefly, but I absolutely will expand at a later date.

Substance is like the slow burn after the punching strike; Realization — afforded only by the living complexion of a place. Themes run off in cycles to one another, but Substance is revelry and relevancy to the Specifics. Like the deep breath before the big plunge. The realization of how you can drown comes upon you, like no other time — you’ve toyed with the ideas ahead of this moment; the lines are still there, on the face and within the mind, but the sudden or slow-burning realization is the substance; It’s History — the act and pion that strikes you so softly, couching you from behind, until it finally hits— One character's relation and especially History to one another. Figure two long had enemies, and an end by happenstance comes, whether a duel or some type of confirmation of their long-lasting villainy to one another — It isn’t revenge; I believe such to only be thematics of a craft, it's rather a compulsion of all these tiny things, hurtling together to build them into an unenviable body — History.

It’s the centered body or even prison away from the superficial and easily portable tropes — like using the Nazis to signify evil whilst never knowing why they are evil; soon one day, they’ll never know Why or How they became Evil for all voices who heed their approaches. You see the Red and Black banners; the gleaming of eagerly weighing faces; the armbands — the spotlights, but Why? Why are they Evil?— Substance in a character is the weighing of their History and their relation, swaying in action by the weight they have; the avoidances and discomforts, and how they navigate from their world, into the larger surrounding.

Of course, this is just limited to the singular person between another person. It's subtle to count and not to limit it to the fates — it's always the conclusion of all these things; Where can this go? Asking simple questions like this deflates a good amount of Themes simply with the most rudimentary of inspections; If you can reason the Why, the Substance will appear before you. Even if it can be pushed through by another one’s reason, if it holds up to its specific reasoning — as in the manner we are speaking here, and that is of singular narratives — then it holds true in of itself. Whether or not you agree doesn’t matter, its History is its bare relation to the belaying forces outside it.

But of course, the range I have shown here is so apologetically tiny, I have to hold in my gusto and not burst from laughing about it. In Writing there is no Firmity in the rules — though, I prefer the longhand.

Why. Why! Why? — Rattle with it, and keep Rattling still.

PART THE FIRST — AN INTRODUCTION-SAY-CHARLIE

I was overhearing in another stint — with my head perked over the counterline of a Cafe somewhere — my nose up, and my eyes covered mostly by my blinkers, about this marvelous little conversation. Thankfully, it wasn’t in the same nature as this obscene one I heard just moments earlier — Ah! — But rather one of curiosity, which is ever more passive and digestible!

So I Overheard them — what I say to myself — and whilst listening in, I homed through this path, of these pitfalls and jubilating passages, all swarming around this innate desire to know — and to know — do you want to guess what? Writing — of being that interminable or tempestuous Writer; endowed by divinity seemingly in their sudden wise perks of creation or hopefully avoiding the sudden shocks such as a shotgun misplaced and fired too close to the head can be, if all falls asunder — if you catch my driftwood.

Away from tempestuous realizing asides, In this, totally Public conversation, a literal lightbulb blew over my head, and all was cloaked in sudden darkness — But a lucky Jim rejuvenated the currency and all was in the light once more.

This sparked, a sudden flux of fizzing and jutting inside of my body, and Yowza-frank! I had this here brilliant idea — which we are spiraling towards at an untoward pace, I think you’ll agree — I hope you do…

What I picked from these two lovely jubilees was what a stranger would make of something that binds together a Writer — unspecific here, but excuse my common fallacy of generalization — so let me continue with Author as that asserts a larger spectrum of what a Writer may endure as being as one within themselves jutted upon the blank page for all to witness and bare. As their own Authorcrat… Ah, the puns. Self-publishing, you owe us so many of them!

Judging by Nighthawks — the expectation is there for me to continue in a Sayy-Accent of a Nightly Detective but ol’ Doctor of the North here will do!

I wish I could remember when I first picked up my scribe and went tumbling down onto the page, a hail of ink and perfumes flying all jetsom — confounded by a similar desire as they. To know, the Desire to know. An unearthly child as though I was once, or harboring still — what would you be without all this experience? If you could strip it all back and away, where would you find yourself without? Like a musician without the knowledge of any Harmony or Chord? The notes would prang and the spectators would be rioting up a right awful tish. You become all but nurtured — only being able to cross up your legs and bow down repeatedly as they hurl you asunder into the wooden stage for your lack thereof. The violence alone of stripping back of what you couldn’t have possibly perceived. Once had, it’s always had; like History, it’s your Substance.

Yes, I do use the terms Aged to the Virgin — as that is what Writing does to you, it Consummates you into Being, into the flux of memory and unbridled thoughts — however hunkered, hungered, and festering they make themselves to be.

God forbids us to know where half of those Strained, squeaking, and bemoaning notes come from in all those Blues’ Records — Oh Lord! It’s his substance; it’s Ma Rainey’s Subject to know of herself also. All the scandals and trials behind the darting eyes.

Through the widening board of tapped Fountain pens may unsheathe all terror towards you —if you’re a tempering soul solicit — or garnishing yourself with a pickling of saving dignity to endure immensely darkening times; as all dark times are never stagnant, they progress sometimes in the most grueling and hurting fashions one could devise if the daring desire possesses you most precious.

But how does this all enfold back to First Drafting? In a spout of jest, I believe it's all the things you wanted to say — minus all the grammatical errors and lack of coherence, and batty logic one writes over a large pint of Whiskey-rue — but frankly, you shouldn’t say. Not all want to hear total honesty, especially all of the time; most can agree upon that writ. Like a romantic relationship coming to wed itself, living with total honesty would dissolve that union before the honeymoon thighs are lifted high enough to reach the ecstatic sky. It’s a temperament, you could say, to curve that sudden expulsion of the bleeding words upon the salivated pages. Others in affording jest would say, it’s could Writing. All can write, but to cohere it to some form away from the rambunctious ramblings of madmen is Writing, I.E. Editing and Drafting.

I just went over this piece again before adding all these additions, and my! I thought I had a winner on first bets — Ah! Doctor, never can that be! Always, something so quirky and small starts to linger on me, on my eyes and I see it all fall faulty in salty tears and aching headwinds. Even by a gross mistake.

So that’s all the basics had away with — again, in writing there are no true rules to aright yourself by; you can be as doxy as peroxide is to virgin hair. But I almost believe in enterally, all must submit to some form — can things truly be transmutable in of themselves? Would that require no outsider observer — can that ever be? Certainly, we all perceive things differently, but unless we take action about it, the thing in itself remains as it was. Am I waffling on like a damp biscuit for the sake of whaling? Hasn’t one sworn themselves to finding out what is Drafting? Then please, let me conclude you with some arighting fashion of satisfaction in the next Act.

Whilst I write this, I am versed in the Latin prodigy of Carl Orff: Carmina Burana —

PART THE SECOND— A FASHION OF WORDS

I believe drafting on the fashionable word is like the drafting of a ship. There are these long planks that make up the prime skeleton but somewhere, in-between it all are these little wooden pegs holding it all together. I’m speaking of course about Wooden Ships here, I don’t know how applicable it is to Steel-Hulled or even Carbon-fabricated ones is; perhaps even more so, considering all the little decisions that have to be made to a standard. But a peg runs its own special, unspoken course, woven into the Skeleton of the vessel, like what I mentioned before in Themes and Substance, the skirting flesh of the vessel is like the concept of Themes alluded to, whilst again, I return to the Skeleton theme as being the worn history inside.

Run your course well, Master Shallow or beach on primary shores so abrupt and so convinced upon!

So once a form starts appearing before you, which may take a certain chelating or perhaps, hammering to attain. Then you may go on forth and strip back all the auditory padding that begets frowns and striding looks, for leaving behind all the jokes, Idiot’s Idioms, and any other compacted and pasty language you thought so smart to take away from that billboard that day.

Stop, Master Shallow! You are becoming that evasion of Substance, to flummox only as the beached wall on the shore, that swam too close to well-known by deceitfully uneven shores. You’re taking someone else's potential of failure aboard, especially if they have equipped their illy pen without considerations of your own. Raining cats and dogs! — Oh, you weren’t thinking at all that day were you now? Fish, yes I can take that, but large mammals est-twisted far from Virgina to land somewhere in Alberta. Na — not taking that illusion of fancy far mate!

When you’re reaching for the Dictionary perhaps a sudden shock that kills the will to think of anything — tongued tied, they call it. And when you believe a synonym would work so well next to the previous word of the same family you just wrote, Stop! Don’t you dare and do it! It would acquire you as much sense as saying: Yes, Yea, Aye, Affirmative in one beguiling sentence. Unless the sly tongue works on wit, even then, use it sparingly, as it taxes the ears to no clear end.

Why not always begin with the simplest of words to anything that has you in a stooper? Never use acronyms, they only take language further down into a remorseless pit of nothingness.

Be wise in your procurement of words — Be wise like some oblique Wizard in a faraway land in the middle country that remains so tactfully undisclosed — conjure your words precisely, for time, is so precious; Turning the strokes of the phrase can carry the shifting weights of all that you apply your wit to, and make it into something, Other than the mad feastings of a simpering fool. Apathetic reading is no fun game for any.

I could never be as specific for all the pieces you’re all writing now — from which, this hoping for my coaching words to be compatible without fault; Frankly, that would astonishing on my behalf if I could beget you all that advice, perhaps a hotline for writers. But by Principles I could beset you with a certain type of consideration for you then to take, and figure out in your situations what it must be. Are you ready?:

1. Draft your Vessel’s skeleton well — When it starts leaking, you know where to find the offending peg.

2. Never try to beguile an audience by affronting humor — the substance of Wit may bring you through alright, at least to the most attentive; But when a joke fails, the odor is felt on the remaining pages.

3. Curve the desire to add interpolations that distract the reader — perhaps from your awful writing or not; perhaps because you enjoy disruptive influences. Either/or, few of you’re readers gain the same mirth by extended scenes as you — especially if they’re like the Overthrower’s scene from Macbeth. Dear Lordy me.

4. Never use an overtly long word where a short one will do.

5. Never fully submerge yourself in a form where you become so easily shatterable as the form you knit every word to. Let it slip out — you, every once and a while.

6. And, calm down on your usage of the Ands — of the Buts — of the Becauses. Show us, not tell us. I’m not descended to the grave yet, neither should you.

7. And, lastly, cut all pretentious “Therefore” and “Thus” away. Use sound logic to argue you, not around the shaping words that carry too much of the weight, leaving one with a distilling air of disatisfaction all about.

If you catch yourself following all these rules too closely. Flummox yourself awake — shake up the whole canon again. Writing cannot be under authority; even of the most enduring ones that submit to legacy too fondly. Believe me, I’m faulty of all these too.

And if you’re reading this back in Legacy, you know where the last part comes from. MR. Blair.

Truly, you may say, Comes down to all this: What you Ought to Say; What you needn’t Say; and, What you Desire to Say. Helpful nor? But never take this as the knobs which contrast a picture into full resolution. Rotate at your own will — rather, as principles to help wrangle the uncared beast down and away from beleaguering eyes, casting only in sunlight.

Never be allured away in not doing something on paper. It cannot hurt, but once it is published, the fluxing works of envious spites and applying spirits thereafter will ply your words to all types of reasoning. Woe-betide ya, dear Author, for alluring the conjurations of others. You did your role. Let placating doctors of other soothing crafts shape the rip—rattle—and role of your words.

Understand why they say not to write in this way, once you do, write in that way, just to grasp the experience and seek its knowledge of placement and portions. This ladder of importance, with varying rung sizes and distances between the rungs, gauges the importance of the wherefore behind the word that conveys the ideas.

A ladder where so many fall off or stay camping on a certain rung of their incited comforts. Whether they should or not — that's a truth that has to be applied like the dutiful Lawyer to each and every case. Not being dished out on mass.

Out of fear of this becoming an exercise for the vocally beleaguering. I call it all down to a tidy rest now.

Ah! So deliciously alluring and tame in the preface, yet once in action, it can became so confounded to the daring points of some insanity;-

Of maladies which quake & quack the jaw in a silly juddering manner, as though the person was traveling down a set of withered, mossy-stone stairs!

How I review this piece.

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As ever, Dear Reader.