Category Archives: writerlyAdvice

“Why don’t you write books people can read?” Nora Joyce, to her husband James

The serious writer and her bush

The serious writer looks back on a long and distinguished career as an herbologist. Her favourite bush grows in Central Park and is called Noah’s Ark by the residents because of the myriad of animals that it shelters.

The serious writer and his social life

The serious writer lifts his ideas like limp lychees from anywhere and anyone. Anything and anyone crossing his path becomes material. He turns silly stuff into junk and junk into art.

The serious writer and his first novel

He moves his household to a deserted location called Loch Llamorgan. He buys a large shovel, which he covers with tattoos lifted from a book of Maori motives. He anticipates a journey of many moons. He drives to the local liquor store and purchases supplies.

The serious writer and his woman

The woman at the side of the serious writer is devoted to his cause, which he never clearly articulated to her. She is tall, but not too tall, a blonde who could, in the right light, be taken for a brunette. She has a black bushel of strong, willful pubic hair.

Off the Record

“it was all miserable: the weather, the health, the job, the relationship. everything seemed soggy and wet. i had a cold. i couldn’t face one more day in the office or else. nobody loved me or if they did, i had not met them yet.”

Y

why am i looking for inspiration right now? i can still see sunsets, can still get annoyed in the twice daily traffic jams, car against car, making lovers wait and families, bicyclists cruising gaily – what’s missing? friendship is nothing to me – brotherhood everything. there are a few men who earned my attention and

why i write

I write for the bum on a bike with its missing spokes and the saddle of leather half eaten by rats. I write for the woman, who bends the sun to her will behind her glasses. I write for the people in power, who don’t know half of the words for poverty. I write for

deliver yourself from your great toe

the I Ching says: Deliver yourself from your great toe. Then the companion comes, And him you can trust. at the start, the human condition includes extended periods of solitary confinement (we shall not call it prison for lack of sentimental sentence and judicial joviality but who really knows?): what a beautiful, perfectly horrible happening