C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

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06/15/2010 • 11:46 PM 0

Cool Word of the Day

Inceration

The act of covering something in wax.

i.e. The villain of the waxworks murdered his victims by incerating them in hot wax.

(There was a bad Paris Hilton movie along those lines…or was that her sex tape?)

Filed under: Cool Word of the Day, cool word of the day

06/15/2010 • 10:48 PM 0

Writers are misunderstood all the time. Horror authors are often asked, for instance, why they identify with the evil monster. (Nobody asks them if they identify with the hero, for some reason.) misinterpretation is rampant, especially in song lyrics. For a long time, I thought the lyric was “I believe in marigolds!” (not miracles.)

You must see this site about the Top Ten Most Misinterpreted Song Meanings. Great reading! And yes, I believed the Phil Collins myth about In the Air Tonight. Fantastic read!

Filed under: Unintentionally hilarious, web reviews, top ten most misinterpreted songs

06/15/2010 • 7:06 PM 0

On Truman Capote Love and A-Team Hate

Truman Capote once said of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, “That’s not writing! That’s typing!” Yeah, he was a real bitch sometimes. However:

1. I admire In Cold Blood very much,

2. found his biography tragic yet inspiring,

3. loved both the Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Toby Young movies

4. and yearn for the good old days when a flamboyantly gay and genuinely wild character could be high on a nationally syndicated talk show and make Dick Cavett squirm.

They don’t build literary figures like Truman Capote anymore.

BONUS:

As Hannibal said, “I love it when a plan comes together.”* **

*If you catch the old reference, your childhood was wasted, too.

**If you catch the new reference, you’ve recently wasted a couple of hours at the movie theater.

Filed under: Writers, A-Team, Truman Capote, writers

06/15/2010 • 12:34 PM 0

I resolve to be a better supervillain, uh, no, I mean, writer.

Amidst a flurry of productivity pumping out short stories lately I was reminded of a book I read a long time ago. Had I heeded its message when I read it I would have several books behind me by now.

The book is The War of Art, Winning the Inner Creative Battle by Steven Pressfield. (Highly recommended!) One key is, treat it like it’s a job. You don’t wait for time to surface, you dive deep to get it. You don’t wait for inspiration to strike, you assume inspiration will appear once you start typing (sadly this never happened for the writers of Sex & the City, the story of three hookers and their transvestite dad, Kim Cattrail.)

Don’t be a dilettante. Establish a writing schedule and stick to it.

I’ve called this meeting because we must come up with a plan to kill Superman!

Whoops! Sorry, wrong speech.

Filed under: book reviews, publishing, Rant, rules of writing, writing tips, writers, writing schedule, writing tip

06/15/2010 • 12:27 PM 0

Most Depressing Writing Tip Ever

Get a Merck’s Manual or just peruse medical databases or watch House. However you get the information, I find that delving into the perverse ways God screws us over can really take your writing to another level.

I had a plot problem in a story because I wanted something interesting to keep a man from getting on a plane to attend his brother’s funeral. I found something exotic and X-files wierd for him to suffer and voila, interesting things ensued.

It’s a ghastly world. Babies are born with two heads and people have strange perceptions of the world, like that it’s a happy place, for instance.

Filed under: writing tips, existential angst, medical conditions, writing tip

06/15/2010 • 12:23 PM 0

Best Spin City joke ever!

Mike, upon learning somebody’s dating a writer:

“A writer? A writer is just an actor who’s too lazy to wait tables!”

Filed under: Uncategorized, Writers

06/15/2010 • 12:19 PM 0

Moving on from Burma

Myanmar used to be called Burma. A secretive totalitarian military regime took over. Apparently the media doesn’t like it but it is reality. Reporters must stop saying “Further tragedy in Burma today, sometimes called Myanmar” or “Myanmar, formerly known as Burma” or “Burma! Burma! Burma!”

Filed under: Uncategorized, Burma, Media, Myanmar, Reportage

06/15/2010 • 1:03 AM 0

Death to Adverbs

An editor sent me a pdf today so I could check my column for an upcoming mag issue.* I made a small change and then, startled, stared hard at the first paragraph again. Had I really written, “She asked me demandingly, “BLAHBLAHBLAH…”?!

I sent the editor a note that I really needed that to change to “she demanded…” whiningly.

He came back with, “Can you demand a question?” (inquisitively)

I e-mailed back, “Sure. Demanded catches her demeanor but you can demand an answer in the form of a question.” (breezily)

And even if you can’t do that grammatically I don’t care. I trust my ear over grammatic semantics and there’s a time to use an adverb like “demandingly.” That time is never or two weeks after the sun explodes. (he said defiantly)

Not sure. I’ll go look it up. (assiduously)

BONUS:

Folks in the magazine business always call it “the book” not the “issue.” I always suspiciously thought that betrayed insecurity on their part.

Filed under: grammar, writing tips, adverbs, death to adverbs, writing rules, writing tips

06/15/2010 • 12:54 AM 0

Writing Tip: Can you say it?

I just finished listening to a CBC Radio interview with Clive James. He’s one of those fascinating writers who also speak in complete sentences and paragraphs, off the top of his head as if from a prepared text that’s informative, entertaining and engaging. He’s led a wonderful life and he’s been paying attention, it seems, to everything.

He said something that will stick with me: “Sayability.” In everything he writes, one of his tests for whether it’s worthy is whether he can say it, perform it, speak it to an audience and be easily understood.

Nice. It’s a solid standard and makes me want to check out his book Cultural Amnesia.

I can say that.