Writing Chronicles – GreenGoalie1
Two people wrote in to complain that I am not a real person and therefore I should not be writing stuff. Far be it from me to evade an existential and philosophical debate about identity and what constitutes a real person. (I learned on my correspondence course how to write stuff like what is in that last sentence.)
Our tutor, not the one from Wigan, the other one who claims to be a descendant of Shakespeare, the chap from Stratford-upon-Avon, she told us, that woman who wrote about Harry Potter wrote another book using a different name. That proves that a name of someone who does not exist can be a real person. I rest my case.
The correspondence course I am pursuing – we learn to use unusual words like that that are not in common parlance (there’s another one) – when we are trying to be writers and striving (another) to stand out from the rest of the millions of writers that abound (it’s how I tell ‘em) everywhere. My rule for you this week is to eschew (look it up) common words when you want to write something that is not naff.
Apart from the two idiots who complained last week, there was a positive response from one reader of this blog who was so fired up by my account that he determined to find a correspondence course so that he can learn to be a great writer too like me.
Unfortunately, he cannot travel to a course that might be running in his neighbourhood on account that there are none in the immediate vicinity of Long Lartin prison. Anyway, Bludger Carmichael said that other than going over the wall the governor will not let him out to do a course. Now he has so much time on his hands (twenty two years), he will pursue a writing qualification so helping him on his anger management course while detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Go Bludger!
Ethelred from Birkenhead is one of my fellow students corresponding on the correspondence course. It is not just the tutors who sling their barbed arrows of criticism at us students. Fellow students do it as well. Apparently, it seems us great writers have to be able to flail and be flailed with words if we are to be great writers.
I hope you are keeping up with all the unusual words I use when I could be using ordinary words that everyone knows. It’s like those politicians tearing the arse off each other, as my grandmother would say, when they argue over getting out or staying in Europe. Like writers attacking writers, politicians attack each other in the hope that it might make them better politicians,
or just help them get their own back, or take over the running of the country. None of them tell the truth, but neither do writers so that is not an issue.
Like readers of books, the listeners to the politicians have to take with a grain of salt all the rubbish that is being said. It is difficult to keep serious when two of the outing people are on the tele. One of them looks and acts like the village idiot and the other is the village idiot but they gang up on Davey Boy because he upset them once and now they won’t let go of his leg, like Growler Punchion’s dog when he hasn’t been fed for a few days. It is a pity they can’t all blather on like Nige the Farage; at least he makes us laugh.
Anyway, I was telling you about Ethelred from Birkenhead who nearly gave up the course after the first week because of the way his little poem and opening piece of short fiction were savaged by most of the group. The two tutors also thought the pieces were shit but have a more roundabout way of saying it.
In support of Ethelred, I penned (=wrote) a supportive commentary that said I liked his poem about the time his classmates threw him into the slimy mud along the banks of the river Mersey at Rock Ferry. He captured the quintessential feeling as the slimy mud eased its way into every orifice of his naked body. They had thoughtfully disrobed him before throwing him in the mud. His short story about the day he discovered he was an outstanding drag artist, to my mind, captured the inescapable power of fate and the inevitability of déjà vu when you look back and see what was really going on.
I read that last sentence in a book with loads of long words and thought it impressive at the time and longed for the day when I could write it. Now I feel a sense of achievement in having used it. I think I got most of the words in the right place. It shows how important it is to read if you want to be a writer.
Starting today there will be a new feature each week in this blog that is a quote from individuals that nobody has ever heard about. This will make a change from all those noxious (that is a cracker!) quotes that everyone has heard of by chaps who had nothing else to do only make up quotes. Send me any handy quotes by a nobody you know. To make the quotes look impressive we will give this part of the blog a title all of its own.
Quote of the week Oxymorons are not silly cows. (P. McGinty)
