HOW TO WRITE WITHOUT GIVING A FUCK
Illustration Credit to Me, The Artist Currently Known As Me
ALRIGHT, look.
Every pen-named punk on here will tell you to write all of your articles with something called “poise”.
Poise?
Never heard of it. Sounds like a D-tier French dessert, one of the ones made out of something you’d never think to make a dessert out of. Like wheatgrass. Or pebbles.
Let me give you some real advice with some words that don’t make you sound like you have a stick up your ass.
By my professional calculations, roughly 99% of the people on here spend 99% of their time complaining about writing.
B O R I N G
Who cares what your writing looks like? Sometimes you gotta let loose. Talk about something people aren’t going to read and don’t look back. In my neck of the woods, this is called “catharsis”.
Catharsis.
Now there’s a good sounding word, like something you’d say at the end of the best sex of your life.
Follow my recommendations to the letter and you’ll be writing like you don’t care in no time.
STEP ONE
Pre-writing phase. A lot of people overlook this phase, but it is crucial. You must set the mood. Writing is about EMOTION after all. Punks will waste your time with fluff like “wake up at 5 AM” or “write after a good cup of coffee/workout” or even (gag me) “write when you feel good”.
Yikes. Keep your life coaching skills to your 500 followers on Instagram, thanks.
What you want to do is wake up whenever the fuck you want. Make sure you’ve previously submitted a trash article to a high-profile publication — the snootier the better. If you don’t know how to write a trash article, here’s a great read that explains it. The idea is to wake up with a rejection, so the first thing you see when you wake up is an email from some narc telling you you’re not good enough.
Perfect. Channel that discontent. Let it ferment, but not for too long. You’re making 2-buck chuck here, not Château Smith Haut Lafitte. Resist the urge to write for now. You don’t want to bust your nut early.
In the meantime, go find some articles telling you how to write. If you’re having trouble finding such articles, here’s a fun game to choose one.
- Open Medium.com
- Roll a die (I prefer d20, but you do you)
- Click on a random article, scroll to the bottom.
- Click on a related article at the bottom. Repeat this step the number of times that you rolled. You’re basically guaranteed to land on a self-help, writing tips, or success story article.
STEP TWO
Check your stats a few times.
STEP THREE
You’re ready to write. But about what, you ask.
I don’t know? Why are you asking me? This is an article on how not what.
Once you’ve picked a topic, go ham. Throw formatting to the wind. Who cares where your line breaks are? Editors? If you think you’re doing anything but self-publishing, you’ve got the wrong article.
Make sure that you pour your angst into the article. If it doesn’t read like a My Chemical Romance ballad, revisit step two.
“When I was a young boy / my father took me into the city / to see a marching band”
STEP FOUR
Make sure your intro is longer than the article itself so people know this story isn’t about them. Delete the conclusion. Leave the reader hanging. Suspense. Publish immediately.
Never look back.
I’m not projecting, you’re projecting.