Car Horns

Written by Michael LaRocca


CAR HORNS Copyright 2004, Michael LaRocca

Let's pretend that you live in China. Perhaps not in my neighbor- hood, but in China. Let's also pretend that, unlike me, you own a car. A Volkswagen Santana, of course. Who do you honkrepparttar horn at?

Well, you honk at everyone who's in your way, and who you think is in your way, and who you are passing, and who you think is trying to pass you. Every bicycle needs a honk in caserepparttar 128643 driver can't see you. Every pedestrian, most definitely, because they're not looking at anything except their feet as they float out in front of you.

Every car does this, andrepparttar 128644 roads become a constant cacophany of car horns. The noise is such that everybody tunes it out in order to function, sorepparttar 128645 horns are pointless. Nobody is listening torepparttar 128646 horns. But honking them is a habitrepparttar 128647 Chinese driver can't break.

Writer School?

Written by Michael LaRocca


WRITER SCHOOL? Copyright 2004, Michael LaRocca

Here's something from my mailbag. "Dear Michael, do you need to do good in school if you want to be a writer? I stink at school and all my friends laugh at me when I tell them I want to write, but I'm serious." Followed by a sentence or two of "I need your words to encourage me" or some such nonsense.

Fortunately, a writing sample is rarely attached. If it is, either it's excellent or it stinks like rancid yak butter. There's a lot of middle ground inrepparttar writing world, of course, but for some reason it never seems to accompany these emails.

The message is usually (but not always) so filled with errors that I'm not gonna reprint them here or correct them when I reply lest I destroy some sensitive soul like a jackhammer to an eggshell. (It's ridiculous that I should even have such power, being a stranger and all.) Let's move on torepparttar 128641 relevant part,repparttar 128642 question, which actually contains several. This writer gets bonus points for brevity.

Do you have to be good in school? Given what's passing for English in some places, I'd certainly like to see more effort given to school. If you're a student reading this, please try to learn something while you can.

If you aspire to be an author and you did poorly in school, or if you're just plain uneducated, don't let it stop you. What we do as authors isn't taught in school. They teach grammar, and bless them. I can't teach that subject. If you're very fortunate, as I was, you'll stumble across some teachers who teach you how to think. But thinking isrepparttar 128643 beginning of writing, notrepparttar 128644 end, and grammar can be fixed later if you find some long-suffering editor (like me) willing to do it.

In other words, school can help you withrepparttar 128645 first step or two of your journey to be an author. Considering how many steps come after those, don't be discouraged by test results and report cards.

To distill what you think, feel and believe from allrepparttar 128646 trash floating around in your head, and then to actually put that on paperrepparttar 128647 way you mean to put it, is a skill that only comes from years of practice. They don't teach it in school. At least, no school I've ever attended. I struggled at this for 20 years or so after I graduated from college. That's where I learned to write. Not in a classroom.

In my travels throughrepparttar 128648 Matrix, I've met blind authors, deaf authors, dyslexic authors, authors writing in a second or third language, authors suffering partial paralysis, authors with various psychoses, authors who deal with more than one of these obstacles. What they overcome makes my complaint, that I'm too left-brained to be in this business, seem absolutely pathetic. And yours, about doing poorly in school.

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