Grasping for the Wind

Want to be a writer? I hope you have twenty years to spare.

Here's a hilarious piece over at the Oxford American about the steps you need to become a writer. George Singleton manages to marry writing with....picking up aluminum cans.

This plan will work if and only if the writer-to-be is, say, twenty-five years old and intends to live another fifty years. But it’s fun to play even if you start at age thirty or forty. Maybe it’ll give you the incentive to live past ninety....

Anyway, write one thousand words on the first day.

Now go out—this will work if and only if you live out in the country, in a state that doesn’t offer a nickel for cans, seeing as no one in those states throws nickels out the open truck window, I doubt, like they do where I live in Dacusville, South Carolina— with a plastic bag and pick up at least fifty aluminum cans. This might take as much as a quarter-mile of walking.

Come back home and place the cans upright. Stomp on them. This will reduce space. Throw the cans in some kind of container with a top—a rubber garbage can, for instance. If you live in an apartment complex, make sure that your neighbors don’t snoop around and steal your cans. Wait. You live in the country. You live in a place like Dacusville, South Carolina. Maybe I should’ve mentioned that you might be living in a trailer.

Anyway, put up the cans. Start thinking about tomorrow.

(HT: Worldmagblog)

Posted by John on January 10, 2008 10:25 AM | Posted to Literature and Language
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