*this is not referring to any kind of S&M, so if you’re here looking for a how-to guide for sexual perversion, this isn’t it. I wish I could write an exciting and salacious post on how to rev up your sex life, but my days of swinging from the chandelier are behind me. *Tip if that’s your goal, I’d say call an electrician first. Make sure it won’t come crashing down since each of those damn kids added an extra ten pounds and totally messed up my BMI.

As I stated earlier, I’m using this to chronicle the process of becoming an author. So here goes:

WRITE A DAMN BOOK. I used my COVID-19 quarantine isolation to write a book. In fact, i wrote four. Yup, FOUR. Does that mean anything? Am i another Margaret Mitchell waiting in the wings? BTW, she wrote ‘Gone with the Wind.’ If you write a book, tip number one: use the right font. A good default is Times New Roman. That’s an industry standard, and should you choose to do anything more than read it yourself, a fancy font may look good to your eyes, but it won’t wash in the publishing world. You might say, hey, you’ve taken away my creativity. I chose that font for a reason.’ Good for you, but if your story needs a special font to sell it, maybe you need a better story that will look good in any font. Agents, authors, hired professionals, anyone other than yourself want Times New Roman. ( a good point to muse is ‘what does Times Old Roman’ look like, but that’s a topic for another day.) using this font will save you a lot of time otherwise you will have to convert your manuscript to Times New Roman.

Tip Number 2- become familiar with formatting a manuscript. As well as a preferred font, the industry also prefers all manuscripts to look the same. One thing I know for sure is it must be double spaced. It’s easier to read and leaves room for anyone to make notes. If you are submitting your book someplace special, make sure you understand what the requirements are for that submission. You don’t want your work disregarded on a technicality.

Tip number 3- go online to some free teach yourself grammar site. If once again you’re saying to yourself ‘geez, all these rules are really crushing my creative groove,’ too bad. If you want to write a book you must like words, and words need to make sense to tell a story. So a grammar review shouldn’t be too painful. The only reason not to do this is because you are too lazy.

Tip number 4- do the above before you even start writing.

Enjoy your Monday.

They say you should blog if you want to be a writer, i guess because you have to write if you blog. So I’m writing.

Guess what! I won the Pulitzer Prize in literature!

Psyche! April Fool!

Should i write about fools? Why not. There are plenty of them out there. Tom Petty wrote a song about it ‘Fooled Again (and i don’t like it)’ only he was the fool. Some girl fooled him, about love, i would say. He didn’t like it. But was he really a fool? I don’t think so. He got played. Could happen to anybody.

There are plenty of fools we elected into office. We elected them based on what they said they’d do. Were we fools when we elected them into office?Were we fooled by empty promises? Maybe we were just foolish thinking things would be different.

Me? Am i a fool thinking i have potential career as writer? Probably. Not that I’m i bad writer, i may be, but there are a lot of bad writers fooling themselves into obscurity. A lot of good writers, too. To actually get an agent who scores you a contract, that’s the holy grail. That’s you winning a gold medal. Or the lottery. Did you know many people are going to finance their retirement with their lottery winnings? Are they fools? To quote Billie Eilish, ‘DUH.’

And those people who think Covid-19 is a hoax, and wearing masks are useless? What about those that think the new RNA vaccines are really minuscule computer chips to control people? Is he a fool?

I know the answer to that last question. It’s YES. I know because he’s my brother.

Happy April 1st.