(NOTE: I have not been feeling very verbose in recent days, so much of my blogging activity has consisted of quoting extensively from other people’s work. This post will be no different.)

Via ethanham.com

Emily Conyngham has an excellent post at Open Salon entitled “Seven Steps to Becoming a Superior Writer.” Note that she did not say a good writer, or even a successful one, but a superior writer. Presumably, the sort of writer who always wears turtlenecks and emits self-importance that way that some of us emit perspiration. But I digress—she might be as big of a smartass as me, if not bigger. Here are a few enjoyable highlights:

1. If at all possible, arrange to be born in a small town, raised with traditional values, which you can laud as building your backbone. The insular environment can be reworked to other purposes; you escaped in the nick of time, with only your wits and a battered hand-me-down suitcase, as soon as you could save bus fare from your job shoveling pig swill. It does not hurt to have been poor, or at least poorer than your stupid neighbors. You can mock those gomers later, when you’re a degreed city dweller.

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3. Hold grudges. These are precious fuel. Hopefully, you were tormented by the other children for being different. You should Never, Ever forget their cruelty, especially that of Homer Finkelheimer, who will don a different disguise and appear in Every Single Thing you write. Your repeated mutilations of his sorry carcass will become the art for which you will be famed. To be a “Finkelheimer” will become part of the common lexicon, synonomous with the nether regions of the male anatomy.

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