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From: mdubuque@yahoo.com (Matthew)
Newsgroups: alt.surrealism
Subject: Re: HOW TO AVOID WRITER'S BLOCK?
Date: 13 Aug 2003 19:38:59 -0700
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mdubuque@yahoo.com (Matthew) wrote in message news:<3aea8d23.0308121855.28ddc01b@posting.google.com>...
> I like to write. And sometimes there's a thing called writer's block
> that gums up the works, like a fly in the ointment or a Republican at
> a party.
>
> That's why I occasionally rely on the prehumous work of Steve Martin,
> comedian, on how to deal with this madaly.
>
> He suggests writing until you get to the point of a block and then
> taking any book at random from your library, inserting a choice phrase
> from a random page, and then make it fit. Works for me!
>
> For example, I was writing a short piece on human rights, attempting
> vainly to argue that somehow freedom from death squads was a freedom
> that people aspire to in the Southern Hemisphere. I was laughed out
> of the bathroom.
>
> Nobody remembered, but the stone kept the little raindrop's secret.
> And the stone, who never dies, told the new plants who were born and
> the new clouds who arrived were told the tale of the little wisp of a
> cloud who let out a little raindrop.
>
> So from the dining room I continued to drone on that surely the right
> to life itself was more fundamental than secondary rights such as the
> freedom to vote. Because if you are dead, you will never vote, nor
> will you ever have freedom of speech.
>
> So logically, it is more humane to focus on human rights which are
> precursor rights to the others. Freedom from death squads, freedom
> from premature death caused by drinking contaminated water etc.
>
> My how they laughed. They encouraged me to go into sit down comedy.
>
> Shannon was interested in discovering the amount of redundancy in
> English prose and how this might affect the reliability of the text.
> Psychologists have become interested in the effect of redundancy on
> human memory.
>
> So I rephrased my ideas to her. I said that one of the best
> indicators of human rights is the United Nations Development Index,
> which weights various quality of life factors including infant
> mortality, life expectancy and literacy in grading nations.
>
> She laughed and left. I had not entertained her.
>
> So I ran after her and started saying, you know what's REALLY wrong
> with this pathetic nation? That nobody dances in the street, they are
> so busy being angry, road rage, soccer rage, air rage, sports rage,
> rage of the day, rage de jour, such an angry nation that calls itself
> peace-loving.
>
> And I showed Shannon a few of the new Cuban dance steps I've learned,
> dancing just the two of us to the music which is always in my head and
> you know, now she thinks I'm a deep thinker.
>
> Just because I danced with her.
>
> Matthew
The two quotes chosen at random and inserted into the above piece were
the bit about the little cloud (from the book Our Word is Our Weapon)
and the quote about Shannon (of Shannon and Weaver, giants of
electrical engineering, talking about reduncancy).
So then I thought of the girl's name Shannon and made up the part
about dancing to try to make it all fit.
Matthew
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