The Writers Guild

Now, observing every detail and being prepared are the starting place for an intelligible writing act. However, good writing goes deeper. Writers carefully select what they will write about. Like poets they agonize over every paragraph, word and syllable. They don’t bring all of War and Peace to the boards. When it was only one paragraph of one page of one chapter that was exciting enough to talk about. Writers should create vivid, living pictures in the readers mind, even if they have no visual memory at all. A successful compilation of the referred qualities earned me an invitation to the city’s most dreaded critic’s convention.

Having read from a section of the invitees, I began my wild and random imaginations and could almost place the faces of those ones that are trying out their hand in writing, the type that show amateurish habits throughout their pieces. I could identify the full time comedians who must have spent years pursuing a career in being funny; it would be easy to tell the recycle bins. Their general presentation is like a boring repertoire by a band that forgot to rehearse an infamous artist’s songs. Just how do your re-write the same thing that was written a decade ago and been featured in over twenty magazines and still hit a historical low as far as that subject is concerned? Go and read some literature for further assistance, then position yourself rightly in the society, writers are fixed at birth, it’s wrong to make a chef write!

On that given Saturday evening we went through fifty to eighty articles spread over disparagement and scornful writing by kings of disapproval who maintain their commercial value by writing about all negative things under the sun. Some writings did not have any agenda, reminded me of a scrabble match when an opponent has finished their letters while you are stuck with your “Q” and “J” that you have been saving to finish the game on a climax. Analytical writing was represented by my good self; I should have referred to myself as an observer who writes about the truths the society is afraid to or refuses to see. There was another set of good writes, intelligent and great assembling with hints of humor and non-defamatory which could hardly be converted into speech by the authors. The two couldn’t stand for three minutes and opening their mouths was a very big task. From that point I decided that if I have to attend this gathering again it must be zombie-proofed.

This kind of meeting should be a platform to discuss the factors affecting today’s writers. A lot of things that impact the world positively and negatively are mostly caused by people who are either excited, greedy, carried away, insensitive, overconfident bla bla bla and writers should have the courage to hold this people to their feet. Writing is an unfinished business when writers limit themselves by deciding certain topics are good and some are bad. Its disingenuous when main element is censored by that columnist who takes home the headliners salary.

Recycle bins? They exploit a topic when it’s popular! They are form a modern nuisance sect. Remember the unrehearsed band doing repertoire of some jazz musician who died without making to fame? This is their adaptable survival technique. They manage to drop this line in anything they write, “I want to go peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather, not kicking and screaming like the passengers in his car” Come on replicator everybody knows who wrote this line first!

Why not change the agenda if the readers are not attending your routine? A more accurate say on your material may garner you the needed audience. Or am making a mistake by telling those aspirants that writing does not only mean anything voluminous goes? If fail to sow honesty and integrity in your writing and expect to be harvesting readers then you equal with that unrehearsed band. The moment you run out writable content is the moment you lose you commercial value, if you are a freelancer then you could convert to zero-lancer if you do not have a side job

My interest however was to meet those audacious men and women who choose to confront the truth that the society is afraid to see. The ones that possess the nerve to make comments about race, administrative dysfunction, international security and stay calm when things fall apart. Their possible amendment to their editorial is always like “that’s my personal view which am entitled to” while their critics are launching an apocalypse.

Commercial value of familiar, well-liked names and faces is testament that writing is a victim of audience evolution; it has become important that you write only the things the readers want to read. These days we are often dealing with a certain kind of formulaic star-driven writing which must adhere to profitable standards. No wonder a pair of most respected writers in our convention marked all items in the zombie checklist.

Once I got to talk it could not match to my writing, they thought I should be spokesperson instead, this turned into a half an hour debate that changed nobody’s mind. Thank God, writers are not the people who will make or break another writer’s career. What makes or breaks a writers career are their audiences/readers. Don’t just act surprised if you can’t build a fan base. When you take to the stage have some clue of who you are, don’t be discreet because you are afraid of the reactionary comments, thicken your skin if you don’t want to be involved in some lifetime therapy.

As for the winning pair, please write you will and leave me some money.