Lameness As An Advantage

Is your writing lame? Sure it is. Don’t be embarrassed. So is mine. And don’t be dismayed, because there’s an easy fix. In fact, you can fix your writing without making it less lame.

How? Simply add a layer of abstraction.

A layer of abstraction separates you from your writing in a way that not only allows your readers to forgive your lameness, but will even entice them into thinking your lame writing is clever and ironic.

Here’s an example: Tell lame jokes, and people will simply think you’re lame. But write a story about someone who tells lame jokes, and the lameness of those jokes will serve to drive your point home. What is your point? Who cares? Readers eat it up, and that’s all that matters. (“Zooey Mamma” anyone? Yes, I bought that book, and I’m proud to admit it. It’s a genius example of how adding an additional layer of abstraction makes the author look like a genius.)

And we’re all familiar with playwrights who have run out of ideas extending their careers by decades by writing plays about playwrights who have run out of ideas. A bad play is just bad. But a play about a playwright who writes bad plays is good. Somehow. I don’t know, just go with it. It’s symbolic, or something.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to write a story about an author who writes terrible novels about a socially inept vampire who makes it big on the bowling circuit. (Just don’t tell anyone that the author I’m writing about is me. Or that the “vampire” my “fictitious” author writes about is me. Or anything about bowling.)

2 Comments

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  By Peter Cawdron, May 11, 2012 @ 17:43

  So, if I write a book about someone writing a book about someone else writing a book about yet another author working on a book about zombies… it’s going to #1

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  By AndroidAstronomer, May 17, 2012 @ 07:28

  Not if I write a book about what you just said.

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