Irrelevant Cheetah

When Pinhole informed me that he had awarded me the ROAR award, my first thought was “Oh, isn’t that nice of him?” My second thought was “He’s obviously lost his marbles. I need to send a nice bouquet to his rubber room. I wonder if FTD has something thematically appropriate – like poppies.” My third thought, of course, was “Oh, thank the Llamas! I desperately needed something to blog about!”

The ROAR award, in case you’re clueless (I was) is awarded by bloggers to fellow bloggers whom they feel exemplify the standards of writing. In other words, it’s a meme, but nicely dressed in Armani and carrying a bottle of Jack Daniels. Recipients of this esteemed award must, in their acceptance blog, list three “writing tips” which have contributed to their success in winning memes awards.

Now, asking me about writing calls to mind the following:

Q: How do porcupines have sex?

A: Very, very carefully.

And that’s how I write: very, very carefully, and occasionally it all works out and I’m left with something vaguely resembling success, if not vaguely resembling baby porcupines. Still, if I had to list three “writing tips” (and I do, according to the rules of the award,) I guess they would be as follows:

1. (Stop me if you’ve heard this one) Just WRITE! You can read books about writing by writers for would-be writers published by wanna-be writers, but nothing is a good substitute for sitting your ass down in the chair and hitting keys (hopefully in the right order, but that’s what spell-check is for.)
2. Read! Everything you can get your hands on. I’m partial to fantasy, sci-fi, particle physics textbooks and used bus passes.
3. Free-write. You may have heard of this. I just recently tried it, and it’s amazing. Basically, you sit down, choose whatever topic you like, shut off your internal editor and just start typing. Sometimes there’s treasure in the gobbledegook that emerges. Here’s an excerpt from my last attempt:

While exuding communicable diseases like a common man disturbs the plague from its 1099 form, the botfly can often be found sucking on a Slurpee purchased via debit card from the local convenience store under the shadow of Notre Dame, also known as “My Fair Lady” by Gilbert and Sullivan.

Well, I didn’t say “free-writing” always works. Just sometimes.

Okay, as Miss North Carolina once said, enough said. Well, she didn’t say that, but she should have. I must nominate five fellow bloggers, and I hereby call the following to front-and-center. If you’ve already been awarded, or choose not to participate, just bask in the glow. Bask in the glow.

Brent, from Ominous Comma. I’d like to know how he does what he does, though I’m not certain if it’s because I’d like to imitate him or because I need to know what to watch out for.

Diesel, from Mattress Police. This guy has written a book! With a cover, even! And because this probably qualifies as a meme, it will bring out his Nazgul, Grundir, whose writings I sorely miss.

WordVixen. She’s fast becoming a working freelancer, and tips from her might save someone else some grief.

J.A.Konrath, another author. If you haven’t checked out his blog yet, you should. It gives the rest of us some hope. I hope he has time to play.

Moooooog35. Another humorist I’d love to emulate, even though I haven’t gotten around to adding him to my blogroll yet.

So there you have it. Now I’m off to free-write and try to think of my next post.

This post is also over at humor-blogs dot com, because I’d like more people to know how awesome I am. I’d settle for two people.