Listening To My Inner Muse

Showing everyone how it's done

A lot of talk lately about whether stuff like this is “actually good”:

lol

A lot of talk about whether that shit is “actually good,” and not enough talk lately about whether we can “find Nabeel a high-paying job that fulfills his every need—financial, spiritual, sexual, social, etc.” Just something I’m noticing.

What you guys don’t realize is that writing is fucking intangible, brother. It’s, it’s…it’s indefinable. It’s not easy at all. It’s actually one of the most physically painful and laborious things you can do, and anyone who does it should be treated like God. You don’t even understand how hard it is, and how much more important than other people you become once you start typing on a keyboard. And trust me, I know. I’m literally studying it. I’m actually becoming so smart and employable from being a graduate student in fiction. Trust me on this. Good writing isn’t a prompt you enter into a little Chinese open-source box and hope it spits out a fire 🔥🔥🔥 poem. It’s something, well…a little more like this.

If you want a formula for how to write something good, I’ll give it away right now. This is after 2.5 years of graduate school; they don’t release this for the public. And now? I’m opening up the vault, due to my incomparable largesse. Here’s the basic outline for “actually good writing!”

Title (Something cool like “Unmappable Bodies” or “You Cannot Cheat Death, Mr. Jackson”)

Always start with an epigraph, like below:

Quote from the Qur’an first.

Quote from R.E.M.’s “Man on the Moon.”

Big word up top, right from the jump. Something like “insofar” or “heretofore.” Just fucking go for it, you know?

Space break.

HOOK HOOK HOOK HOOK HOOK (that means something obscene and graphic, like a gruesome murder or a sex scene, maybe a sloppy penis being serviced by a hand whose owner is heretofore 😉 unknown)

See? And this thing is nominated for Best Movie or whatever

Space break.

Picture break! (Whatever you do, do not let them lose focus. I usually go with something humorous style or sexual style. Memes work AWESOME in this context—I fucking Love memes!!) Here are some examples to get your creative juices flowing:

Awesome Meme that combines sexual style and humorous style!

Cinnamon rolls I made the other day. Thoughts?

Meme I made once

At this point, I usually lose steam for the day. I would recommend you take a break and get back in the lab tomorrow.

But already—can’t you see? This is amazing writing. The formula is so sound, and the way I’ve explained it and formatted is unambiguous and so clear. Everything makes sense in what I wrote above. There’s definitely no haziness or confusion in my instructions.

So then when you go back to writing the next day—that’s what I’m saying, this whole writing thing is a multi-step process, you gotta let the ideas percolate and ferment, it’s really not for everybody…—just kind of pick up from there and see where you’re at. Syracuse didn’t really give me much more of the formula after that but I kind of just figured it out on my own.

All I’m saying is: we don’t need no stinking Chinese LLM! We can produce our own poetry, using a standardized formula that I’ve shared with you all here. Go forth and be with God. Spread your literary seed. I can’t wait to see what you all come up with.

Ritam’s Footnote

Cinnamon rolls look bangin brother!