Sacred Cows Make the Best Burgers

NOTE: “Swimming in the Afternoon” is the subscriber-only writing section here on Fetal Position, the title a reference to a Kafka diary entry I’ve written about on FP before.

The essays in “Swimming in the Afternoon” are not the usual How To Write (structure, character, theme, prose) but rather How To Be A Writer - about the difficult but required attitude, defiance, remove, approach and mentality that for me is at the heart of doing this whole writing/art thing. I hope they’re as helpful for you to read as they are for me to write.

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For many years, everything I wrote was bland.

Technically, it shouldn’t have been; it had story, character, plot, dialogue – all the right ingredients, in all the right measures, thrown into the pot and cooked according to the directions. But when I tasted it – nothing.

It all seemed lifeless, pointless – more words on yet another page, another story, another essay, more noise but nothing… more. If it were served to me at a restaurant, I’d have sent it back.

The writing guides told me to check what writer’s guides tell you to check: character development, structure, point of view, prose. None of it helped. All I knew was that there were writers whose work seemed hearty, like a meal, and some whose didn’t.

And mine didn’t.

So I took the books that tasted good, and all the books that didn’t and I separated them into piles. Literally.

This is what I discovered:

Sacred cows make the best burgers.

But there’s a catch…