The write way

It's no secret that many folks working for this paper would really like to write for a living. But breaking into that biz is no easy matter. Yours truly is perpetually stuck on chapter three of his sure-to-be-blockbuster novel. And that dude who writes the horoscopes? The next Tennessee Williams.\nBut becoming a writer takes discipline, persistence, creativity, luck, a keen eye and a curious mind. Or, at least, that's the old way. No, recent events have uncovered new guidelines:\n• Write all about yourself -- but don't be you. What is the classic, clichéd advice for aspiring writers? "Write what you know." But what if "what you know" is unmarketable? What if you're a middle-class, suburban, straight, white kid with no complaints against your family and no major physical or psychological ailments (that is, except for the desire to be a writer)? Do you write about the world around you? Pfft -- no. That'll violate current literature's preoccupation with introversion, psychological analysis and subjectivity. Besides, you'll have to do research, which is hard. Do you write about what it might be like to be someone else? Yeah, right -- poser. No, it's time for a new you, a more interesting you, a you that's "raw and harrowing" in all the best literary, politically correct ways. Of course there was the James Frey controversy (in short, he wasn't the druggie, super screw-up that he led Oprah to believe). But far more impressive is the tragic, impoverished, Navajo writer Nasdijj -- who turned out to be a white, middle-class author named Timothy Barrus -- and the former homeless drug addict, ex-male-prostitute and HIV-sufferer JT Leroy -- who is played in public by Ms. Savannah Knoop, and is probably the creation of Leroy's "rescuer," Laura Albert. Me, I plan to be a Polynesian quadriplegic who writes with her nose.\n• Be a celebrity. What's great about this is that you don't even have to have talent, or insight, or even be literate. Even American Idol contestants -- not content to merely ruin music -- have managed to land books in the Top 10 of New York Times Bestsellers (December 5, 2004 -- Clay Aiken's memoir debuted at #2). Who said literature was dead?\n• Have others do it for you. You may have heard about how teenage author, Kaavya Viswanathan received a multi-million-dollar advance from her publishers, only to get caught plagiarizing. But did you hear that she worked with a "book packager," Alloy Entertainment, who among other things, "craft proposals for publishers and create plotlines and characters before handing them over to a writer (or a string of writers)"? Alloy has said that they didn't write Viswanathan's book -- but, how amazing to have someone else make up the plot and characters? I could concentrate on punctuation.\nWith these standards anyone could be a writer -- but, then why should they?