Names I have used in Anacrusis:
- Eddy
- Edmund
- Edwidge
- Edgar
- Edwin
Names I have not heretofore used in Anacrusis:
- Ed
Category: Writing
Week Combat!
Anacrusis on Week Combat! been has this, record the for.
Story Hacks: Fourth in a Series
Most magazines pay by the word, but sometimes even doubling up on your adverbs won’t help you break that magic-million mark. How else can you fill the pages you’ll need to pay down that Porsche? That, dear wreater, is why Gutenberg invented the dream sequence.
Ooh! Dreeeeam sequence!
Some authors choose to “reverse-engineer”* one of the many sober, objective dream interpretation books on the market. If one wants to symboblize a penis, for example, one could use a snake, a pencil, a toothbrush, a remote control, a key, the letter I, or any of thousands of vaguely cylindrical objects we encounter every day. After all, our formative years were spent around lots of penises! Am I right? I’m right.
Of course, interpretative books with scanty indexing may require significant work to find the right symbiology. As we should know by now, work is the opposite of writing! Instead, google “dream journal” and grab about two things from every result you find. Don’t forget to change the names–unless you forget on purpose!
To help you get started, here are some useful common elements:
- Uncles
- Running but not going anywhere (isn’t that scary? It’s scary!)
- A hunchback
- Your mom
- This one house you went to but now it looks completely different
- Freud seriously said your mom
- Nudity
- People who are also other people
- Freud was like the Tupac of his generation, kids
Once you’re published, your consumers may pay a lot of attention to your dream sequences. If they don’t like what they find there, remind them that it’s just a dream! It doesn’t mean anything! Except hilarity! If they claim that you’re just writing nonsense to pad your word count, point out that it is way deeper than them, and that they just don’t get your symbliography. It’s true.
* Translation: “drive backwards.”
Today’s Hack in a Nutshell: Nothing you can “wrighte” is “wronge!”
Today’s Anacrusis will be late because the one I was going to put up is just too awful. Too awful. I couldn’t inflict that on my readers.
Here it is!
C H I L I J O H N
– – – –
“I was told we’d be noncombat!” shrieks Lester as he presses up against the trench wall. Phosphorus shells scream and gob-smack.
“That’s right,” Chili John nods, “you’re the civilian component of Operation Wombat.”
“Oh, that’s much better,” Lester says. He looks relieved.
“See that metal-plated monstrosity over there?” Chili John points. “That’s the Tomcat. Your job is to carry some fuel to it–here, use this top hat.”
Lester scrambles off with the crude naptha. Moments later, he and it are splashed all over the ironside, burning happily.
“You’re a bad man,” chuckles Moon.
“Stop that,” Chili John snaps.
For the record, this is Combat Week! on Anacrusis.
Combat Week!
I am waiting for familiar resolve
Got the first search referral for “thinspiration” today. That story is currently the #113 Google result for it. Think I’ll get any mail?
I’m not sure whether it counts as irony that I only realized this morning that “Me and Mia,” one of my favorite songs ever, is about, um, ana and mia. Ted Leo should enunciate better, and I should listen harder. It’s a vicious song.
Oh, today I’ve officially written two years’ worth of Anacrusis. That’s a lot!
Some days you think you’re just yodeling down the pipe, and some days you get a powerful response and moving discussion and people caring and kind words.
Should have saved that one until tomorrow. Now the next story’s going to be a letdown.
I finally figured out what to tell people when they ask what an anacrusis is.