So, you want to write like the folks at Receiving Me?, but you’re unsure how to get started. What are you crazy? Good! You’re halfway there! Now, here are some writing tips that will help you understand what it takes to transfer that “crazy” to the virtual page. Literary types: beware of verbal discharge.

1) Acquire words. This is the most important aspect of writing. Without words, sentences look…

…empty and subjective. Writers who forget this step often have trouble being read or getting published (even on their own blogs). This is silly because acquiring words is easy. Take the internet, for instance, which is filled to the brim with words. Take a selection of these words and change their order slightly, thus making the words your own. A quick example:

“Papa Smurf is a male fictional character from the Smurfs.“

Through the process of writing this sentence can be turned into something beautiful and new:

“Is a male Papa Smurf from the Smurfs fictional?”

The answer is, of course, “No”– only a female Papa Smurf is fictional; a male Papa Smurf is real. More importantly, the sentence is now yours, or, in this case, mine. That’s right, you can’t use it; you’ll have to use some other variation on the theme. I assure you it’s possible, especially when you don’t worry about meaning.

2) Don’t worry about meaning. Slick transition, eh? This is an extremely important concept. No good writer has ever worried about meaning. Meaning is for the reader to determine anyway, which means you can’t control it, which means there’s no reason to concern yourself with it, which brings us right back to statement number two, so don’t worry about meaning. Okay? However, if you really must worry, worry when your writing is incapable of being misunderstood. How will you ever get credit for writing something ingenious if you saddle yourself with the responsibility of coming up with all the ideas yourself? You won’t, because you’re probably no that smart. However, by being as vague and nonsensical as possible, you place the onus on your readers. Nobody understood this better than the great writer Nostradamus:

The young lion will overcome the old one
on the field of battle in single combat:
He will put out his eyes in a cage of gold:
Two fleets one, then to die a cruel death.

Over four hundred years later, people are still reading this man’s writing. Do you think this would be the case if he had written:

I like my cat, Samantha.
She’s much better than my old cat, Tabatha.
Also, she beat Tabatha up this morning.
[Three random words] Hopefully Tabatha will just die.

Please disregard any references to characters from Bewitched, they just happened, or, better yet, read something into them, it just proves my point (sort of). Anyway, I never change a word I’ve written.

3) Never change a word you’ve written. (Rest assured, I will cover how to make these snappy transitions as well.) If you want to be a writer, write. If you want to be an editor, edit. If you want to be a porn star, see a plastic surgeon. Different jobs come with different responsibilities; don’t confuse them. Firemen are expected to put out fires, arsonists are expected to start fires, fire-eaters are expected to be racist politicians from the Confederate South. You won’t catch these folks confusing their job requirements. But writers are often less self-aware. Sometimes it helps to remember that the backspace and delete buttons on your keyboard were put there by evil people who want to take your jobs away. For proof, try writing something by pressing these keys…. How’s that going for you?

4) How’s that going for you? Transitions are just about the only element in writing that requires thought. First you must come to a place where you feel the urge to put a white horizontal line in the midst of your writing, and then you must repeat the most recent thing you’ve just written, in case your reader has become distracted by said line. Actually, these white line interruptions are simply an excuse to take up three lines while saying the same thing, but nobody ever calls you on it.

5) Nobody ever calls you on it. Okay, sometimes they do, but just keep writing anyway.

6) But just keep writing anyway– a mantra to live by. Death, famine, and an inability to type while sleeping are the only acceptable circumstances in which you, as a writer, should stop writing. Pauses should be in punctuation only; there is no need to be redundant and pause yourself. Remember, readers will pause for you if you use enough punctuation or write something really, really long.

7) Write something really, really long. There is nothing more impressive to a non-writer or, for that matter, any person with a job that is actually valuable to society, than writing something so long that no one wants to read all of it. Examples in this literary field are The Bible, Qur’an, and anything by Tolstoy. People will assume you are smart because nobody reads anything that weighs more than a bowling ball (unless it’s written by J.K. Rowling), so, except in the case where you are writing a novel about a kid who likes to fly around on broomsticks and pretend to be in danger (but he never really is because he’s MAGIC), nobody has read anything to compare your writing to. Readers will assume that all lengthy writing repeats itself verbatim every three or so pages.

8) Repeat yourself verbatim every three or so pages. Actually, don’t do this unless absolutely necessary. Instead, contradict yourself. Readers love this. It reminds them that they were smart enough to remember that you wrote something completely incongruous earlier. This alleviates any thoughts they may have about their approaching Alzheimer’s or being really stupid.

9) Approaching Alzheimer’s or being really stupid. Whatever you do, never write about these two subject matters. They will only serve to remind your readers of their approaching Alzheimer’s or being really stupid.

10) Finally, [Use a strong transitional word to start your final paragraph...] when all else fails, write a piece of writing about how to write a piece of writing whilst breaking all generally agreed upon rules of writing style, grammar, and etiquette. You are now ready to write for Receiving Me? [...and then resort to flattery.]