Dear Young Writer

Today’s prompt: “You’ve had a really rotten day, you’re mad at the world, and in an evil moment you decide to give a classroom full of impressionable, hopeful young writers all the worst possible advice anyone could possibly give…”

There is nothing new under the sun. That clever idea you think you have? It’s been done. Maybe ten times over. So why bother trying to find a new way to say something, a novel approach to say the same thing we all feel and know? People use clichés because they work. Embrace them.

Brevity is for fools. Using tons of dependent clauses shows how complex and rich your ideas are. I expect lots of semicolons.

The active voice is for active people. Can you run a mile in four minutes and thirty seconds? No? Then it’s the passive voice for you, bucko. “Mistakes were made,” that’s what I expect from you from now on. Now drop and give me twenty. Haha just kidding. On the pushups part, not the passive voice part.

Cthulhu loves it when you read poetry at him.