Ramblings of a Coffee Addict

How To Be A Writer At 23

First, you have to be a cynical person. You don't have to have had a terrible childhood or experienced something horrible; you just have to be good at making that shit up. Writers are not happy fluffy people. In fact, they are usually weird loners who live in their parents' basement or on the strangely stained futon of their stoner college ex-roommate.

You know that you are the next Ernest Fucking Hemingway or Ray Bradbury but the only person who will publish your work is your itty-bitty unknown college newspaper. Your exposés are phenomenal of course, but that second-rate rag only wants human interest pieces. You're pissed but getting published somewhere is necessary to launch your career. So, you suck it up and sneak in some edgy opinions/commentary/analysis in the middle but some ninny in the editor's office with nothing better to do leaves it on the cutting room floor. You wonder why you even bother because the readership is only reported to be fifty people anyways.

It's time to focus your efforts elsewhere. Nobody told you when you were eighteen years old (expect your dad and literally EVERY member of your extended family) that a writing degree is useless in the struggle to secure a "day" job. Never fear though; as a writer, you are also a professional drinker, much to the dismay of your general health physician who asks way too invasive and judgmental questions about your consumption. Drinking comes with the territory; it's like an unawarded minor on your diploma. You already spend so much time at the local dive bar, slowly sipping bottom shelf gin (because gin is an "adult" alcohol) that they finally give you a job. Let's face it, you're hogging up a valuable seat with your worthless ass and mini notebook full of scribbles, that you'd actually be worth more to them behind the bar pouring drinks.

You should be excited because you now have some new material. You used to write about your friends, family, and roommates but it's starting to get a bit dicey. At first, they found you hilarious (um duh, you're fucking brilliant) but then they started to find parallels between themselves and your stories. Suddenly you are no longer witty but mean. You try to keep a straight face through their criticisms because after all, this is great material for Alfred, your next character, and his pathetic life as a DMV employee.

It's honestly better just not to show them your work. They're engineers, accountants, and software programmers and they wouldn't know a literal genius if it bit them on the schnoz. The whole bartending thing might allow you to move out of the basement or off the ganja-infused couch, but it just isn't providing you with the intimate details that you need to make your stories "authentic". Never fear though, you always have yourself.

Get liquored up, go out, have wild sexcapades, dance your ass off at trashy clubs, experiment with your weirdo co-worker's ecstasy, and write all about it in gritty detailed honesty. People may judge you and your lifestyle choices, but this is what it takes. This is how to be a writer at twenty-three.