When You’re Young -- Write Rhymey Dimey Stuff

Lester Goran, the author and forever creative writing teacher of the University of Miami once said, “It’s okay when you’re young to write rhyme dimey stuff.” (Or, perhaps that was someone else).

What did he mean? When I was 19, I tried to write a novel about a young man who meets a handicapped British author by accident. The novel would be subtle, romantic, literary, in other words utterly impossible for a 19-year-old to write. A few years earlier, I had been writing vampire stories with lines stolen from Evil Dead. Dreadful stuff -- but pleasing to my peers who, like me, just didn’t know better.

Rhymey dimey stuff is anything with waves crashing dramatically against an alien shore with your hero, Captain Flashgasm, shaking his iron fist, vowing revenge to the entire army of internet-trollia!

A few years back, I threw out a lot of my rhymey dimey works. I didn’t hate them. If I read enough of them in one sitting, I could even see a kind of art and passion in them. I cared about my rhymey dimey cliches. There is a stage all writers must pass through when they write rhymey dimey stuff. Some writers may even learn to love rhymey dimey genres so much that they learn to to turn some money from them. That’s okay too, right? After all, there are a great number of readers who will never read past rhymey dimey stuff.

As I finish writing this sentence in a comfort of a chain coffee shop, I notice the staff starting to look longing at me. Were they just coffee shop attendants or were they creatures of the night, readying themselves for attack.

I pick up my pen.

Here’s something for the ol' pulp magazines, readers!