Clara Bush

Sci Fi Novels & Novellas Author

Wyso And The Other Creepy Kids on Gerard Street
Novella 1 of The Creep Mesquite Anthology
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Man's Best
Novella 2 of The Creep Mesquite Anthology
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Sparkers
 Novella 3 of The Creep Mesquite Anthology
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Better Dig 2
Novella 4 of The Creep Mesquite Anthology
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Thoughts From Author Kurt Vonnegut On Writing. Living Life As A Writer.

by 4 Comments

blog post #67 by Science Fiction Author Clara Bush

And So It Goes

“If you want to really hurt you parents, 

and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, 
the least you can do is go into the arts. 
I’m not kidding. 
The arts are not a way to make a living. 
They are a very human way of making life more bearable.
Practicing an art, 
no matter how well or badly, 
is a way to make your soul grow, 
for heaven’s sake. 
Sing in the shower. 
Dance to the radio. 
Tell stories. 
Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. 
Do it as well as you possibly can. 
You will get an enormous reward. 
You will have created something.”

—Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

Vonnegut’s Eight Rules For Writing 

Taken from his book Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction.











Vonnegut says: Now lend me your ears. Here is Creative Writing 101.

  1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
  2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
  3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
  4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
  5. Start as close to the end as possible.
  6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
  7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
  8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

(Vonnegut noted that Flannery O’Connor broke all these rules except the first, and that great writers tend to do that.)

Slaughterhouse-Five is considered Vonnegut’s most influential and popular work. It is semi-autobiographical and references his experience during WWII. He was part of a group of American prisoners of war who survived the bombing in an underground slaughterhouse meat locker used as an ad hoc detention facility.

Slaughterhouse-Five is the sixty-seventh entry to the American Library Association‘s list of the “Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–1999” and number forty-six on the ALA’s “Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2000-2009”. 

It continues to be controversial. In August 2011, the novel was banned at the Republic High School in Missouri. The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library countered by offering 150 free copies of the novel to Republic High School students on a first come, first served basis.

Other Greats From Vonnegut

“I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled ‘science fiction’ ever since, and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.” — Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons, 1974

“I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’” — “Knowing What’s Nice,” In These Times, 2003

“I do feel that evolution is being controlled by some sort of divine engineer. I can’t help thinking that. And this engineer knows exactly what he or she is doing and why, and where evolution is headed. That’s why we’ve got giraffes and hippopotami and the clap.” — interview on the Daily Show, 2005


“I don’t know about you, but I practice a disorganized religion. I belong to an unholy disorder. We call ourselves ‘Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment.’” — A Man Without a Country, 2005

***
Top image on Pixabay by johnhain

***
I love hearing from you. How will you spend your Thanksgiving?
Will you write a poem? Sing in the rain? Dance in the snow? 

Have you read Slaughterhouse-Five?

To prove I love hearing from you, for those who share a comment, your name will be placed into THE MAGIC JAR. If you comment and link back to my blog from your blog, your name will be placed in the magic jar twice. On December 29, 2014, my alien friend ( or ghost) (or Walk-In) (or whoever is hanging around at the time) will reach into the jar and pull forth a name. That person can claim one of the following:
1. A Wyso/Danny ring handcrafted by my Native American friend, Neal Paquin of Santa Fe, NM, especially designed for my first novella, Wyso and the Other Creepy Kids on Gerard Street. (Picture below.) Sizes for children, women, and men. (Best choice. Simple. Elegant. One of a kind design.)
2. A $20 gift certificate to Amazon via email.

3. My opinion of the first twenty pages of your novel or novella. (Not that my opinion is worth anything, but it is someone else’s opinion. Something I look for every chance I get. Just thought you might be looking also.)

The Science Fiction Reality blog is a little science, a little fiction, a little about writing, a little real, and a lot of weird.
Clara Bush
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Latest posts by Clara Bush (see all)

About Clara Bush

Clara is creator of the popular Science Fiction novellas, "The Creep Mesquite Anthology." It's SyFy with monsters and a little romance, available on Amazon Kindle.

Comments

  1. DilloBoi says

    “It continues to be controversial. In August 2011, the novel was banned at the Republic High School in Missouri. The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library countered by offering 150 free copies of the novel to Republic High School students on a first come, first served basis.”

    I love stuff like that. When people try to close minds and individuals fight back to give people their choice in what information they want to access. Such an amazing way to fight censorship.

    What is so controversial in his books? I am not familiar with Kurt Vonnegut. Your blog mentions he is controversial but not why.

    Reply

  2. Clara Bush says

    Good point Dillo.

    Slaughterhouse-Five is controversial because of the profanity, adult situations (sex), and is called obscene by closed-minded individuals ready to trample freedom of thought.

    From Wikipedia:

    “It was one of the first literary acknowledgments that homosexual men, referred to in the novel as ‘fairies,’ were among the victims of the Nazi Holocaust.[17]”

    Though it sounds like a historical novel, it is actually science fiction—why I find its history so fascinating.

    Thank you for commenting and asking such a great question.

    Reply

  3. DilloBoi says

    Thank you for enlightening me Clara. It is wonderful he acknowledged homosexuals as victims in the holocaust. So few people seem to give recognition to the homosexual men and woman who were persecuted during the holocaust. I may have to pick up Slaughterhouse-Five.

    Reply

  4. Clara Bush says

    Hi Dillo,

    Thank you for returning.

    I am currently re-reading Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. You would love his quick wit and way of telling his story.

    If you read it, we can compare notes.

    So it goes.

    Reply

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