An Exercise in Self Deprecation

Posted on July 16, 2003 in Writing Exercises

Another writing exercise from the Wednesday group. In this warmup, we wrote about how we were a bad writers:

I am an awful writer, vain, arrogant, pathetically obtuse, undereducated, mean-spirited, and foul of mouth. When people read my stuff, they walk away, they turn off their monitors, they surf off to another web page. They never want to read what I said ever again. Someday they may burn my books — actually, I suspect that they will burn my manuscripts so that they will never see print! They must save the world from Joel Sax! Erase the man with the persecution complex! Destroy the fool who thinks that he “knows better than anyone else the right way to do things” — Oh how bright the fire will glow!

But some will say “his pages are not worth the burning. Let’s flush them.” And they will shred what I have written, carry them to the foulest outhouse in the most remote corner of the most national park, apply them to the unmentionable orifice, and leave them there to ferment and to rot.

I’ll deserve it.

I heartily commend this exercise to anyone with a writer’s block. It got me started on some less sarcastic stuff that may later prove publishable or at least bloggable. Thanks to all the people who heckled and belittled me in the last two weeks. You provided great material for this and by the time I was finished writing, I was laughing very hard.

Thanks also to Kirial, Nanette, and Samantha who laughed very hard with me as I shared this.

You know, I should have added “Lover of James Joyce” somewhere in there.