Friday Tyrant - How to Write a How to

If you have been paying any attention at all, you may have noticed the abundance of internet articles beginning with the same two words. Two Words this, Two Words that, Two Words everywhere. I do not know who started this trend (Was it Gordon Lish?), but I have a few suggestions to help these internet writers instruct us on how to do what they do, and how to do it just like they like to do it.

How to Write a How to Piece

First, give it a title. Something like, How to Something-something. Begin, continue, and end the piece by speaking to the reader like a small child in a corner who's at the tail end of a cry. Remember, this little guy is weak and vulnerable. Speak confidently, do not waver, and always, always declare. A How to piece--which is essentially a lesson--must be declarative. Point at the child. Fill the child with fear. Point and shake your finger as you fill the cornered child with fear. Do not allow the child to look away. If the child turns or tilts its head away, take its chin of between your thumb and forefinger, straighten the child's head so its face is facing yours, and then focus your eyes on the child's eyes. Look down on the child, look down into the child's eyes. Raise your open hand like you are about to strike the poor child that was just a moment ago crying. If the eyes of the child do not focus on your eyes, if you don't see a gaze in the eyes, then there is no lesson here. No one is learning. You can only force so far, only force so much. You cannot strike the child. You wish you could strike the child. God, you wish you could strike the child, but you cannot. Keep your lesson moving, fill the lesson with so much life and movement that you overwhelm and paralyze the child. Make your lesson live, give it real life. Make your lesson pulse urgently. Make it like a dark animal darting through the snow, and never stop your lesson from its darting and its running and its moving so that the child's eyes, like a hunter's eyes, never stop moving right along with it. Never stop following the words of the lesson: keep it moving and running. You know that the child is as ready for the lesson to end as you are prepared to keep it going forever. I never said the child in the corner didn't have a gun. Always assume a child has a gun, and that the child and gun together will shoot at anything as soon as they can doubt it. If the child senses doubt in your lesson, then the lesson slows, it stops, it gets shot at, gets hit, then dies. Do not give the child a choice. Give no quarter, no room to move, allow the child no option. Restrain the child. Tie up the child in the corner with your movement. You will know when it is time to take the gun from the child, so make sure to take the gun from the child when it's time. Never give the child (take the gun now) a chance to pose a question. A How to piece is a lesson, and a lesson is not a seminar.

A lesson is a litany. If any questions are formed, catch them while they're still unsaid. Muffle them by inserting the barrel of the gun into the child's mouth. Shake and knock the barrel around. Break the child's fangs. Keep telling the child How to and How to as you break off the fangs. Do not let the child budge. You are a voice. You are a living, breathing bridge of learning, and the reader's a child, voiceless and fangless in a corner. Once you've shackled the child in the lesson, once the confidence you at first feigned becomes true confidence, then take a step away. Step back from the child. Take a few steps around the room and see if the child moves. The child won't move. If the child does move, it won't. Lean against the counter across the room from the child. Cross your arms and don't take your eyes off. Continue talking. Stand still and keep it moving. Never keep your lesson from shifting, darting, voicing. The child will not stop staring. The lesson will bind the child so tightly that it won't mind. It won't even notice that its mouth is bleeding; that its fangs are in chips and splinters down its front. Although it is a risk, you must take this risk and give the child a moment of liberty to look away. See how tight a grasp you have. Make known that the child was given a chance. If the child still doesn't move after your gift of one silent moment (the child's only real chance to ever free itself), then you can feel secure about your lesson and your lesson's chains. Then you can just leave and the rest of the How to piece will write itself. You are done here, and there's no more any reason to stay. Now that you can walk out of the room and leave the child to die, walk out of the room and leave the child to die.