Twenty-Seven Theses on the Act of Generating Potential Artworks as a Human Animal in the Year of our Bored Two-Thousand and Fifteen

I. There is nothing more greedy and pathetic than the assumption that the “creative work” done by anyone in any field is worthwhile.

II. Writing is perhaps the foremost of these fields in its pathetic fawning and greedy attempts at self-sustenance by merely stringing together signs in interesting ways generating “sentences,” a term oft used in these times to imply an intricacy within literature as art form that does not exist, but like any ritual is interesting.

III. Writing comes from nowhere, leads nowhere, is nothing.

IV. If you have a pencil you might use it, or a computerized word-processing device, both will yield similar results in that both will merely put the “writer” three or four steps closer to laughing death.

V. If an artist doesn’t hate themselves, or worse, exudes a sense of “pride” or “confidence” in the work they’ve done, ignore them.

VI. If a writer is struggling with “writer’s block” show them footage of historical massacres and grind their nose into a greased pulp using a file.

VII. Spending one’s time and money on any craft is as worthwhile as spending one’s time and money seated in the parking lot of any restaurant in the United States of America or abroad; any sense of the work one’s doing as being “special” or “historically significant” should be shattered as a fictive mirror when the frozen teenage pimple pus’d and popped to shoot away the glassine lie.

VIII. Inspiration is for cowards, as is practice and the formation of habits; one would better spend one’s time digging away the insides of a rotted log with toenail clippers hidden neath the porch of the childhood home.

IX. Literature is fairly young, unfortunately.

X. If you have gone to college, you will be disappointed.

XI. When the pressures of the world seem to drive you to your writing station floating through the cosmos on what largely amounts to a sea of shit and plastic, look away. There are television programs that are incapable of viewing themselves and your efforts have the slimed ulteriority of an angry snake.

XII. Go to the store, it is any store: go to any store and purchase nineteen folders of varying colors—to purchase folders each bearing nineteen separate colors would be an impossibility, for most of us anyway, so after you’ve picked up five non-same-colored continue this process through the even split of fifteen, start from there and you’ll be missing one (say a red) once you’ve finished up—after you’ve purchased these folders, return to your car and seat yourself. Within the car, having seated your body against the fabric, remove whatever pieces of literature exist pertaining to the car’s mechanics from the “glove box,” and read these thoroughly, recategorizing them throughout the nineteen folders depending on an order that makes sense to you unconsciously so that you understand the machines you own: you have completed a brilliant novel.

XIII. It is better to spend the day asleep than to argue over Milton or Melville. If tempted, join as many book clubs as your village features only to call in massive orders of pizza anonymously via the public library’s telephone system each week, having done none of the reading.

XIV. The writer, as the human, is a complex, beautiful little cherub in the sprawling universe, and at best presents a stench of indifference to the rest of society while “cultivating” their “works”.

XV. Some say menial labor is the best inspiration for the literary rat, this is misleading for ten thousand reasons. Not only is menial labor not the best anything for anyone, but if the writer is to provide any inspiration whatsoever to the duly vexed public, it must be in the form of Goncharov’s fictive Oblomov, the lazed practitioner of nothing, spending life in glorious repose only to draft sonnets when the grant money dries up.

XVI. Pragmatism is the swift and tedious enemy of progress and absolute dominion over one’s life, be a creep instead or dullard.

XVII. No sentient being has ever spelled the term indicating the color “grey,” properly, whether they spell it “grey,” or “gray,” the proper spelling is “ffnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnk333####skism”.

XVIII. Pick up a book that tells you how to write, as it’ll shortly teach you how to spit, berate, vomit, disparage, bleed, and move into the home of your parents in glaring shame.

XIX. Listen to inspirational talks on the act of creativity to find out just when the moment has struck the heroic scribblers of history, only to find out Thoreau lived a short walk from town and visited his mother often, and was little more than a glorified housesitter, and that every single animal since the leg sprouted has lied, and lied, and lied.

XX. Treat the act of reading as you would the grinding of herbs with a mortar and pestle: antiquated, unnecessary, annoying and potentially traumatic to the wrists.

XXI. No person has yet been right, one might better observe the ethical dilemmas of poisonous spiders.

XXII. If you have something to say, avoid saying it to say it.

XXIII. Taking ten years to pen something great is akin to taking ten years of your youth to learn the bicycle: it is cute, though pathetic and aggravating and the observant public will spitefully imbibe each thorny minute of the experience.

XXIV. Dogs have a great deal to teach you about the possibility of fiction in the future, in that I’ve heard they eat blades of grass to summon vomit.

XXV. The great secret of history resides in the teeth of any Great Artist, the ways they’ve moved and ground, their tawdry glint and shimmer, Chaucer’s teeth were discovered to have held an impossible liquid not dissimilar from window cleansing mist.

XXVI. If you’re thinking of submitting your writing, let it include poorly-made footage of the first minutes of every failed date thus far, the key to the publisher’s heart is through the heating duct.

XXVII. Perhaps fish food is the greatest thing you’ll never taste.

Grant Maierhofer is the author of various things. All of them should largely be accounted for here and here.