Fairfax, VA, USA.I have an innate advantage as a columnist: what I write is seldom not published in some form by this website. True, my editor may reconstruct one of my columns to other purposes, but I seldom discard in its entirety what I write.

I may repurpose them myself, however, if I don’t like what I have written, but an author’s deconstruction and revision of her own work does not feel any bit like rejection.


No writer likes rejection and I would like to think that I compose printer ready perfect prose without nary a blotted line but I know I have bad days like most everyone. But, as I have said elsewhere, 99% percent of everything is crap. [N1] I do edit myself several times before I send a column off to the editor and I like to think my columns fall into the other 1%. [N2] I have my vocal dissenters. Some days I have many.

There are days I only have a column title and begin writing to find my course. Writer’s blocks and blank pages are overcome by writing. The act of typing is often the source of inspiration. My fingers seem often closer to the muse than the gray matter that passes for my brain.

There are obvious ways to begin. A statement composed on controversy is one, the more virulent the controversy the better:

Transgendered Men are Just Men in Dresses.

A Man in a Dress with a Penis is Still a Man.

The only true religion is …

But you get the idea. Unless the writer is desperate, it is unproductive to pick an open sore most often.

A writer should not to throw water on an oil fire. The resulting explosion of steam and splatters across the blogs is not normally productive. Questions like

Can someone explain to me the difference between a self-identified “non-op” transsexual and a transvestite?

seldom lead to calm, logical discourse, even if the question is a perfectly reasonable request rational explication. Invested human emotions too often substitute for carefully reasoned explanation.

A simple sentence

No one likes to be stripped naked on the internet

can be changed to an incendiary grenade with a few added words

No one likes to be stripped naked on the internet, especially if the stripping reveals a penis that would prefer to remain hidden.

See the difference? The first statement is a calm metaphor that plays upon the Dylan line that

Even the President of the United States must sometimes stand naked. [N3]

which, in turn, evolves from the short tale about the Emperor’s New Clothes. [N4]

The second statement, of course, raises biological issues that Gender Theorists and Transgender Activists would prefer not be discussed in a public forum. Actually they would prefer that biological issues not be raised at all.

The rule of thumb is that a writer should not hurl an incendiary grenade without a safe haven in which to withdraw. Either that or the writer should learn to love firefights. I seldom choose a direct approach, preferring to focus on the central column point (in this case writing a column) rather than on peripheral issues that might distract my readers. A writer never knows what might bring the wrath of the blogmeisters down upon her neck.

And one should never, never refer to the authors of blog content as fanboys. Some of them have proudly announced they are bipolar and we should respect that. Others that they are sociopaths and we should take note of that also. Who knows what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches out of Bedlam to be born?

Too many literary references can be a problem. A writer should not expect her readers to be literate – that is an old white man’s assumption we no longer need follow. Have you not heard the Patriarchy is dead?

Long live the new regime and whatever horse you are riding in on. If you can’t say in 140 characters, it’s probably not worth saying at all. Who has the time to read anything longer. A writer should write short sentences. Like Hemmingway. Only not as literary. Punctuated with a lot of obscenity.

Failing that, a writer should write a style that closely resembles the pidgin English found on most blogs and text messages. Do not talk down to your readers by using big words. Sesquipedalian word usage throws up barriers to readers who might not get past the headline of the column before posting their comments.

Some segments of a writer’s readership may object to the use of English language personal pronouns. He, She, Her, Him, His and Hers are the tools by which the Patriarchy oppresses women and keeps them in their place.

Only the Gender Theorist, Transgender Activist, and Radical Feminists are smart enough to resist the Patriarchy. The rest of us are warm pudding, or, even worse, unconscious dupes of our male oppressors. And, whatever a writer does, she must not make fun of words like cisgender, cisliberal, cisradical and their many cisvariants. You will be marked for training once the Gender Proletariat is in charge.

Better to surrender now than being suspected of identifying as a man or a woman who believes he or she is part of the sexual binary. [N5] None of us want to be labeled a reactionary. As a rule of thumb, however,

when an honest writer discovers an imposition it is her simple duty to strip it bare and hurl it down from its place of honor, no matter who suffers by it; any other course would render her unworthy of the public confidence. [N6]

Sam wrote that over a hundred years ago, but I agree. A writer should not go out of her way to gouge politically correct cows, but, should she find one, she must shove her sharp writer’s knife in deeply and twist the blade once or twice before removing it.

You always have your editor to hide behind.

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