Here are some tips I was going to include in The Forest for the Trees until my editor reminded me I was not Anne Lamott. (Funny, in graduate school a professor told me I was not Fran Leibowitz. That BDP I mentioned earlier told me I wasn’t Woody Allen.)  Who the fuck am I? Anyway, here are some tips I dreamed up when my identity was still relatively secure:

• Write your first draft in long hand.
• Rewrite a famous story from the point of view of a minor character.
• Rewrite a first person story in the third person.
• Write a sonnet
• Shower, dress, wear shoes that lace.
• Do not show anyone your work until it’s in the third draft – at least.
• Do not show your work to your mother, lover, or bff.
• After you write something, leave it alone for as long as possible before you start revising.
• Cut anything that bores you — be honest.
• Use your dictionary.
• Play Scrabble.
• Go to a reading.
• Write an editorial letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald about the structure in The Great Gatsby.
• Write the same paragraph from three different points of view.
• Write a character description without physical attributes.
• Outline your book. Index cards for extra credit.
• Clean your glasses with a soft cloth.

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