To a Young Writer Whom I Have Yet to Meet or May Never Know

  • Finding and following your own voice is vitally important.  Yet that idea can be extended to: finding and following your own voices.  They are inside you.  Many of them.  Who knows why they are there, and from where they came.  But they are waiting to be found.  And released into the air and light, into the world.
  • Play is Serious Business (see: Children).
  • Commitment as a discipline, not the fickleness of flings. Passion waxes and wanes, ebbs and flows, but discipline is as steady and consistent as you make it.
  • Attune to your internal rhythms and abide by your creative impulses.  Discover what it is you want to say, not what others want to hear.
  • Writing is not the end of the world, nor the beginning of it.  Even when it feels that way.
  • For the 99 people out there who do not enjoy or appreciate or give a shit about what you’re doing, remember the 100th person who is not only waiting to hear from you, but needing to.
  • Daydream actively.
  • If what you’re writing does not produce that warm, curious feeling in you, that zing and resonance, it might be a good time to ask yourself: Why the hell am I doing this?
  • Writing is a communicable disease.  Transmit your contagions with unrepentant glee and abandon. You may infect someone who will happily never be the same again.  

About John Biscello

Originally from Brooklyn, NY, writer, poet, performer, and playwright, John Biscello, has lived in the high-desert grunge-wonderland of Taos, New Mexico since 2001. He is the author of four novels, Broken Land, a Brooklyn Tale, Raking the Dust, Nocturne Variations, and No Man’s Brooklyn; a collection of stories, Freeze Tag, two poetry collections, Arclight and Moonglow on Mercy Street; and a fable, The Jackdaw and the Doll, illustrated by Izumi Yokoyama. He also adapted classic fables, which were paired with the vintage illustrations of artist, Paul Bransom, for the collection: Once Upon a Time, Classic Fables Reimagined. His produced, full-length plays include: LOBSTERS ON ICE, ADAGIO FOR STRAYS, THE BEST MEDICINE, ZEITGEIST, U.S.A., and WEREWOLVES DON’T WALTZ.
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