What, ME Writing?

On The Shoulders of Giants We Wrytes When first bitten by the wry and sly idea that I too could maybe tell an enjoyable written new tale of some kind ... I paused. True, I had just wasted $6 on a paperback that had a very catchy title, fantastic cover art, a way interesting and appealing back cover blurb, and had even read well for the first few scanning pages to elicit me opening my wallet and buying it.*SIGH* It wound up thrown against the opposite wall of my living room in disgust twelve pages in. Nobody, not even a supposed smart and intrepid hero and/or heroine, would act or say things without a single "douche" ex machina lick of common sense nor one credible reason to set up and begin their literary adventures into whatever realm of time and space they were in, let alone end one. That tossed piece of written crap was the trigger for me to consider writing as an aggravated yell came from the kitchen,"Don't break my stuff, you silly clod! If you don't like that book, then you're smart enough to write your own!" So in a typical mixed review of old shoe married insult and praise a new idea heretofore never considered was born; my very own Alfred E. Neuman wry and sly moment of: "What, me Writing?" I also got a big mixed bag of immediate conundrums. Where to start? What kind of tale to write? How to outline a creative idea? What would/should be my writing style? Should I emulate an old favorite author or two? Or cast my future fate as a budding author into the winds of self perceived creativity? What if I turn out to be just another lousy $6 ripoff of a reader rejected author? For inspiration my troubled eyes left the now used, "trade-in fodder at a discount house" of a book tossed on the floor and wandered over to my living room bookcase. There, among others, stood the spiny backbones of my favorite treasures penned by: Joseph Heller, John D. MacDonald, Roberta Gellis, Keith Laumer, Randy Wayne White, Jim Butcher, Elmo Leonard, Gordon R. Dickinson, Louis L'Amour, John Steinbeck, Naomi Novik, Bernard Cornwell, and Anne McCaffrey. To my surprise they "spoke" as one back to me. "Hey, silly clod! Be yourself. Be real and logical to life and people's motives in your writing, even make your monsters as plausible as you can. Write to enjoy your characters, your plots, and yourself. Tell the entertaining kinds of tales of derring do adventure, slice of life realism, and flights of time and space fantasy that you always wanted to be told and never found. Others may or may not like your end products, but so what? Some will if it's entertaining. Just write. "Ummm, but before you start or maybe as you go, at least hone your writing basics of punctuation, sentence and paragraph structure, as well as other irritating basic wryting skill gaffes that have always tended to kick you out of the flow of some past read." Good advice, eh what? Even brilliant, or at least conundrum mollifying. Thank you giants of yore and current year! So, with wrinkled brow from literal worlds full of plot possibilities and a trusty number two pencil in hand, the author muse bit into a chunk of another Alfred E. Neuman type writing brain; one that likes his writing realistic but with humor sly, slapstick, high, low, varied, and wry. It also made me pause and wonder. What writing giants of the past are other current authors standing upon to produce their own versions of "What, me Writing?"