Bursting into the Drowning Sorrows Tavern for his nightly troll, Thurston spied a likely prospect sitting next to his usual stool at the bar. When the lady in question, a middle-aged brazen hussy with platinum blond hair and turquoise eye-liner, winked in his direction, Thurston stepped up to the firing line and ordered a double for himself and another for her. Half measures would avail him nothing tonight.

“Hi, my name is Thurston, but everyone around here calls me Thirsty.” Despite looking like an aging fire hydrant in a cheap suit, Thirsty had, until recently, been a Big Dog in the financial world. Markets rose and fell with his every howl, but more recently his fortunes had waned substantially. Now, far from being a Big Dog, Thirsty was just another wan cur on his way to the pound.

“My name is Jennifer June, but you can call me J-June. Everyone else does.” Once a top advertising executive, J-June had run afoul of the backlash against Bully Broads. After two stints in anger management rehabs and several failed comeback attempts, she now sought company in the nether regions of Greenwich’s café society.

“Speaking as Greenwich’s pre-eminent career counselor, you look like a man desperately in need of a really good job,” J-June said, deploying her most successful opening gambit.

“You got that right, lady! I was making big money before they accused me of reporting false profits. Picky, picky, picky. Even Bush said that profits are just opinions, so I’m entitled to mine, right?”

“No man is a prophet in his own land,” she said, “but that’s just my opinion.”

“And it appears that I have missed all the good bubbles. What’s a guy to do?”

“Thirsty, you’re in the right place. It just so happens that my specialty is stiffening the resolve of job seekers so they can cut the mustard in this new world of ours. You’ll be back on top in no time. Perhaps you have read my book, “How to Get a Leg Up in Today’s Dog eat Dog Economy”?

“So sorry I missed it, but please tell me more,” he cooed.

“You need a brand new shtick, slick, something that combines your ability to spin a plausible tale with your talent for producing short change. In cases such as yours, I normally recommend becoming a Professional Quant, but it seems that you have already exhausted that route.”

“Sadly, yes. For years I received high praise for being a Professional Quant, but when those same people see me now, the only thing they can say is ‘See You Next Tuesday.’ Somehow, that lacks the same caché.”

“Not to worry,” J-June said. “I know of a very big hole right here in Greenwich that needs filling immediately. The job is yours for the asking.”

When J-June leaned close to whisper in Thirsty’s ear, several patrons spontaneously called out, “Get a room, for crying out loud!”

Unable to resist the force of an idea whose time had come, J-June and Thirsty repaired to Thirsty’s apartment, conveniently located above the tavern, where they spent the evening writing a new self-help book, “Barking up the Tree of Success,” soon to be published by Dogwood Press, a division of J-June Enterprises.

Using the passive voice is like speaking while inhaling. It will attract attention for all the wrong reasons.

Using the words “suddenly” or “sudden” is therefore most often redundant, serving primarily to identify the writer as a rank amateur. Stephen King makes this point with great good humor in his book “On Writing.”

Let’s take a simple example:

“Suddenly, the telephone rang.”

Telephones always ring suddenly, even when you are expecting the call.

I see this all the time in undergraduate college admissions essays. In a misguided attempt to color a rather commonplace situation with a sense of sweaty urgency, applicants combine suddenly ringing telephones, especially very early in the morning, with squealing mother’s urging them out of bed to answer the call of destiny.

This will neither attract nor retain the reader’s attention. If anything, it may persuade them to read no further.

Avoid “suddenly” like the plague.

The Spectre of Grim Professionalism

We had been warned;
some took heed,
but the numbers
were overwhelming.

The Spectre of
Grim Professionalism
grabbed a choke-hold on the
throat of a generation,
forcing us all to grit our
teeth while small
bursts of air
squeaked out
as if through the
neck of a balloon.

The joy of living died,
leaving no room
for imagination.

We were left with
blank bubble-headed stares,
while a lone refugee
brain fragment rattled
around in our skulls
like a marble in a milk can.

What passed for ideas
seeped out from between
our lips
like so much balloon spit.

This gruesome horde
of buffaloed zombies
thundered across
the fruited plain,
trampling out the
last flickering
vestiges of humanity.

I can still see
smoke rising from
the scorched earth
as the
blazing
tide withdraws
to gather strength for
the Final Assault,
leaving a high-water mark
just short of
where I stand.

I’m afraid to turn
around and look.

I may be the
last one left
standing on this hill.

So maybe I’ll just
call out:

Hey!

If there’s
anyone
left back there,
let me know!

Well?

I’m waiting!

The truth is much closer that that. It is staring me in the face all day long. I only need to open my eyes to see it.

This is good advice, especially when writing about oneself. Show the reader through examples and anecdotes. Do not tell the reader by making unsubstantiated assertions.

“I am a hard worker who always perseveres to the very end.”

Everyone sees themselves as hard workers who persevere. Have you ever known anyone to describe themselves as a lazy quitter? Probably not, at least not in writing, even if they are lazy quitters. Especially if they are lazy quitters.

Rather than a slurry of empty assertions, simply state facts. For example, a college student who worked 30 hours per week to earn money for tuition, volunteered 5 hours per week at a hospital, and graduated with a 3.9 GPA is obviously neither lazy nor a quitter.

Res ipsa loquitur. Enough said.

Not here. Being conversational does not mean talking like an idiot. At least not here it doesn’t.

I will make mistakes, but I promise not to be proud of them.