Alley Cats - The Art of Survival in Writing

So of the three alley cats do you recognise any?

The cat in the middle is Bob Dylan. The cat on the right is our man Allen Ginsberg who wrote the infamous poem the title of this blog has come from, Howl. The other mee-ow is Michael McClure. Enough in your education for now.

The point is that Dylan was hanging out with the poets, and the poets were hanging out with Dylan, and words were changing everything including the Times. The writing came from the heart.

It was not determined by marketing departments or authoritarian figures but from the self. It is very hard to write from the self nowadays. I think it always was. But particularly now people want writers to be celebrities and writers often want to be perceived as celebrities.

The first secret in writing well is to resist this. Ignore trends and multimedia advertising. Write what you want to write in the word you choose and stray up the alley with all those other cats if that be the consequences. Eat your dinners out of trash cans, wash beneath fire hydrants.
Be true to yourself. It will be its own reward. And I promise you, it will lead you to greater success that a brief period of time under the intense heat of some bright studio lights that will eventually pale, flicker out and die.