How to Be a Person (25 page)

DON’T USE FIRST PERSON UNLESS YOU HAVE TO

Speaking of being annoying, don’t write “I” into sentences you don’t need to be in. “I think that movie is terrible” is not as good a sentence as “That movie is terrible”—the meaning’s the same, it’s clear an opinion is being given, but one’s got filler and the other doesn’t. Plus, “I think that movie is terrible” has a whiff of self-importance to it, as if we are supposed to know/care who this “I” is. (The people who write “I” a lot are the kind of people who always want to tell you about their dreams.) Finding ways to avoid self-importance is a useful challenge for a writer: You couldn’t get more self-important than that weepy paragraph by Fitzgerald about falling apart, and yet it doesn’t stink with self-importance because it doesn’t have the word “I” in it. Go ahead and use “I” if it makes a sentence funnier or if there’s just no way to write the sentence without the “I” because, say, you fell down a flight of stairs. You can’t really improve on the sentence “Then I fell down a flight of stairs.”

How to Write a College Paper

Because so many people have potatoes where their brains should be—no matter how many times they hear something or see something, they don’t get it, they have nothing to say, they have no questions, hhhhhhhhhhh—because of these people, the college paper was invented. It’s to separate the potatoes-for-brains from people with the capacity to absorb information, apply it to other
things they know about, and express a response. That’s all you’re doing with a college paper. You’re saying,
I learned a thing, and here’s what’s interesting about it
.

You do this with sentences and paragraphs. If you have a question/prompt, give a confident answer (in the first paragraph) and support your point with examples/evidence (each one getting its own paragraph—what the example is and how it supports what you’re saying). Then, at the end, restate your point and why it’s interesting. And you’re done. If you don’t have a question to answer—if you’re in a literature class and you’re just supposed to respond critically to a text—well, that’s a fun one. That just means:
Show off how you think
. Go crazy. Come up with a specific question and then take a look at how the text answers it, and show your work, once again with each example getting its own paragraph.

Reread your writing—preferably after letting it sit overnight or at least for an hour or two. Ways to make it better will be obvious.

Don’t bore your teacher. Imagine how many boring papers that poor person has to read.

How to Write a Cover Letter

You’re overthinking this. You just write it like a normal person. Keep it short. Shorter. No clichés, no wasting time, no overwriting. Try not to be funny
—trying
to be funny is the worst in a cover letter. Keep it just: Here’s who you are, here’s why you’re writing. Then reread it. Did you reread it? It’s full of typos. REREAD IT!
The Stranger
received a cover letter by e-mail from someone who wanted to write a sports column. The subject line: “The Starnger Needs a sport’s Writer.” That person is not going to get a response. Likewise, cool it on the superlatives about how thrilled you are at the possibility of maybe getting an interview, because you’re just going to sound like a freak. You’ll end up like the poor woman who once sent a cover letter we’ve been reading aloud in the office ever since—a letter we framed and hung on a wall.

It begins, “Your newspaper is brilliant, professional, progressive, enlightening, edgy, and so bitingly human that I could swear it bleeds.” Aw, that’s nice—she reads the paper and she likes it. Good to know. “All in all it offers the well blended and well aged voice that a modern audience craves. It is a staple in my Seattle apartment and I have been known to send sections of it back East to friends and devotees with great frequency.” Okay, so she reads it a lot and likes it a lot. “
The Stranger
has seamlessly tapped into the pulse of Seattle and has thus developed Seattle’s fingerprints and nuances.” Like, a lot a lot. “It is everything an alternative city newspaper should be.” Uh huh. “That is why I am at the cusp of my excitement to be your intern.”

Those quotes are just from the first paragraph.

There are five paragraphs.

She goes on to state that working at a college publication “allowed me to fertilize the skill set necessary to create fluidity when pinned to the wall, poise when encountering formidable challenge, and consistency when working amongst chaos.” She adds, “My work
ethic and devotion to professional development are irremovable aspects of my personality.” A few sentences later, she writes, “If these notations speak to anything I would hope they speak to the severity of my desire.”

Then, later: “In addition to my vivacity, dedication, and competence, my personal symphony of written voice and exhaustless creativity should be highlighted. I offer them to you because I envision our relationship as being extremely mutually rewarding. I would be honored to invest in your riveting and entertaining journal. Please contact me at your earliest convenience …”

No one ever did. Sometimes we wonder whatever happened to her, although we don’t wonder very much.

How to Write Poetry

Do you know who Emily Dickinson was? Do it like that.

17. WHAT NO ONE ELSE WILL TELL YOU ABOUT HEARTBREAK AND DEATH

BY BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT AND CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

I
t is inevitable: Someone is going to break your heart, and someone you love is going to die (followed, inevitably, by another person, then another, etc.—hopefully not in close succession). It’s not going to be pretty, but you will get through it.

How to Get Over a Broken Heart

There’s baby-games sad-because-it’s-over, then there’s the real deal: Heart. Break. True heartbreak is unmistakable, because it hurts so much. It hurts like being sick—it hurts like you’re going to die. Nothing means anything, nothing is worth anything, because they don’t love you. If you’re not the stoic type, you have to carry Kleenex around because you never know when you’re going to start crying. If you’re the stoic type, the tears you don’t cry hurt just as much as the ones you do.

But there is something—one thing—that will help. That thing is time. You’ll feel better with time. You don’t believe it right now. You think you’ll never get over this; you think you’ll never feel better; you are in the depths of despair, and you will dwell forever there. Not so, friend. Time heals all wounds, even the broken heart.

How much time? Some people maintain that for every year you were together, you must suffer through one month of heartbreak. But even if you were together for only six months, you’ve still got some hurt before you start feeling better. If you were only together for a couple months, you may feel heartbroken, but you’ll probably realize later you really didn’t even know the person, and, conversely, they really didn’t know you. Which is somewhat comforting.

Even if you were together for months and months, you might still find out later you had no idea what was going on. Say, for instance, your first love, clearly the love of your life—the person who loves old movies like you do, and is so funny, and who writes
you love letters that you read over and over, and whose beautiful eyes you would live inside if such a thing were possible—breaks up with you, and you carry Kleenex everywhere, and you feel like you want to die. You call your mom—that’s how messed-up you feel—and your mom says, “Oh, honey. I’m so, so sorry. But you’ll feel better with time.” You cry some more, because you know in your extremely broken heart that she’s wrong, that a human being cannot recover from pain like this. But she’s right, and after you spend every hour of every day questioning what’s wrong with you and how can you be so unlovable and what did you do wrong and missing missing missing crying crying crying—eventually, slowly, you feel better. You’re shocked, but you really do. Fast-forward 10 years. You live in a different city. You have a pretty neat job. You’ve loved again! It’s like a miracle when it happens. And now you are or you aren’t seeing someone or in love or what have you. You hear from your heartbreaker—the first one, the one with the eyes—that they’re going to be in town and that your old mutual friend Philip is having a party and it’s an hour or so outside of town and do you want to drive there together? Sure you do. A part of you wonders, with a very real thrill, what might be rekindled; you remember the love you had for this person with a vividness that seems somewhat impossible, after all this time. The first time you met, and how they looked in the half light of the night outside the party, how crazily happy you were every time you saw them, the time you rolled around together in the still-warm sand. But when you get together now, riding in the car, just the two of you, your heartbreaker has lost
their spark completely. Your heartbreaker starts talking about back then, and how much they drank, and how serious that was. “What?” you say. “Do you mean like you drank secretly?” you ask. Yes, that is what your heartbreaker means. You can’t quite believe this. Your heartbreaker goes on and on about themselves back then—and themselves now, and themselves in between—with you thinking all the while about how preposterous it sounds. How could you not have known this person you used to love had a secret drinking problem? And: If only you’d known! This is total vindication! It really wasn’t your fault! You wish so, so much that yourself back then—the self you also remember entirely vividly, carrying Kleenex around and wanting to die, your poor, sweet, younger self—could have known this. At the same time, you’re having another realization: You never really knew this other person at all. The mind reels. Can you ever truly know what’s in another person’s heart? This is crazy. Your heartbreaker is still talking and now is saying that as part of their 12-step program, they’re making amends to those they hurt, way back a decade ago, and they want to make amends to you. “That was a long time ago,” you say. “You don’t have to do that,” you say. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” you say—and with a pleasant shock, you realize that you absolutely mean it. But yes, your heartbreaker says, they
do
have to do this, it’s important, and on and on and on. You repeat yourself: long time ago, not important, water under the proverbial bridge. Your heartbreaker clearly wants some very specific verbiage from you about accepting the amends-making, but the whole thing seems more about your heartbreaker than anyone
or anything else. You’re on the side of your past self—the poor, sweet, heartbroken thing. So you never actually say you accept the amends. And it isn’t until more years go by that you do—you accept, and you say it out loud, to an empty room.

But let’s back up: Your heart is broken. Only time will really help, but friends help a little. You might only be able to see them hazily through your pain, but spend time with them. They might bring you ice cream. (Note that when a friend of yours is heartbroken, you should be so, so nice to them, and also bring them ice cream. And refrain from too much I-told-you-so if you never liked the person they were with in the first place.) Meanwhile, it’s okay to dwell in bed for limited periods of time, but go outside. Take walks. Stay busy. Do something nice for someone else.

If you really can’t get out of bed—can’t go to class or work or function at all normally—call a friend or your mom or a mental health help line and get some help. Likewise, if you fall into self-destructive behavior—too many drugs, or unprotected sex, or anything like that—get some help.

As a wise man once said, it gets better. The first time your heart is broken, it seems unfixable. The good news is, you’re stronger than you think. And chances are, that person was kind of a shitheel in ways you don’t even know, and not right for you at all. Just hold on. You’ll see.

When Someone You Love Dies

If you think a regular old broken heart is painful, try this one on for size. You will never see this person again—the finality is unbelievable, in the sense that it cannot be believed. The devastation seems complete. Many great minds have tried to address this pain, but there is not much to say. Only time will help. Some say that it takes a year to begin to feel normal again after losing someone very close to you.

But meanwhile, know that every single thing you loved about this person still lives on within you.

On Suicide

Please do not do that. If you’re thinking about suicide, you need to know that you will feel better. It doesn’t seem like it—it seems impossible—but you will feel better. Problems that seem insurmountable have solutions. Reach out to someone right away; call a friend or a suicide hotline (1-800-273-8255). You WILL get through this; you WILL feel better. Life is worth living. Hold on, and get some help.

APPENDIX A. WHAT NO ONE ELSE WILL TELL YOU ABOUT WORKING IN RESTAURANTS