The Two Cows' Guide to Creative Writing

I'm sure you've heard of the Two Cows' Guide to Economics and World Politics before. If not, they basically explain complex political and economic systems by assuming you have two cows and telling you what happens next. I thought I'd try the same for creative writing.

Most of these apply to novels, but there are a couple towards the end for short story writers and poets. All cows are equal in this post. (But some are more ... oh come on, you know what's coming.)

1st draft: You don't have any cows. You settle for two piles of BS.

1st readthrough: You have two cows. Upon closer inspection, one is actually a bull. The other is a corpse.

Beta-reading/CPs: You have two cows. You show them to friends, who write treatises on how you can milk cows better. Now you want two bunnies instead.

Rewriting: You have two bunnies. With extensive use of paint, stilts, and carrots for bribery, you turn them into two cows.

Main characters: You have two cows. You torture them and squish them and talk to them.

Character development: You have two cows. You subvert tropes by painting stripes on one. The other cow evolves into a bunny.

Character deaths: You have two cows. One makes too much milk and is too happy. You kill it.

Accidental foreshadowing: You have two cows. One dies. You remember a day three months ago when it barked. You tell other people that it barked a prophesy of doom.

Line editing: You have two cows. You clean every inch of their hide. While you are cleaning their ears, you discover they are actually bunnies. (Now rewrite the damn thing.)

Querying: You have two cows. You take them to market and accidentally put them with the bunnies. While you wait for buyers, you make more cows.

Dead genres: You have two cows. There are too many cows for sale. People tell you to sell bunnies instead.

Poetry: You have two cows. One's eyes look like the other cow's eyes and maybe stars. Stars are always good.

We get it poets: things are like other things

— shut up, mike (@shutupmikeginn) September 8, 2014

Word vomit: You have two cows, or so you think. In reality, you have been up until 2 AM these past days and the cows appear to be random paint blotches of black and white.

Blogging: You have two cows. You don't want to feed them, so you call up other cow owners and talk about how to feed cows. You gain lots of cow owner friends, but you still haven't sold your cows.

The actual writing life: You have two cows. You don't want to feed them, so you write a post about two cows and try to be funny.

Twitter-sized takeout:

• The Two Cows' Guide to Creative Writing (Click to Tweet)
• Writer @AlyssaC_HK describes the writing life with cows and humour. (Click to Tweet)

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