Advice for aspiring writers: Learn dog language
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- Take a walk every day.
- Stop to smell the roses, jasmine, and angel’s trumpets.
- But don’t bother to smell the camellias; they don’t have a smell.
- Get a guidebook to local flowers and find out which ones are worth smelling.
- Get to know people who aren’t like you.
- Befriend them.
- Eavesdrop on your neighbors.
- Find out about your neighbor’s dog’s health problems.
- Make friends with dogs.
- Learn dog language.
- Talk to your local dogs.
- Learn what smells interesting to dogs.
- Learn that your neighbor’s dog isn’t sick but is actually the victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
- Confront your neighbor about dog abuse.
- Get in a fist fight with your neighbor.
- Get arrested.
- Get bailed out by your new friends who are unlike you and therefore have the cash on hand to bail you out.
- Make promises you can’t keep, like I will pay you back for bailing me out.
- Represent yourself in court.
- Discover the judge has a dog, Baxter, with emotional problems who sits at her feet in court to help with Baxter’s separation anxiety.
- Violating all rules of propriety, talk to the dog instead of the judge during your closing statements.
- Offer to talk his emotional problems through with Baxter.
- Get sentenced to community service as the judge’s dog’s psychologist.
- Help Baxter resolve his Oedipus complex.
- Finish your community service but stay friends with Baxter and the judge.
- Get another client for dog psychotherapy from people you meet at a potluck at the judge’s mansion.
- Make business cards that say “Dog Psychologist and Writer.”
- Start running seminars on dog psychology.
- Cross out “Writer” on your business cards.
- Become an Instagram-famous dog whisperer.
- Really famous.
- Treat Beyoncé’s sad pup for social anxiety.
- Get on the late night talk show circuit to talk about how you cured Beyoncé’s sad pup.
- Due to popular demand, write a book titled “How to Psychoanalyze Your Pup” with a jacket blurb by Beyoncé.
- Get new business cards that say “Writer and Dog Psychologist.”
- Take time to appreciate your success.