Authors who have been granted permission to proceed by a licensed organization (National Semiconductor Foundation for the Arts, President’s Council on Fractal Plot Exploitation, North American Treatise Organization) may continue in accord with principles and intentions as detailed in the approved Proposed Request for Funding. It is advisable (although not enforceable) to employ abstract verbs instead of nouns, and to make liberal use of excessive clauses, empty phrases, promotional sex defects, and dehumanizing slang. Such techniques will give the innovative work a superficial resemblance to standard texts and therefore render it palatable to the general audience.
• Driver nods. Silver-nailed finger lifts from the steering wheel three times.
• Covert code recognition.
• The crowd pushes out around you but you keep your place on the curb, nodding three times back at him.
• He looks away from your shoes.
Obviously the Style Guide cannot follow authors beyond this point. Until the artist files the Provisional Acceptance Form, hse must follow hsis best judgment, as provided by the strictures indicated on all credit allotments.
• Finger the cold plug in your belly; you touch a leak, wishing that it looked more like a sweat stain, wondering who in the crowd can see.
• Shrill brass horns. The sun caught in the cement warren. Oven temperatures.
• Lowrider rumbles and pulls away into traffic.
• Jealousy, you know?
DEALING WITH REJECTION
If the text is rejected, the author must first submit to involuntary screening and accept the possibility of holocortical revision by a qualified editor or hsis editorial consultant. Emotional quotients will be rebalanced to offer increased objectivity, and then recommendations will be made by the PolyDecisional Authority Board. The author at this point may wish to return to the conventional format (see previous instructions), or else hse may further develop the work until it is considered suitable for social integration. Once approval has been granted, the artist has cause to rejoice. (See form RJC- 465. )
• The light changes back to red. Trapped again.
• Another lowrider pulls alongside you. Driver glances out.
• You decide to make contact.
WHAT HAPPENS TO THE TEXT AFTER ACCEPTANCE?
For the dedicated artist, this may be the most difficult phase of creation: artifactual collaboration. An acceptable text is immediately distributed nationwide and judged for applicability by a wide range of media utilities, including cinevideo inducers, sociocultivators, satellite principalities, light rail surgeons, hive designers, rheological medics, extermination surveyors, and UPS-compatible academicians. All of these departments and many others are required by law to put your text to work.
• The finger lifts three times from the wheel.
As the social order encounters your text, facilitators will first reduce it to the basic constituents, then “predigest” any content for maximum bioavailability. A consumable product may take the form of a mass-marketed “Eat&Learn” planarian diet, or it could be as homely as a mandatory printed-wall feature. There can surely be no thrill to compare with that of the author whose work has been injected into the economy, to become part of every citizen’s neutral baseline status.
• You give three nods.
WRITER’S BLOCK
This maladaptive syndrome has become less common in recent years. At one time, authors stated that the sight of a sheet of blank paper waiting to be filled was an obstacle to the first stroke of creation. We have tried to remedy this problem by providing a plethora of forms and flow-sheets, many of which are already at least partially completed for the author’s convenience. In addition, there are many public domain programs designed to break the seemingly endless sheet of ice represented by 93.5 square inches of white paper.
• The light changes.
For further information, file Form PTW-109 (Permission to Write), or present your Querent’s License Number to the Style Enforcement Agency. Please check the Information Etiquette Access Guide for your social classification and save yourself time and money by making sure that your question is not forbidden before you ask it.
• Ah, brotherhood!
• You step down from the curb.
• “I have a message—”
• Squeal of tires, stench of burning rubber.
• Spiderwork cracks infiltrate your vision as your windshield eyes shatter.
• You’re not my reader, and you never were—
USER INTERRUPT
USER INTERRUPT
BUDGETARY VIOLATION
BUDGETARY VIOLATION
TRAGIC RESTRICTION 7998
TRAGIC RESTRICTION 7998
THIS WORKSTATION HAS BEEN REVOKED
THIS WORKSTATION HAS BEEN REVOKED
“Your Style Guide - Use It Wisely” copyright 1989 by Marc Laidlaw. First appeared in Semiotext[e] SF (1989), edited by Rudy Rucker, Peter Lamborn Wilson and Robert Anton Wilson.
MARS WILL HAVE BLOOD
“Too much ichor,” said red-faced Jack Magnusson, scowling into a playbook. “The whole tragedy is sopping in it. Blood, blood, blood. No, it won’t do for a student production. We’re not educating little vampires here.”
“That remains to be seen,” said Nora Sherman, the English office head. She stared into Magnusson’s round obsidian paperweight, which he had pushed to the center of the table. Little Mr. Dean’s hand kept darting toward it and receding.
Magnusson, the chairman of Blackstone Intermediate School’s Ethics Advisory Committee, threw the playbook at Steve Dean, who was sometimes mistaken for a student. Dean flinched but caught it.
“Well, Jack…”
“Speak up, Dean.”
“Er, it is Macbeth, Jack, and it’s on the reading list this year.”
Magnusson drew himself up, spreading his halfback shoulders, running a hand through his thinning steel-wool hair. “That curriculum’s always been trouble,” he said, “but there’s no use asking for more. What with the swear-word in Catcher in the Rye and the dead horse in Red Sky at Morning and the A.V. Department showing Corpse Grinders on Back-to-School Night, we’re going to start losing constituents to other districts that don’t have these problems.”
Dean looked ready to cry into the pages of Macbeth. Nora Sherman grabbed the book from him and held it dangling by the spine.
She said, “Tirades aside, Jack, you’d better let the kids do Shakespeare this year or there’ll be a rebellion. Birnham Wood will move at recess, with Neal Bay heading the insurrection. There’s a lot of talent going to waste around here and the kids damn well know it.”
Dean stared at her, dazed. “Well said, Nora.”
“You stay out of this,” she said.
“What do you want from me?” Magnusson asked her. “I can’t approve this.”
“Perhaps not as it is, but what if it were toned down?”
Magnusson reared back. “Cut out the blood? There’d be nothing left.”
“No editing,” she said. “We won’t use the Shakespeare. We’ll write our own version. Improvise. I’ve seen grade school kids do it with The Wind in the Willows. Once we get rid of the poetry, we’re not stuck to the plot, and that gives the students considerable freedom. We can change the setting and period.”