Hey kids, enjoying the magazine so far? Glad to hear it! By now you’re probably wondering what it’s like to be a writer for Generation. Well, it’s a lot more than just an easy way to get a three credit "A" of upper level English and a monthly stipend--it’s also a great way to publicly humiliate your parents. But great writers are made not born, so before you can get in on the Sub-Board gravy train, you’re going to have to do a little work. Don’t worry though, it’s a lot easier than you think. You don’t have to be a tortured artist type with rivets stapled into your face. Not even a typical "C" average English major dreaming of law school at Harvard. Hell, to write for us you don’t even have to be literate! All you have to do is keep a few of these handy tricks in mind and you’ll be all set.

Verbosity is key. You can’t just say something. It has to be deep. It has to paint a picture. It has to be impossible to understand. In the past only really smart people could pull this off, but now, thanks to the miracles of modern technology, anyone can!

Load up your word processor, preferably one with a date after its title, and follow these easy instructions. Start off with a simple sentence:

The old man lived in the black house on the hill.

Now use your software’s built in thesaurus to change every word over two letters in length to the biggest synonym that it suggests. It doesn’t matter if the new word radically changes the meaning of the sentence. In fact, as a writer, it really doesn’t matter if you know what the sentence means at all--that’s what the readers are for anyway. Go ahead and try it for yourself now. You should end up with something that resembles this:

The atavistic patriarch dwelled in the tenebrous domicile on the promontory.

The closer it looks to actual Latin, the better! Now start to click on words and drag and drop them all over the place. It’s a lot of fun, give it a try. I know what your thinking now, but you have to trust me. Subject verb agreement. Passive voice. Don’t end a sentence with a preposition. Well, laws were made to be broken my friend. So what if this word is a noun and that one is an adjective. They’re all big, so it really doesn’t matter what order they get put in:

On the tenebrous domicile patriarch dwelled in the promontory atavistic.

Is yours still making sense? Just keep rearranging it then. That’s more like it! Say it out loud. Don’t like the sound of it? Say it faster then. No? Faster. Add some chords, crank the distortion, and maybe someday a couple of kids will be listening to it and be saying:

"Man, this guy really knows what he’s talking about, it’s like deep or something."

"Yeah, I liked’em before they sold out and sucked corporate cock and then you bought their T-shirt."

"Fuck you man. I didn’t buy it--it was a birthday present."

Now ditch that punctuation your teacher is always harping about. You’re an artist with a vision, don’t let your creativity be stifled by THE MAN. Power to the people. Remember, you can use visual space to your advantage and never, ever, capitalize "I" when you’re referring to yourself. It’s a tad bit egotistical, don’t you think?

!on the tenebrous. doMicile patriARCH dwelled in the pro montory atavistic

Now you’ve got it! To cement your status as a writer, you have one more skill to master. Gothic Poetry, thorn among roses, is the holy grail for which we all aspire. If you understood that last sentence then you’re well on you’re way already! Goth isn't about what you say, it's about how you feel when you say it. Think about little puppies getting sucked between the wheeels of a runaway lawnmower. Think about the fact that everyone you know and love is going to die and there's nothing you can do about it. You are hopeless and alone in an uncaring world. Now, all you have to do is write about it. In fact to save you some time, I’ve included a sample of my world famous Gothik Poetry Mix & Match. The complete toolkit is available at better department stores near you!

Write down a phrase from the first column. Choose one from the second now, any one you want, and write it down after the first. Do the same for the third column and you have your first gothic sentence! Run to your mother's closet now, find her fishnet stockings, yeah you know where they are, and put them on. Now you’re ready to complete your poem.

Keep making up lines using the Gothik Poetry Mix & Match. Don’t worry if they all start to sound the same, it doesn’t matter--you’re suicidal--you can say whatever the fuck you want! Nobody is ever going to read it anyway, unless you pay them to, that is. My therapist says that I’m improving on my use of perceptual phlegmatic imagery but my grasp of spatial luminance in regards to the suppression of encratic ends is sorely lacking. But I digress. When you think you have enough poetry to fill up a page, double spaced of course, you’re done. Easy as that! Just remember that it’s vampyre, not vampire. You are so Goth.

Now that you have completed your training, you are ready to become a full fledged member of Generation. Go forth and ramble.