Yes! It’s true! You too can write like Mark E. Smith!

At home. In the pub. In your spare time. Sober or drunk—you can write just like Salford’s most famous son!

In The Mark E. Smith ‘Guide To Writing’ Guide—The Fall’s frontman Mark E. Smith takes you thru a step-by-step, day-by-day guide to writing.

No tiresome exercises! No unsightly stains! No tricks!

Impress your friends! Attract strangers with your belligerent antics! Drink pints and not be sick!

Yes! Mark will teach you everything you need to know about writing and how to be a real writer—just like the legendary Mark E. Smith himself.

Seems reasonable.
 

Yes, this man could be the key to unlocking your future…or drinks cabinet…which ever’s nearest.
 
In 1983, Mark E. Smith—him with the face like a crumpled cardboard box left out in the rain—gave his top tips on how best to write like a pro. It went like this:

Hello I’m Mark E. Smith and this is The Mark E. Smith ‘Guide To Writing’ Guide.

Day-by-day breakdown

Day One: Hang around house all day writing bits of useless information on bits of paper

Day Two: Decide lack of inspiration due to too much isolation and non-fraternisation. Go to pub. Have drinks.

Day Three: Get up and go to pub. Hold on in there a style is on it’s way. Through sheer boredom and drunkenness, talk to people in pub.

Day Four: By now, people in the pub should be continually getting on your nerves. Write things about them on backs of beer mats.

Day Five: Go to pub. This is where true penmanship stamina comes into its own as by now, guilt, drunkenness, the people in the pub and the fact you’re one of them should combine to enable you to write out of sheer vexation. To write out of sheer vexation.

Day Six: If possible stay home. And write. If not go to pub.

More Mark E. Smith after the jump…

 
It’s time Manchester did the decent thing and honored its most celebrated son. If their Merseyside rivals can honor John Lennon by renaming its international airport after the sarky mop top, then Manchester should do something similar and rename its bus station after Mark E. Smith.  But let’s not stop there - a local holiday should be adopted on his birthday, street parties held, and a statue erected in Broughton. Not much to ask for the man whose band The Fall have been essential listening over the past thirty-odd years.

Thirty odd years indeed, with Smith the only constant in The Fall’s ever-changing line-up through a long, difficult, but productive, and brilliant career. How the great Mancunian has survived the bitter fights, spiked drinks, broken bones and riots is proof of Smith’s creativity, ambition and touched-by-genius talents.

And let us not forget, Smith’s ability to be a thorn in the side of the condescending prissy-mouthed southern soft lad press, who’ve repeatedly written him off as a “piss-head,” failing to see that a piss-head could never produce such quality or quantity of work. Yes, let us rejoice, for we are alive in the days of Mark E. Smith.

This little gem is from 1983, when Smith gave his guide to writing - not the kind of shit you’ll get from those writing-by-numbers courses, but something far more interesting and entertaining.
 

 
Bonus clips of The Fall after the jump…