The Pennsylvanian period took place during the Paleozoic era, some 200 million years ago. At this time the earth was dominated by species of early reptiles. They were a pre-cursor to the dinosaurs, and enjoyed eating cheesesteak as well as visiting Hershey's park. They lived in small communities with strange names, such as Breakneck, Hop Bottom, and Punxsutawney. They were a valiant, good-hearted, and rowdy bunch who excelled at baseball. They are now extinct.

When writing, always wear socks or some type of shoe. There is a force beneath you which will want to extract through your feet the ideas placed in your head from above. You must protect yourself.

Do not endow your character with a death you would not personally want to suffer. Do not give your character a gift you would not personally want to receive. Writing on a subject that bears no personal desire will always be incomplete, or worse, inaccurate. By contrast, even the tiniest speck of desire can provide access to some truth about that subject. The limits of your story are the limits of your characters, and the limits of your characters are the limits of your personal comfort. Hence, if you want to expand the limits of your characters, you must expand the limits of your comfort. The best writers are masochists.

The title of a work must be in someway be internal to the work itself. Do not eschew the effort of formulating a true title by quoting another writer’s words. Your first impression to the reader should not be as someone who has to rely on the poetry others. 

There is a realm of truth and experience that cannot be accessed soberly. While you certainly do not have to, writers who want to explore this realm must engage with drugs, not like a child engaging with his toy, but like a cyclist engaging with his bike. So long as drugs do not grow to interfere with your health as a writer, and more importantly, your health as a person, you should not be afraid to intoxicate yourself, be it with alcohol, marijuana, hallucinogens, pills, music, entertainment, or sex.