First you want to make sure the television set is on in the other room. Is it loud? Is it some sort of vaguely depressing game show? Good.

Next, sit down at the kitchen table. Does the room smell of eggs and pills? Is everything orange?

Once you've surveyed the room, pull out a piece of paper and put it in the typewriter. Make sure the ribbon is old. Curse quietly and old-timey-like under your breath and creak up from your chair and shuffle down the hall to Tini's old room. When you walk in be sure to notice that the dust ruffle is uneven. Straighten that out.

Stand looking out the window at the neighbor's dog in their yard. Then look at the Matheson boy sitting on his back porch smoking a cigarette. Remember the time he took Tini to her junior prom and showed up stinking of whiskey and you chased him off the porch. Remember that Trini said that that was the final straw and that she swore she would never speak to you again once she got out of this backwater town. Remember that she hasn't, but that you were happy for the card on Christmas. Make a weak ball with your first and shake your head tiredly.

Next, roll up the old roll top desk and bumble around for a new ribbon. Find it and walk back to the kitchen.

Swat at the typewriter for a while, trying to jam the ribbon in, cursing "Dagnabbit!" and other variations.

Finally cram the damn thing in after calling "Gene/Jean?? Gene/Jean???" several times without any response. Gene/Jean should be asleep on the sofa in front of the television set in order for you to properly write the letter.

You are almost there! Focus your eyes and search for your glasses on top of your head. They will not be there. Realize that they are on the little necklace doodad that Paulie and the kids got you for Grandmother/father's Day last year.

Put glasses on. Prepare to type.

By now you should have forgotten entirely what you were so upset about.

Write about the grocery store and/or the town alderman who wants to close the library in the middle of town at four instead of five on Sundays to save some money. Just a lousy buck or two. That's all anyone's after in this world.

At this point the phone should ring. You will hope it is Trini. It will be someone trying to sell you some piece of junk. Hang up, shuffle off to wake up Gene/Jean. Forget about the letter until weeks later. You'll drop it in the mailbox when you're driving home from the library. At four.

And there you have "How to Write a Cranky Letter to the Editor"

Also, fake socialite diary entries.

Though, actually, they'll probably only go out in Manhattan.