Category Archives: humor

9 Good Writing Excuses

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writing, novel, freelancing, book, fiction, blog, grammar

Dear Novel,

Yes, I know I have 60,000 words of you written already. I have a scene outline. I even know your ending (and I still respect you). Yet I haven’t sat down with you in days, haven’t added a word to you or done even a little tweak here or there.

Here is what I’ve been doing instead. You can see it’s all really important, so you won’t feel neglected.

  1. I helped my husband find his keys. I can’t have him wandering around tearing up the house looking for them any longer.
  2. I did laundry. Writing naked is overrated. Besides, it’s COLD.
  3. I organized my knitting supplies. Stepping on one of those stitch markers could be painful.
  4. I checked my facebook page. What if a publisher is desperately trying to find me?
  5. Made coffee. That one is obvious.
  6. We helped the guinea pig get un-impacted. You really don’t want to know about that one.
  7. I watched Battlestar Gallactica. (It’s inspiration, okay!)
  8. I cooked dinner
  9. I wrote a blog entry.

O.K. so maybe I’ve been procrastinating just a little bit. I promise to do better.

Writer Reactions, Responses

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In my last post I asked about how people react to you when you tell them you’re a writer. Below are the responses I got. I was surprised that no one gets the odd responses that I seem to, but maybe it’s just me.

Moneybites

When I say I’m a writer the response is usually, one of surprise but then one of interest.

DebMc

Most people think it is a cool profession. I’m already known as an artsy creative type from my former career as a photographer. A few people, very few when I think of it, ask me what kind of writing I do. Those that do, also write in some form or fashion.Fun question. Now that you’ve asked it, I’ll be paying more attention in the future.

Abhishek 

I don’t think I am a writer just expressing my words, not a pro B. Well people found my blogpost useful/ Entertaining. few say I go rude in case of linking to officials but well that’s something subject to Officials popularity !!

Les Becker 

They are impressed… until they realize I’m not making my living at it. Then, I can almost see myself being slotted into the “deadbeat” category of their minds. LOL! Thankfully, I’ve grown a thicker skin of late.

Simon 

I’ve revealed my blog to several of my friends and family and they were all shocked.

They often say:
“Wow, you do not seem like the author behind this blog”
“You write more than you do for your classes!”
“I don’t believe someone like you can write this professionally”

I often say, “Yeah, right??”. It seems as if I don’t even believe I can write like I did.

It is a great hobby and very productive. I have found myself to procrastinate much less when it comes to writing papers for class.

Michele 

I’m not a writer. I’m a librarian. We love writers.

Me

  • Blank stares. I think sometimes people just don’t know how to react, so they just don’t.
  • “Romances, right?” First off, I have nothing against romances or romance writers. It’s not the comment, it’s the tone that puts me off. This one tends to come from guys. I’m not sure why they assume a woman writer does romance, but that seems to be the case. The fact that they usually say it with a little sneer gets my goat though.
  • “You mean like….” (insert whatever movie is popular at the time). This comes from people who know that I do speculative fiction, so they’ll plug in anything from Harry Potter to a Stephen King.
  • And then they’re the diggers. “What do you write about?” “What’s your novel about now?” “Can I read something?” I don’t talk about a novel in progress, and some people just can’t seem to accept that. They push like a gossiping teenager.

I think being a writer is exotic enough to elicit oddball responses, and I’m sure other artistic jobs are more or less the same.

What’s an Obama?

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We were out of town last weekend, and we stopped Sunday morning at a Waffle House for breakfast.  A customer at a table across from us was reading about the election and mentioned Obama.

Waitress: “Obama? What’s an Obama?”

Customer: “You know, he’s running for the democratic nomination.”

Waitress: “Oh, I don’t watch the news.”

As odd and funny as that may be, think about it. She’ll probably vote this November.

Please, not your profile!

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I love spammers. I love Akismet more, since it keeps all this garbage from showing up on the blog. I did notice one today that I almost approved.

“Hi, I’m Dr. Richards. Check out my Cialis profile.”

Dude. If you’re on Cialis, I do not want to see your profile.

10 Tips for a Craptastic Blog

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Dear blogger,

  1. Put sound on your site. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it’s noisy. Music and ads work equally well.
  2. Bonus points if it’s exceptionally loud.
  3. Double bonus if it’s also a little racy, the kind of thing I don’t want everyone in my department hearing.
  4. Make your site slooooooooooow to load. If it’s taking less than 30 seconds, add a few more widgets and animations.
  5. Add more animations anyway, you know you want to.
  6. Put what I’m looking for somewhere I’ll never find it. This goes double for Entrecarders. I don’t care if your widget is above the fold, just put it somewhere on the FRONT PAGE for crying out loud!
  7. Write a one line summary and then link to someone else’s REAL article. I bet they love it when you try to make money from their work. I know I love being sent on a wild goose chase for it.
  8. How about some nice pop up ads?
  9. Bonus points if the ad shows a nearly naked woman. Yep, I want someone wandering by and seeing me looking at that.
  10. Choose some funky color combination that will make your blog virtually impossible to read. Even better, make it migraine inducing.

Overheard…

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I love listening in on other people’s conversations. Here is one from today.

First, I heard a woman explaining to her companions “that if you don’t keep their teeth, they’ll sell them.” That was intriguing enough that I listened, and it turns out that she believes funeral homes sell the teeth of the deceased, unless you keep them.

Wouldn’t you love Sunday dinner at her house. “There’s my daughter’s cheerleading trophy,  our wedding photos, and Aunt Martha’s dentures. You know they’ll sell them if you don’t take them, don’t you?”

Now, I’m not sure that there’s a lucrative market in used dentures, but even if there were, what do I care? What the heck am I going to do with them anyway?

Wouldn’t that make a great tongue-in-cheek (couldn’t resist!) horror story?

Link fun

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Here in the middle of NaNo, I thought it would be fun to link to some other interesting sites.

Punctuation fun on flickr. Think about how you’d punctuate it, or simply read it aloud.

Design Your Life

What would you do if you could do whatever you want each day. Although this article isn’t specifically directed at writers, it certainly is something to think about. What would your writing day be like? Think about what you want your days to be like, and what do you need to do to make it so.

SEO Tips for Bloggers

This article gives some great tips, and some great advice for optimizing your blog.

How to Write Faster, Better, and Easier

That’s a great title, and a great post. ‘Nuff said.

Writing Helper: Just Thinking to Myself

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Once upon a time, I taught first year college English. I also taught what my students not-so-fondly called “bonehead English,” which was a grammar and remedial writing class. I still chuckle over one particularly funny exchange with a student. Maybe it’s also a pretty good indication I wasn’t cut out to teach.

I had marked up her paper pretty badly, but it read like she wrote it in the car, while driving, running late for class. When she approached me after class, flapping the notebook paper at her side, I knew she was already ticked off.

“You marked something that wasn’t wrong.” She dropped the offending paper on the table between us and pointed to one of many marks. “See?”

I didn’t see. To tell the truth, I couldn’t figure out which of the marks she meant. “Where?”

“Here.” She pointed again, this time to the phrase, “I was thinking to myself.” I had marked out “to myself” and had written the word “redundant” in the margin.

I explained that it was, in fact, redundant to say that you think to yourself. You can’t think to anyone else, so it really isn’t necessary to specify you’re thinking to yourself.

She pointed out again how wrong I was, that she had really been thinking to herself in the situation in question.

I didn’t doubt that. Despite all the red marks, she seemed pretty thoughtful in general. I bet she did it several times a day.

I explained again why there’s no need to add “to myself.” I explained that if she could think to others too, then it might be necessary to be specific, but since any time she thinks, it must, by necessity, be “to herself,” there’s no need to say so.

We repeated this conversation until we were both out of patience. I finally asked. “Are you telepathic?”

That shut her up. She looked at me like I sprouted a third eye on my second head (thanks for the expression, Will!). “HUH?”

“Are you telepathic? If so, then yes, you should have written it as you did. If not, then you’re wrong. Okay?”

I think she left just to go look up “telepathic.”