Writerisms Ten

Ten Things Writers Say, and What They Really Mean

A book is a labor of love.

Nineteen hours in drug-free hard labor with my daughter was easier, actually.

Being a professional writer is an interesting and rewarding career.

Be anything but a professional writer. Don't make me beg you.

I'm always thinking about my story, even when I'm shopping at the market.

I'm always thinking about . . . hey, are those chocolate-frosted donuts on sale?

I'm so glad you enjoyed the book.

I'm so glad your e-mail was a nice one because I just ran out of Valium.

Maybe Publishing is tough, but I love the competition.

Maybe Wal-Mart is hiring.

My editor is thoughtful with responses and is making me a better writer.

My editor hasn't answered my e-mail and is making me crazy.

So you want to write a book? That's great.

Please don't ask me to help you write your book.

Sure, I can wait another six weeks for payment to be approved.

Sure, I can pawn my wedding rings again. Do you have any recipes for making something edible out of ketchup and beans?

Writing a synopsis isn't so bad. You just have to think about it.

Writing a synopsis makes me break out in hives but I'm too poor to hire someone to do it for me.

You will absolutely love holding your first book in your hands.

You will scream like an air raid siren, shake like you're standing naked in a blizzard and then cry like a teething baby while clutching your first book in your hands. P.S., don't let them videotape it.

Pub Ten

Ten Things That Indicate You're a Published Writer

All of a mega-bestselling author's technical shortcomings can be listed verbally by you on demand, as well as how they could fix them (if they weren't so busy rolling in all those heaps of cash.)

At least three of your non-writer friends ask for free books every single time you have a release; after reading them two who have no talent for writing whatsoever insist on telling you how you can improve your stories; one of them will be right.

Drama and dramatic events always interest you on your writing level first (i.e., How can I use that in a story?) If a non-writer is around you when the drama occurs, you will put on your best shock/sympathy face so they'll think your interest is purely compassionate. If another writer friend is around, together you'll dissect the drama like that flatworm in high school science class.

Every mistake you, your editor and the copy-editor didn't catch in the proofs will from the published page forever glare at you like a hot pink bloodshot eye. For a time you will be convinced that something like a missing apostrophe spells the end of your professional career, or makes you look like a complete dumbass.

Facing out your books always feels good; finding them faced out feels even better. Stacking a couple copies of your book in front of the faced-out book by your sworn writer enemy feels best, although you'll try to resist doing that because in your heart you know it's wrong and might send you straight to writer hell. Until the day you find some other writer's books stacked in front of yours; then it's simply payback.

For at least ten cities around the world you can describe in detail the local architecture, weather, living conditions, ethnic distribution of the local population and even give driving directions to numerous restaurants, hotels and local places of interest. You will not, however, have ever personally visited any of these cities, nor will you admit this.

In your opinion books by authors who sell better than you take up too much shelf space at the book store; books by great writers you admire never get enough -- and neither does your debut.

Office supplies excite you. So does opening a new ream of printer paper, successfully removing the seal strip from and installing a new toner cartridge, starting to write on the first page of a new notebook, and opening the box of new business cards that just came in the mail. The biggest thrill you will ever have is the very first time you hold a published edition of your work (which you will also read over a hundred times or more to refresh the thrill that over time settles to a satisfied glow until release day, at which point you can't look at it anymore, much less touch it.)

Sex scenes don't worry you until the moment you have to give a copy of the book to your mother, your father, and/or that frail elderly family member with the heart problem.

Writer hell for you encompasses things like having your debut novel ripped to shreds in a major trade, not winning that award you wanted, having to applaud and smile while someone else takes that award you wanted for that piece of crap they hacked out, or a close writer friend who tells you they've just donated all the copies they owned of your books to some charity or the local library, without telling you why. There are many levels to writer hell, and each is twice as torturous as the previous, like the ones you plummet through after hearing about the mysterious donation:

--Level #1: You don't ask why, but wonder if your close writer friend is a) wonderfully generous, b) totally pissed at you for something stupid you did to them and have since forgotten, or c) secretly hates you for some completely justifiable reason that is still unknown to you.

--Level #2: You say nothing to the writer friend you thought was close but debate why did s/he do that? internally for at least a month before deciding that they now secretly hate you.

--Level #3: You drive yourself crazy wondering what the unknown reason is, and what to call the friend now. Not a friend, obviously.

--Level #4: You drop hints to your former close writer friend about what the unknown reason is -- very subtly so they don't know that you know that they now secretly hate you -- to see if the ingrate will slip and actually confess to the truth.

--Level #5: You stop speaking to your hateful and merciless writer acquaintance for a couple of weeks while you take a kick-boxing class, violate the terms of your twelve-step program, and/or compulsively gorge on Skittles, M&Ms and/or Nacho Cheese Doritos.

--Levels #6,7,8 and 9 are variations of level #4, until at last the cowardly monster who used to be your close writer friend casually mentions an ordinary reason for the donation, like they moved to a smaller place and had to downsize their book collection.

--Level #10: You decide that they are lying to you, return to level #1 and tour all the levels again until you find a get-out-of-writer-hell free card, like casually mentioning to the close writer friend that you now secretly hate that you've just donated all their books to a charity or the local library -- without telling them why.

Writerisms Ten

Ten Things Writers Say, and What They Really Mean
(The Holiday Edition)

A diamond necklace? Honey, you shouldn't have!

Diamonds? Where am I going to wear diamonds, to the grocery store? What happened to the new laptop I wanted, you moron?

Give me five minutes, sweetie, and I'll help you bake those cookies.

Five minutes in writer time is actually five hours. Or, if I'm having trouble with the WIP, days. Possibly weeks, or months, or . . . look, sweetie, cookies are bad for you.

Going to your office Christmas party should be great fun.

If your boss asks me one more time if I've published anything yet I'm dumping the punch bowl on his toupeed head.

Honey, I love driving around and looking at Christmas lights with you.

God, I could have written two or three chapters by now. And figured out that chase scene problem, too. Ooh, someone's house is on fire -- Honey, pull over!

I enjoy giving signed books to my friends during the holidays.

If my friends weren't such damn cheapskates I wouldn't have to keep giving them free books that they're never going to read anyway.

Let me read you "'Twas the Night Before Christmas."

I'm not going to imagine Santa naked this time. Or that thing he could do with the mouse, a candy cane and that bowl full of jelly.

My book is being released in December, so I expect it to sell like hotcakes.

My book is going to tank because in December the bookstore clerks are going to be too busy to unpack boxes and shelve it.

My family doesn't want me to hog the conversation at the dinner table.

If I tell one more decapitation story and make Grandma throw up again my family is going to make me eat dinner on a tray in my room.

Of course I'll make it to church on time.

They still do that midnight mass thing, right?

The holidays always fill me with joy.

Which holidays are these again?

Writerisms Ten

Ten Things Writers Say About Their Books
(and what they really mean)

All I wanted to do with this novel was share my struggle and help others.

All I want to do with this novel is make a pile of money and stomp my competition into the dust.

Early reviews have been very promising.

Early reviewers have promised to hunt me down and beat the crap out of me.

I hope you love reading it as much as I loved writing it.

I hope you don't hate it because if this doesn't sell I'm going to be pulling double shifts at Shoes R Us.

I patterned my novel after [deceased famous writer's insanely popular novel] but they're really not the same.

I ripped off a deceased famous writer's insanely popular novel and changed it just enough to skirt plagiarism because it's a guaranteed bestseller and I'll have an instant readership.

My editor thought it was very different.

My editor called legal to see if publishing it would get them sued.

No one understands what I'm doing with this novel.

Stop asking me to explain this novel; I haven't figured out a decent premise or hook line yet.

The experience of writing this story was life-changing.

After I wrote this story my spouse left me, my family won't speak to me and the house is now in foreclosure.

This book is why I became a writer.

This book is what is selling like hotcakes.

When I finished the novel I jumped with joy.

When I finished the novel I collapsed and had to be hospitalized for exhaustion.

You can buy the book at any major retailer.

Buy my freaking book!

Writerisms

You know you're a writer when:

1. "After I Make it Big in Publishing" is the title of your most important wish list.

1. Buy Porsche. 2. Get tummy tuck. 3. Acquire mute Swedish mistress.

2. Anyone who screws up the title of your novel is immediately labeled an idiot, pretty much forever.

It's StarDoc. Not Space Doc, not Starbuck, not Star Rock, and certainly not Space Balls. Moron.

2a. You have screwed up the title of another writer's novel.

Douglas Clegg and Kris Reisz were very nice about it, though.

3. At some point in your relationship you've called your significant other by a character name.

Oh, yes, Jack, yes, oh God, that's so good baby I love you so much Jack I need y-- hey, Harold honey, where are you going?

4. Every member of your family has at least one manuscript copy of your first finished novel. Your mother still brings it out like a newborn grandchild to show relatives visiting from out of town.

Here, be careful when you hold it -- it weighs seven pounds, can you believe that? And there's typing on every single one of those pages!

5. People who don't own any books confuse you.

And you mean you're really not blind, dyslexic, or allergic to spine glue?

6. Sean Lindsay can't piss you off.

Oh, he's talking about all those poser writers, not me, heh heh heh.

6a. Sean Lindsay has pissed you off.

I know he's talking about me this time. Bastard.

7. You use character and plot problems as an excuse for messing up in real life.

Darling, I know that I burned dinner, but Alexandra had to perform a major reattachment surgery with a pocket sewing kit, a bottle of Merlot and a couple of votive candles while she told Michael the big you-know-what.

8. Your favorite joke is the one about Dan Brown, Stephen King, James Patterson or J.K. Rowling.

Okay, so Dan Brown is stranded in the desert, and the camel dealer won't take credit cards, so he trades a copy of The DaVinci Code for his cheapest camel, and then . . .

9. Your office trash can is overflowing with crumpled-ball versions of the following: the bestseller lists from the last six Sunday papers, nineteen drafts of your latest query letter, and forty-two copies of the first page of your WIP, all of which have three lines or less printed on them.

One more time. Okay. It was a dark and stormy . . . Gaaaa!

10. You've no problem adding something to this list in comments.

Ha.

Intro Ten

Ten Things People Say When They Meet Writers
(and what we're really thinking while we're politely smiling)

1. Are you really a writer, or was he joking?

He was joking; I'm a retired porn film producer. Say hi to your husband for me.

2. Authors make big money, don't they?

Of course we do. I'm just putting these canapes in my purse for the dog.

3. Books put me to sleep.

Sounding out all those words must be pretty exhausting.

4. Can you write like Stephen King?

No, but I bet you could give him ideas for his next book.

5. Do you have a real job?

Yes, I beat the crap out of people who think writing isn't a real job. Can I talk to you outside for a minute?

6. Have I read anything you've written?

Oh, my God. You can read?

7. I never go into bookstores. I can't find anything I like.

Hey, maybe someday Barnes & Noble will carry pork rinds and personal massage units.

8. I have this great idea for a book. Would you write it for me?

Sure. Just as soon as I write the books for the forty thousand other people with great ideas that I met before you.

9. My sister/wife/mother reads all your romance novels.

Don't worry, Big Guy, your secret is safe with me.

10. You don't look like a famous writer.

While you, on the other hand, look exactly like a jackass.

Blurb Translations

Ten Cover Quotes, And What They Really Mean

1. "A very sweet, wholesome story."

If this book were any more PC, it could run as the Republican presidential candidate.

2. "An interesting male spin on a love story."

Is it okay to send the author's wife a sympathy card before he's dead?

3. "Fast-paced and pithy."

I've read more engrossing bumperstickers.

4. "I want all my readers to buy this book."

My editor wants all my readers to buy this book.

5. "I'm so excited by this author's promising new talent."

Less competition! Hooray!

6. "Say hello to the next great literary mind."

(yawn) Next time, send me the Cliff Notes.

7. "This novel is a non-stop wild romp!"

You know, I think I've had less fun on some of my honeymoons.

8. "This one is a blockbuster in the making."

Tell me when I die that I can come back as this author's heir.

9. "Unbelievably wonderful -- the best book of the year."

I quoted what? How drunk did I get at that conference, anyway?

10. "You won't regret buying this novel."

Until after you read it.

Behind the Lines

Ten Writers' Opening Lines, and What They Were Thinking When They Wrote Them

1. "Call me Ishmael."

Yeah, good name. Not like Herman, you know. Herman. Oy. What am I, a Munster? What kind of mother names her kid that, anyway? I swear, that woman hated me from the minute I was born. I'm never going to write about women. Men only. Big, manly men. Big, manly men who piss off whales, and who aren't named Herman.

2. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so."

How do I start this book off then? Go with the positive claptrap, or the negative claptrap? Oh, ballocks, I'll write both. A big long useless paragraph of both. Let them think it was the dichotomy of my literary genius instead of this bloody damn bipolar disorder.

3. "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink."

I'm writing this sitting in the kitchen sink. Cool.

4. "Into whatever houses I enter, I will go into them for the benefit of the sick."

Decent quote opener. Not as much fun as the thinly-veiled anecdote about the colonel, the misplaced hot dog and how I almost got court martialed for laughing my ass off in a trauma room, but not like this is ever going to get published.

5. "Over the weekend the vultures got into the presidential palace by pecking through the screens on the balcony windows and the flapping of their wings stirred up the stagnant time inside, and at dawn on Monday the city awoke out of its lethargy of centuries with the warm, soft breeze of a great man dead and rotting grandeur."

Hello, my name is Gabriel, and I have period phobia, so I make my English translator, Sancho, use mostly commas to keep my beautiful prose from being interrupted by that sort of crude punctuation and allow me to drift into endless descriptions of my beautiful vultures which remind me of the prostitutes I ogled as a boy in Cadiz . . . or was it Madrid . . . [margin note: Sancho! My God! Not ellipses! They spawn!]

6. "Shortly before being shot in the back with a tranquilizer dart and dumped half-dazed on a stretcher, right before being stolen from the hospital by silent men in white coats, Elena Baxter stood at the end of a dying child's bed, her hand on a small bare foot, and attempted to perform a miracle."

Baby, you just got backstory-opening-line whomped.

7. "...so then the guy sits up on the stretcher, says 'I don't feel so good,' and turns this incredible shade of blue."

Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has just turned on the fasten your seatbelts sign. So buckle up. Right now.

8. "The day broke gray and dull."

Take that, you dark and stormy night writers.

9. "The last camel collapsed at noon."

What will remind my editor that he hasn't sent me my advance check for this novel yet? Last straw . . . camel . . . got it.

10. "The story that follows is one I never intended to commit to paper."

I got a big book deal and you didn't, neener neener neener.

Writers & Cover Art

What Writers Say to Their Editors About Their Cover Art, and What They Really Mean

1. "All I can say is, Wow!"

Only because I'm not going to say oh shit, Jesus Christ, or I'm fucked to an editor.

2. "Did the cover artist read my manuscript before painting this?"

'Cause I don't remember having my H/H performing swap oral sex on a giraffe in my story.

3. "How do you like it?"

Yes, please, let me know if you're as big a moron as I now think you are.

4. "I have never seen anything like it."

But then, I'm not a crack house interior wall inspector.

5. "Nothing could have prepared me for this."

Unless the Spanish Inquisition comes back and decides I'm a heretic.

6. "Production did a terrific job."

Production hates me this much?

7. "There simply aren't words to describe how this cover makes me feel."

Oh yes there are.

8. "This will sell ten thousand copies."

If there's a flood that destroys all the stores' stock and the lighting over their remainder tables burns out, maybe.

9. "What an interesting cover model."

I asked for Josh Holloway and you gave me George Hamilton?

10. "Your artist has captured the spirit of my story."

Your artist is color blind, psychotic and should never walk in front of a car I'm driving.

Writerisms

Ten Things Writers Say, and What They Really Mean

1. All I want to do is go to BEA for the experience.

All I want to do is go to BEA, meet Dan Brown, seduce him while I'm ovulating, have his love child and collect a big honking support check every month.

2. Don't come in here. I'm trying to concentrate.

Don't come in here, I'm writing a sex scene.

3. Excuse me, but I see my agent and I need to talk to him.

Excuse me, but your cologne is making my eyes swell shut and I need to get away from you right now.

4. I hope Ms. New Young Promising Thang does well with her debut novel; it sounds so interesting and she's such a nice girl.

I'm going to burn in hell for all the lies I tell.

5. I have just signed a new one-book contract.

Hello, I need a day job.

6. I'm happy to see that [name of big important trade rag] took the time to review my novel.

I'm happy to see that lousy writers with the IQs of root vegetables are finally getting paying work now.

7. I think your new cover art is very colorful.

Get that freaking thing away from me before it lacerates my corneas.

8. Publishing is a wonderful industry where you can work with terrific people and learn so much about the craft of writing.

I'm so much nicer since I've been taking Prozac, don't you think?

9. Writing is the best job I've ever had.

Working the fry machine at McDonald's is starting to look good.

10. Your constructive comments are truly appreciated.

Oh, blow me.

Turnabout

What if rejection letters were written by writers instead of editors?

Jane Austen: It is a truth universally acknowledged that an editor in possession of a manuscript such as yours must be in want of an antacid tablet.

Douglas Clegg: Long before this rejection letter, and well before my initiation into the mysteries of writing it, there were your many queries, bound in padded envelopes and buried deep within my inbox. They whispered of the manuscript that would come, but even then, in my innocence, I could not have predicted the horror that awaited me.

Emily Dickinson: Unpleasant a task it is for me,
To return this manuscript.
None can avoid this purple prose,
None may evade this rejection.

William Faulkner: I decline to accept this manuscript. It is easy enough to say that man is a writer simply because he will write: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one last writer like you, and a puny inexhaustible voice like yours, still writing. I refuse to accept this.

John Keats: what I feel, fair writer of an hour!
That I shall have to look upon thee more,
And again have anguish in the power
Of rejecting you;—then on the shore
Of the Hudson I shall stand alone, and think,
Till I see your manuscript into nothingness sink.

Alison Kent: Methinks someone’s knickers are going to be in a big fat wad over being exposed to explicit manuscript rejection here instead of hearts and flowers and euphemistic purple-helmeted prose apologies laced with writerly love.

Stephen King: This terrible manuscript, the manuscript that earned my rejection, the apotheosis of terrible manuscripts, which would not end until page 28 (where I stopped reading) -- if it ever did end -- began so far as I know or can tell, with a character made from cardboard floating through a chapter swollen with plot.

Holly Lisle: So my topic is to be the inadequacy of your manuscript. Joy.

Marjorie M. Liu: Given that I have so much work to do, the idea of rejecting your manuscript felt downright sinful. Sinful, I say! But I did take a peek. Dude.

Stuart MacBride: The only question is why the blue sizzling Hell they decided to ask me to reject your manuscript. My guess is that all the good authors were busy so they had to settle for a beardy half-wit instead. Which is gratifying in an ego-massaging sense, but a bit worrying at the same time (better make sure I've got presentable underwear on, just in case.)

China Mieville: A writer rejects. Pushes through cheap white-bond pages, through the purposeless chapters of this manuscript. I stared into it as if I might see something emergent. Things never came close.

Robert B. Parker: Last time I worked rejections was in 1989, when an important kiddie lit tycoon hired me to bounce his wife, who had run off with a Little Golden Books editor named Costa. Her name was, incredibly, the same as yours, but I found her manuscript to be okay. I conclude that you two are different writers.

John Rickards: There may be an actual rejection of an actual manuscript here later today, but I make no promises. I'm on a week off from doing any work, so I might just spend all day sitting here, scratching myself.

J.R.R. Tolkien: Many that write deserve publication. And some that write deserve rejection. I am not too eager to deal out rejection in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends. I have not much hope that this manuscript can be published before you die, but there is a chance of it.

James R. Winter: What is it? Oh, yeah. Manuscript. Rejected. Why? It was okay until I grok'd it around page 100, when I realized where the book was going. Nowhere.

(Feel free to add your own rejections -- and those of other writers -- in comments.)

Writerisms

Ten Things Writers Say, Translated

1. "I am submitting my story for your consideration."

My husband finally pried this out of my white-knuckled hands and mailed it.

2. "My novel is progressing nicely."

I'm sitting here, covered in sweat and staring at a blank page one, would you get the hell away from me?

3. "Oh, I don't mind getting bad reviews."

That reviewer? Is so going to die a horrible death in my next novel.

4. "I'm satisfied with the advance offer."

I thought Lincoln freed the slaves.

5. "I've never read (insert more famous writer's name) but my (wife, husband, dog) loves her books."

I've read every damn word she's written and my molars are gone.

6. "I attended Famous Snotty Writing workshop."

I paid several thousand dollars to listen to some has-been jackass tell me why I can't write. Now I have to act like it was worth it.

7. "Although I did not win Big Important Industry Award, I am glad to see Jane Doe did."

Jane Doe better never step out in front of my car.

8. "Copies of my book are getting hard to find."

Shit, they've remaindering them already?

9. "I love my editor."

Yeah, right. Bitch.

10. "I look forward to hearing from you."

My car needs a new transmission, my hot water heater just blew and the cat is pregnant. Again. And the ink on these pages? Might as well be my blood. Look, pal, I know I'm not your problem. I'm not asking for the world, just a chance. How about giving me one?