A Favorite of Mine

"I hate writing. I love having written."

Dorothy Parker

From: The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

"I had once seen Ajax, Father's best dog, get into a fight with a hummingbird and lose. The hummingbird had dived at him and spooked him until he'd trotted back to the front porch, looking very embarrassed. (It is possible for a dog to look embarrassed, you know. He'd whipped around and started licking his nether parts, a sure sign a dog is trying to hide his true feelings.)

Jacqueline Kelly

It's Friday: Why not laugh so hard you cry ?

I don't know if you watch the world news or if you watched it last night, but this is my new favorite humor blog.

From: Jellicoe Road

"On the other side of the cell Jonah Griggs and Santangelo are too busy sizing each other up like two demented pit bulls who have to prove who's got the biggest...attitude.

I lean against the bars that separate us from the others. 'So let me get this right,' I say to one of the Townie girls. 'All it takes is to insult someone's mother?'

'No,' she explains. 'That's the beauty of it. They don't actually have to insult. The words Your mother are enough.'

'So if I said to you, "Your mother is a...?"' I shrug.

'Just "Your mother." But it doesn't work if girls say it to each other,' she continues. 'You have to have a penis for it to affect you in such a way.'

'Oh funny, funny,' Santangelo says.

Jellicoe Road
Melina Marchetta

Found: A Very Good Simile

"The process of writing books is somewhat akin to a very long police interrogation in which the detective leans over the table littered with the butt ends of cigarettes and cold coffee in Styrofoam cups and says for the 87th time, 'Now let's go over this again.'"

Ann Patchett
from a great article on writing resolutions at The Washington Post

Found: Love

It's all you need.

Librarians are Hot; Good Grammar is Hotter

Occasionally (oh who am I kidding?) when I've no time to blog, I point you in the direction of cool sites that will knock your socks off. Today I offer two great sites.

Direct your browsers to Awful Library Books, a goofy literary site where librarians post the worst books clogging their shelves. When you're done laughing it up, head over to Paul Brians's Common Errors page. Paul Brians is a no-nonsense professor with a PhD in comparative literature. In other words, he knows his shiz. I don't think you can spend time at his language errors site without having at least one ah-ha writerly moment. Go learn something, bloggies.

Good sites come to those who hyperlink. Found any literary sites worth sharing lately? Post 'em in the comments, please.

The Latest Disease: Do you have it?

If you've ever been unemployed long enough to get into Dr. Phil, you know about body dysmorphia--a social disorder that makes people obsess about a perceived physical flaw. It's a "perceived" flaw because the flaw isn't nearly as horrendous as the perceiver thinks.

According to Wikipedia, the most freaked-about flaw in people who have body dysmorphia is acne. Wrong again, Wikipedia. Meet my new anxiety disorder (I have several. I collect them.):

Writing Dysmorphia

I have no friggin' clue if my writing is any good. How does one tell? Just this week, I've described my writing with one or more of the following adjectives:

crisp / stilted
funny / cheesy
gripping / WTF?

You know those people on American Idol? You know the ones! So confident they're going to blow the judges away, they open their mouths and we viewers are stuck between laughter and the immense guilt of watching someone's genuine dreams crushed on international television for our entertainment.

What if I'm one of those people?

Perusing the web-definitions of dysmorphia, I came across this tidbit:

"Body dysmorphic disorder interferes with functioning and may lead to social isolation..."

Oh my, yet another symptom I exhibit. While my friends hit the local hipster hangout, I lock myself in a tiny upstairs room à la Bertha Mason, deleting and re-entering commas, reading aloud, pacing. I am sick, y'all.

Writing brethren, two of my non-virtual writer friends tell me that writing dysmorphia is rampant. In fact, they say everyone has it. Is this true?

Do you have writing dysmorphia? Have you any idea whether your writing is good, bad, or fugly? How do you gain this objectivity? Cure me, peeps!

From: The New Yorker

The cartoon on my New Yorker flip calendar yesterday cracked me up:

PS: Cartoonist Robert Leighton created this gem and a gajillion others. Check out his work. (BTW, you can always click on my images to see bigger, clearer versions.)

I'm Still Alive!

sort of

I'll post something in the A.M. Promise.

Until then, read this hilarious blog Janet Reid turned me on to.

For Your Procrastinating Pleasure

What do you get when you cross adorable animals and modern snark? That's correct. You get a hilarious time-suck.

Sex, Drugs, and Children's Literature

First of all, thanks to everyone who was thrilled to know that Hank is okay. Text messages, and emails, and comments, oh my: you peeps really care. Now, today I offer you something lighter and (warning!) dirtier.

Y’all know I love the Twitter, right?

I'm following the #failedchildrensbooktitles tag* on twitter and it is hilarious. I recommend you go search this tag yourself, but here’s some of my fave Failed Children’s Book Titles from the past few days:

@DAndrewRiley The Hardy Boys and the Mystery of the Hidden Salami
@hollygabrielson Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret Cho
@CalebHowe "The Mile High Babysitters Club"
@seantroversy Are You My Babymama?
@Panger2009 The Red Badge of Puberty
@MrWordsWorth The Little Prince & The Revolution
@andrewpfister Oh, The Places You'll Never Be Able to Afford to Go!
@heywriterboy One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Mercury Poisoning
@ahock76 Mother F#@ckin' Goose and Other Best-Loved Verses

*When you follow a tag, you enter a enter group of words into twitter preceded by a tag (like #failedchildrensbooktitles). Doing this makes it easy for a site like TweetDeck to stream the tag for you. Anyway, when someone wants to jump in on the conversation, they tweet their contribution and the secret tag. Got it?

Or you can just read some by clicking #failedchildrensbooktitles

I Love InkyGirl

She gets it.

Best Blogs Forever

Well, it's official. I think I have a new favorite writing blog.

I Should Be So Lucky

From: Brian's Blog

I don't usually blognap, but Brian Yansky said what we all occasionally think:

"Crap. Crap. Crap. I write crap. I write crap in the beginning and I write crap at the end and then I fill the middle with crap."

Head over to Brian's Blog if you'd like to read more of his motivational (no, seriously!) Writer Talk.

A Quick Laugh for the Enlightened

Do you think of Google as an extension of your brain? I do, so I thought this comic was hilarious. Thanks to Citizen X over at tanjentsdotcom, an Internet culture blog, for turning me on to it.

Top 10 Facebook Status Updates that also Serve as Metaphors for Writing

10. Sick of the f'ing rollercoaster.
- by friend April

9. This book smells like knowledge, comfort and belonging.
- by friend Kat

8. Ugh. Work. FML.
- by friend Traci

7. The waiting is killing me.
- by cousin Roseann

6. Drama, drama, drama. (Rain, rain, rain.)
- by friend Trilby

5. Spent the day exploring 900-year old cave dwellings.
- by friend Ryan

4. Don't judge me, monkey.
- by friend Maryanne

3. Fear sucks.
- by cousin Stacey

2. Everything will be okay in the end; if it's not okay, it's not the end.
- by writer Maria Housden

1. Just tore through some dusty, rusty crap for an hour looking for something that didn't even work. WTF?
- by niece Nicole

From: Criss Cross

"How's it going, Russel?" said Hector.

"Well," said Russell, turning slightly in Hector's direction. "It's going well. Thank you."

It seemed as if Russell might be gathering his thoughts to go on and Hector, feeling so warm and milky and kind, waited.

He set his guitar case back on the floor.

He began to suspect, though, that Russell's thoughts were not gathering at all, that if they even existed, they were wandering through his head like lurching strangers on a moving train. If any two of them met up, it would be purely accidental.

Lynne Rae Perkins

From: Confessions of Saint Augustine

"Give me chastity and continence, but not yet."

Saint Augustine