Stupid things non-writers say

Yeah, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg has co-written at least two books and edited two collections that I know of. She is a "real author," even if she was signing a book edited by her late mother.

stormie said:

Well, the sort of good news is that she--Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg--did co-author a book. Here it is.

Don't bang your head too hard on your desk! I did it for you already.

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And we all know her name had nothing to do with her being published.

After giving my mother a piece of mine to read, her criticism: "Why don't you write nice? Sure is a lot of cussing in there."

Forget about trying to explain character's voices to nonwriters. It would take a lecture with doubtful results.

WittyandorIronic said:

In recent conversation a friend responded to my summer writing goal with, "A WHOLE novel?" lol.

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A legitimate response, if you ask me. I couln't write a novel in one summer.

Khazarkhum said:

And we all know her name had nothing to do with her being published.

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Although I'm sure her family fame didn't hurt, Schlossberg is a legal scholar in her own right.

Daehota said:

After giving my mother a piece of mine to read, her criticism: "Why don't you write nice? Sure is a lot of cussing in there."

Forget about trying to explain character's voices to nonwriters. It would take a lecture with doubtful results.

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I get this with my WIP. I personally don't swear, but in this particular WIP, at least half, if not more, of my characters are ex-cons. Trying to convince my mother that it just feels natural for my lads to pepper their speech with the odd expletive is not something that works very well.

By now most of my friends think I'm an eccentric, as well. And that's even the friends I don't talk to about the 'voices' in my head.

Every time I bring a new friend over to my house I always get asked, "Why do you have a book about poisons and serial killers on your bookshelf?"

I just and say I'm safe as long as a string of people who look the same and die by the same poison doesn't happen. Then I tell them I'm a writer. No one wants to eat over at my house anymore though.

I always use the self-service desk at the library. I shudder to think what the librarian would think about the books I take out...
Like last time. Suicidal Minds, Psychology, Alcoholism, Criminology, Depression, Perfectionists, Murder cases, and Medicine from the 18th century.
Oh no... i'm just a writer - (not a seriously depressed suicidal criminal with alcohol problems. Honest.)

That's why I like the Internet. It feels anonymous when I look up psychopathic tendencies. Or how to murder someone with just a ball point pen. (Easy--aim for the temple.) But then the paranoia kicks in and I delete all cookies, all history, but wonder--do "they" as in Big Brother--somehow watch what I do, what sites I visit in the confines of my home office? (Actually, no, I'm not that bad....)

Okay, I got a bit off-topic here.

Gotta love the paranoia...
-again off topic- Is it natural for writers to be prone to paranoia and conspiracy theories? Simply because it's so easy to come up with the stories behind the facts?

-on topic, kinda -
I got positively ecstatic the other day when I saw in the paper that all the Old Bailey records are being made available on the internet. I was just on the verge of jumping up and down happily, when I realised I was in the middle of my office lunchroom... and my co-workers probably wouldn't be understand.

Heck it's hard enough to make my family understand my weird research subjects, let alone my coworkers! And have you ever been sitting on public transport, and suddenly realised that you just said something to one of your characters out loud?
I did that the other day. Most embarrassing.

Hahaha! People would get a heart attack if they looked through my search history

Beyondian said:

I got positively ecstatic the other day when I saw in the paper that all the Old Bailey records are being made available on the internet.

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A lot of them already are. Or is that just the penny dreadful summaries? I'm not sure, but I know I've looked through Old Bailey stuff online, oh, years ago. For a linguistics paper (linguists are another group that gets way excited when random things are put up online).

I often wonder what weird presumptions people would make about my personality just by looking at my bookcase.
Shakespeare... Hugo... Books about French criminals... books by French ex-criminals... an eclectic selection of classical children's literature... More stuff about criminals and law...
And so on.

Shweta said:

A lot of them already are. Or is that just the penny dreadful summaries? I'm not sure, but I know I've looked through Old Bailey stuff online, oh, years ago. For a linguistics paper (linguists are another group that gets way excited when random things are put up online).

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Recently the full transcripts of ever case tried there for (can't remember full dates) about a hundred - two-hundred years were put up on the net. For free.

My brother is a linguist. He also has weird books in his bookcase, and taught me a lot of strange things...

ClaudiaGray said:

Although I'm sure her family fame didn't hurt, Schlossberg is a legal scholar in her own right.

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Which is why she uses the Kennedy, right? Because she knows she'll be taken seriously as an author strictly on her own merits.

I have no idea whether or not she's a scholar. Great for her if she is. But there's no doubt whatsoever that she plays up the Kennedy name.

rosemerry said:

Every time I bring a new friend over to my house I always get asked, "Why do you have a book about poisons and serial killers on your bookshelf?"

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I'd just grin slightly and say 'Ideas.'. Let them work out what I mean.

stormie said:

That's why I like the Internet. It feels anonymous when I look up psychopathic tendencies. Or how to murder someone with just a ball point pen. (Easy--aim for the temple.) But then the paranoia kicks in and I delete all cookies, all history, but wonder--do "they" as in Big Brother--somehow watch what I do, what sites I visit in the confines of my home office? (Actually, no, I'm not that bad....)

Okay, I got a bit off-topic here.

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Actually, maybe you should be that bad. Your ISP can track what you look at, and in fact many of them sell this information to companies who use it to tailor the advertising you see online.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorm

Beyondian said:

I often wonder what weird presumptions people would make about my personality just by looking at my bookcase.
Shakespeare... Hugo... Books about French criminals... books by French ex-criminals... an eclectic selection of classical children's literature... More stuff about criminals and law...
And so on.

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I got stopped by the cops once and my car was searched because my back seat was full of books about various ways to kill people, psych books about serial killers, a book by a hit man, a book on natural poisons and some military manuals. (I had just finished moving and hadn't cleaned out my car.) I told him I was a writer and he said, "Why does a writer need to know this stuff?"

JimmyB27 said:

Actually, maybe you should be that bad. Your ISP can track what you look at, and in fact many of them sell this information to companies who use it to tailor the advertising you see online.

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LOL! Oh, thanks. You had to feed the paranoia,huh?!

kct webber said:

I got stopped by the cops once and my car was searched because my back seat was full of books about various ways to kill people, psych books about serial killers, a book by a hit man, a book on natural poisons and some military manuals. (I had just finished moving and hadn't cleaned out my car.) I told him I was a writer and he said, "Why does a writer need to know this stuff?"

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To get rid of nosy cops?

stormie said:

LOL! Oh, thanks. You had to feed the paranoia,huh?!

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Well, if it makes you feel any better, they say that they don't hand out the specific sites you look at, just categories, from which they generate the ads.
Also, it's not all ISPs that do this. If you ask yours, and they say they do, you should be able to opt out - if you can't, time for a new ISP.

So my fiance asked me about my day and he has this little saying in this really fake accent which is so adorable "Tell me everything baby." Okay I think it's adorable and you really have to hear it. It just doesn't come across in the writing.

So I started to tell him about how it took me at least 20-30 minutes to find surnames for my Hawaiian and Native American characters in my WIP. He stops me mid-sentence and says, "Okay don't tell me absolutely everything."

So I told him about how I queried b5media and asked them on starting a blog about aquarium ownership. He said, he said, why did I have to pick something so boring...... Why not do something like planning a wedding? I said I can't do that forever and he said just do it until we get married. No, I'm going to stick with the aquarium and see what they say as I haven't even heard back from them. So boring...why the hell did he have to say that for.

Aquariums and fish are the only pets you don't have to pay a deposit for if you live in an apartment. Where I live it's a one time deposit of $300 non-refundable at other places you pay by the month. A lot of apartments don't allow reptiles, rodents, or spiders in case they escape. Some don't allow birds due to the noise factor.

Delarege said:

She said Jonathan Kellerman. So I go find a book by JK. The first chapter has a series of mutilations and same gender sex.

"MOTHER! Why do you read this crap?"

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Oh, hey, I know that book. And in defense of your mother (and the author, whom I do enjoy and would not qualify as "crap" as opposed to any number of other authors out there - okay, ranting here) most of the Alex Delaware novels are short on gore.

Perhaps your mother isn't the only one being unfairly judgemental?

(I know this was posted MONTHS ago but I just got around to looking in this thread. Unless I've been here before, which I don't think I have...)

Now, for the topic - usually what gets me is when someone asks me what I write. I'm always hesitant to reply, because with few exceptions they're just asking to be polite. I'm tempted to respond by asking, "Well, what do you read?"

And then, after they answer, say, "it's nothing like that."

The following probably belongs more in a thread titled 'When Writers seem Eccentric, Odd, or downright Crazy'... but...
Just after finishing a show I was hanging around the stage with a friend of mine. She was still half in-costume, and we were chatting about random things when I looked up at her and suddenly realised that she looked almost exactly as I had imagined one of my MCs from my WIP to look. What did I do? I did what any normal person would do. I dragged her around the theatre in search of a camera for ten minutes, made her sit very still, and took a couple of photos.
Naturally, i explained _why_, but I really don't think this helped. Now she sees me as a weird eccentric person (albeit a nice weird eccentric person). I didn't have the heart to tell her that the character in question dies of a nasty illness not too far into the second book of the series.
Next time I'll just say, "Can I get a photo to remember this by?"

Beyondian said:

I get this with my WIP. I personally don't swear, but in this particular WIP, at least half, if not more, of my characters are ex-cons. Trying to convince my mother that it just feels natural for my lads to pepper their speech with the odd expletive is not something that works very well.

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LOL! My mom threatened to spank me for using some swear words in my novel. (I'm 36 yrs. old!)



I read somewhere that you have to write like you aren't afraid of what your mother will say.

Dana-Lynn said:

LOL! My mom threatened to spank me for using some swear words in my novel. (I'm 36 yrs. old!)



I read somewhere that you have to write like you aren't afraid of what your mother will say.

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My solution to this was simple: I simply told my mother what I wrote wasn't anything like what she read, and she let me be.

My dad read my first effort and liked it... but there wasn't anything in that to be embarassed about. What does sort of give me pause is that the work I'm trying to sell has a sex scene - I tried to get around it and it just wouldn't go - and the prospect of my parents reading THAT terrifies me.