Hey! I Wrote That!

hahaha, that must be a pretty good feeling.

I once found out my brother's English class studied a poem of mine in school. he can't remember what it was about, or in fact anything beyond the fact that it had my name on it. Very odd.

Mwah, how cool is that

That would be so trippy! I BET YOU STEPPED ON IT! I was with a friend eating fortune cookies when she said, "Hey, I wrote that!" But it's never happened to me yet.

How cool is that? I'd love to see that happen some day. Lancaster is full of quirky little gift shops like that.

....wondering if everyone knows how to properly pronounce Lancaster.....

chaostitan said:

....wondering if everyone knows how to properly pronounce Lancaster.....

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Oooo! Oooo! I do! I do!

Jenna, that is cool! Shopping in Lancaster is a lot of fun. And I want one of those door mats. Actually, with your permission, I'll make an over the door hanger that says the same thing and is on eye-level.

That is awesome!

Never had that with my writing, but I was eating lunch in a bar once and recognized the music... they were playing my CD!

In all seriousness, I think I've seen that doormat in one of the stores here in McAlester, OK. "Something Special," I think.

Being an unpublished writer, I always daydream about seeing my own book on the shelves, or reading (good) reviews about my own work. Or, walking around and thinking 'nobody knows I'm a famous author! Or seeing people reading my book on the train! Has anybody experienced this?

I was in the supermarket a few weeks ago, and I saw Bryce Courtenay doing his shopping! I thought about him being a famous writer (I'm not sure if he's famous overseas, but he probably is - he's famous here in Australia), but that not many people would recognize him. I only recognized him because I saw him speak at a function once.

Closest I've come yet is this: in Robin Williams' latest movie Man of the Year, he tells a joke about 'having his way with himself' that is almost word for word the same as part of the lyrics for a song I wrote called 'Safe Sex' way back in the 80s at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. I never had the song published, nor did my band at the time even perform it.

I still have the lyric sheet in a drawer in my home office, maybe I should dust it for fingerprints.

I WANT that doormat.

We just recently got one that says LEAVE instead of WELCOME, but I much prefer yours.

I'm going to start looking for it online . . .

Jenna, you could do a mat signing! I wonder how an author would sign a door mat? With their feet?

I saw my writing in an unexpected place several years ago. I was on an informal tour of an office building where I had been hired and I happened to see one of the first articles I wrote pinned up on a bulletin board. It was turning yellow, so I know it had been there a while. I was thrilled to think someone thought it was important enough to become "bulletin board material".

My 'in-laws' have a mat that says "NOT YOU AGAIN!"

wow. What a neat experience. I'm gonna keep my eyes peeled for one of those mats.

Hey Jenna, that's great! And the fact that your hubby noticed it first without being prompted by you is a real plus!

On a scammer's website. This person had plagiarized several paragraphs from Writer Beware.

A short-lived dot com startup used a sentence from one of my novels (with attribution) as its motto. That was pretty cool.

- Victoria

chaostitan said:

How cool is that? I'd love to see that happen some day. Lancaster is full of quirky little gift shops like that.

....wondering if everyone knows how to properly pronounce Lancaster.....

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Depends which Lancaster you mean.

I was in a bookstore a few years ago and I picked up a paperback copy of a book I'd reviewed for a magazine. My review was blurbed on the back of the book-- my name wasn't there, just the magazine name, but I didn't care. I was so excited, I bought the book and as soon as I got home, I showed my husband: "Look at that quote! I wrote that!" "Yeah, but it doesn't have your name there or anything," he shrugged. Aaaargh!

Doesn't matter. Every time I see it on my bookshelf, it makes me smile.

In July 200, I posted a message on the Yahoo Astrology message boards, in Capricorn, which advised another person to "keep on keeping on." In 2001, I was surprised to hear Joe Dirt tell somebody to "keep on keepin' on." I thought the quote may have been an adaptation of my phrase but of course it could just be coincidence. Perhaps the Joe Dirt movie writers also wrote the phrase and did not pick it up from my message. At any rate, it would be cool if it was my quote, since I would be able to prove that my work actually is worth publishing, that I do have a voice.

It is weird to find yourself in unexpected places! I have twice--there's a PowerPoint presentation floating around online, where someone used a 70-word story of mine from a BBC contest as an example of concise writing.

And a professor of English at CSU-Sacramento used my first book as required reading in a class on the romance novel.

A year or two ago, I found a newspaper article of mine on an old boyfriend's website. He credited me for the article, but whoever put it onto the website made several typos and spelling errors. Those errors did not appear in my original article. I emailed him and asked him to correct the errors, and he just took the article off his site.

A friend lent me a magazine on writing. I was reading an article on opening paragraphs to short stories and thought 'Hmm. That looks familiar.' - then it dawned on me that it was one of mine.

I was torn between being annoyed that they hadn't asked my permission or accredited me and being flattered that they'd used my work and said really nice things about it.

It was odd though - like unexpectedly catching sight of your reflection in a mirror and not recognising yourself for a moment.

I found one of my articles on the required reading list for a university anthropology course.

I emailed him and asked him to correct the errors, and he just took the article off his site.

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Really? What a dink.

Really? What a dink.

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Yeah, we hadn't seen or spoken to each other in years by that time. He didn't even email me back to apologize for mucking up my article (or for neglecting to ask permission to use it).