Odds and Ends

A Roundup of Random Thoughts and Comments

I'm not sure what's wrong with the font and linespacing on this entry and it is resisting being fixed. TG should have it fixed in the next blog.


"I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split." Kurt Vonnegut

I stole that from this morning's edition of

Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac.

Every day TG starts his writing day by reading the Almanac, which comes into his e-mail box. There one will find several mini essays on a famous writer, dead or alive, whose birthday occurs on this date. The above came from a Vonnegut entry and seemed particularly apt as TG had recently engaged in a real knock-down, drag-out with his wife, Mrs. Thriller Guy, (MTG) normally an intelligent and perceptive book reader, who had loathed the new Dan Brown book and was taking TG to task for giving it a good review. TG admitted that the book was perhaps not up to high, or even medium high literary standards in the main, but was not intended to be such and that as far as thrillers go it was perfectly fine, offering lots of interesting facts and a few chills and thrills. TG then reiterated his reviewing code, probably stolen from some other far more intelligent reviewer. Said in a slightly haughty voice:

“My goal is not to pronounce literary judgement, my goal is to alert writers who like a certain sort of fiction where they can find good examples of the sort of thing they like. If a book is really bad, I'll always say so, but you don't get dinged for not writing Literature.”

She didn't buy it. Comments?

Another feature of the Almanac is there's always a poem. TG feels it's always a good thing for a writer to start the day with a poem. Kind of sets the tone for the writing to come. And those of you who think poetry is too twee for tough guy thriller writers, check out Toby Barlow's Horror/Thriller novel, Sharp Teeth, which features werewolves and is written as a book-length, epic poem. Fast-paced, gut-wrenching and sexy.

On other matters:

Commenter Joel responds to two of TG's questions: Has anyone ever written anything successful at a Starbucks?; and, how can TG make money from his blog?

“I wrote a successful piece once. I typed an email that said to my boss that it was crazy to try and rely on Starbucks free wifi to get internet access. The noise and music made it impossible to use the phone too, so can I please get a mobile wireless adapter so I can get the heck out of here and do some real work on these bazillion dollar sales proposals you are expecting from me?

He agreed, so I guess that counts as successfully writing something at Starbucks.”

And...

“Make money off the blog? Sure, this is how: Get the Squatting Toad Gang to open their calendar up once in a while to paying newbies such as myself, a Writers Workshop. I'd pay good money to go to that, I'm sure others would too.”

TG admits that getting the boss to agree to the wireless adaptor was the result of a successful piece of writing, though TG will now amend the question as... a successful piece of fiction.

As for the writer's workshop idea, Squatting Toad has indeed kicked this around and if there ever was enough interest we just may do a Beach Week Writer's Workshop. Let us know and we may get serious about it.