Comments on: Ways in Which I Am Not a Proper Writer

By: J

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 23:16:49 +0000

1. it drives me crazy when people spell it ok, especially when they make it OK.
2.i agree here. this is why they invented spellcheck. not my problem
3.i’m indifferent to this
4. i totally agree here. i want to know the entire story. i want to read the brilliant ending sentence. because it kills me to reread so i get the ending because the i read something uncompleted. i can’t stand it.
5.i simply can’t type with two fingers. too slow and frustrating.
6. I love looking at stationary. but i can’t stand writing in notebooks. quite frankly, i am starting to get over that, considering i have started to write in a notebook so i will write without getting distracted. (doesn’t work as well as i hoped.) i can stand for hours looking at stationary.
7. I freak out over fonts. if it’s not the font, i can’t write. in one of my works-in-progresses, i need to type in one font and read over in another. it gets annoying.
8.I hate coffee. i like chocolate. i can’t write when i am hyper.
9. i have never tried wine so i cannot say.

By: Rachel

Rachel — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 19:10:05 +0000

I have to disagree on the stationery and especially the pens, but for me that goes in the “I like pretty things” category, not the “writer-y things” category.

And my jaw dropped the first time I realized there were full time writers who couldn’t type properly. Que horror!

By: Ellen

Ellen — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:40:13 +0000

Natalie – Try playing Literati on Yahoo if you want to make up words in Scrabble. It’s wonderful. It lets you use words like “xi”, and occasionally even allows random proper names.

By: Kelly McCullough

Kelly McCullough — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:14:43 +0000

Of course, if I’d been reading more closely, I’d have noticed that you already had the pens thing covered. Sigh.

By: Justine

Justine — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:29:22 +0000

Liana: Huh? I spelled it “stationery” which is how it’s spelled.

Natalie: I hate Scrabble. World’s most boring game. I hate all games that are mostly about memorising things. Dull, dull, dull.

By: Natalie

Natalie — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 05:22:13 +0000

I hate the game the game Scrabble and my writer friends tend to love it. I think it’s boring, to start. But I don’t care if words are spelled correctly either and that is sort of a big deal in that game. If there was a version of Scrabble where one could make up the words … I could get into that. Otherwise, meh.

By: Liana Brooks

Liana Brooks — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 02:34:15 +0000

Stationary store??? That took me a minute, I thought you meant a store that wasn’t moving (which, in my experience, is most of them).

I’ll agree with the coffee and alcohol bits. I write with a glass of ice water or lemonade and I do fine.

I spell the word “okay” because that’s what mother taught me.

I’m a touch-typer? I guess? I use all ten fingers, I didn’t realize there was another way to type.

But I do know about fonts! And despite all the beauties out there I use TNR size 12 for manuscripts. But I really prefer Garamound.

By: Aimee

Aimee — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 23:14:57 +0000

I am with you on the inability to write after a glass of wine. I used to send emails home from Canada when I was on exchange after a few beers and they were actually indecipherable, except for a few choice phrases.

By: Nicholas Waller

Nicholas Waller — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:46:17 +0000

@ 16 Julia Rios – JL may have several books out, but clearly they cannot be proper books.

By: Ellen

Ellen — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:08:38 +0000

Well crap! I don’t like caffeine and can’t write drunk either… I do like pens though. I very much like pens. I never seem to have enough pens. Or paper. Or mini portable bright red laptops to write with. Err… >.>

By: Lauren McLaughlin

Lauren McLaughlin — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:20:30 +0000

With you all the way. And I’m proud to say I type 120 words a minute. Properly.

By: Julia Rios

Julia Rios — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 19:50:48 +0000

I don’t hate paper and pens, and I do drink a cup of coffee in the morning, but I fail to see how any of the stuff mentioned makes someone more or less a writer. Isn’t writing (or typing, or whatever) stories or poems or articles or essays or what have you what makes a person a writer? Obviously you’re a proper writer as you have several books out. The rest is trivia.

By: Karen

Karen — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:31:17 +0000

I didn’t even know there was a documentary called Helvetica. Good thing I’m hiding up in Canada where no one can even FIND me to take away my writer card.

I love dark chocolate, but really don’t care if you despise it. More for me.

By: Kelly McCullough

Kelly McCullough — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:27:57 +0000

With the exceptions of the touch typing and the caffeine, I’m with you on this list. I suppose I make up for those two with not caring that much about the exact words at the sentence level—I’m much more focused on overarching story—and having zero interest in pens.

By: Brynne

Brynne — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:00:36 +0000

I’m glad you posted this list. I now feel like less of a bad person.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:20:33 +0000

I AM OFFENDED! What next? Are you going to tell us you hate LOLcats, too? I don’t know what to say…

By: Megan Crewe

Megan Crewe — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 12:18:31 +0000

Writers aren’t supposed to touch-type!? I have a hard enough time typing fast enough to keep up with inspiration (on the good days) with all my fingers!

I prefer finished books to ARCs, too, but I also prefer getting to read certain books as soon as I can get my hands on them… and sometimes the latter preference outweighs the former.

And agreed on caffeine and alcohol! Actually, I’m not much interested in alcohol in any situation… I am occasionally afraid someone try to take away my “adult” card.

Thankfully writing seems to be one of those endeavors where the main point of having rules is figuring out how to break them.

By: veejane

veejane — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 11:42:53 +0000

I find font-nerdery fairly annoying, but there are good reasons for serifs and non-serifs, each in its context. Same with fixed-width and variable-width fonts, especially if you are some poor editor someplace trying to find the right place to hyphenate a long word in a news column.

It’s the kind of thing that is mostly invisible to most people (and ought to be) — until you publish Clarissa in Arial Narrow.

By: Nicholas Waller

Nicholas Waller — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:49:09 +0000

“O.K.”, though, looks pedantic and old-fashioned.

I see you’re also not JG Ballard, who used to take his kids to school (he raised them single-handed when his wife died young) and then get home and have a glass of Scotch an hour while writing until it was time to pick them up. I’m not recommending it – I also lose concentration after a glass of wine.

I like paper, but then I used to draw and paint and the texture of the surface and the way it feels with whatever medium you’re drawing and painting in is important. Drawing on a graphics tablet is not the same (I sometimes place a sheet of paper over it to give the graphics pen some resistance).

If you have zero interest in fonts then you will be confused and irritated by this Noisy Decent Graphics blogpost playing with fonts, bands and song titles – “I Shot the Serif”, “Bat Out of Helvetica”, “Arialsmith” – so avoid.

The Helvetica movie was fascinating, btw – Helvetica gets everywhere.

By: Sam

Sam — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 08:50:53 +0000

I was on board with this post till the bit where you said chocolate tastes bad. BLASPHEMER!

By: Joey-la

Joey-la — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 07:35:19 +0000

completely agree on everything except the chocolate (yum…) and stationary shops!
How could a writer not be able to touch type? I almost died when I had to write a 3 page essay by hand last week, I can’t imagine writing a whole novel!

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 07:25:41 +0000

Dear Justine I assumed at first that your desription of what your fellow writers think of you was just a ludicrous exaggeration, but then I read that outrage you wrote about stationery!

By: Vanessa

Vanessa — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 06:39:00 +0000

I was strangely drawn into that ‘Helvetica’ doco, even though I’m not as passionate about the font as some of those interviewees were.

By: Malinda Lo

Malinda Lo — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 05:14:55 +0000

I love it. I am with you on the coffee and the wine!

By: El

El — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 05:08:31 +0000

Been reading writers on writing pretty much my whole adult life and the main rule is, writers write–and sooner or later (some much sooner, some much later) they write something publishable. All those other ideas about writers are at best tendencies.