sherriemiller

~Reprint from February 2007~ FONDLING YOUR MUSE by John Warner Writer’s Digest Books ISBN: 1582973482 ASIN: B0045EPDD6 2011 update: available on Amazon (not an e-book at this time) If the title does intrigue you to at least pick up John Warner’s bestselling tome on writing advice, then you are either: (1) sufficiently satisfied with your full-time job as a meter reader, saving your writing “hobby” for evenings in front of “Home Improvement” reruns; or (2) you are so completely and sickeningly content with not only your burgeoning writing career that you are impermeable to so-called “advice” from someone who doesn’t write in your chosen genre but also you must get enough action in the bedroom to resist any book that has the word “fondling” in its title. Before you sit down with Fondling Your Muse, turn off Tim the Tool-Man Taylor and move your stuffed animals off the couch so they avoid being showered with the grains of salt you will toss about wildly while tearing through the animated, hysterical diatribe. Warner, an award-winning editor of McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies (and chum of a number of disgustingly accomplished young, impish writers) is side-splitting. Resist the temptation to read aloud passages to that disheveled, pierced teenager sitting next to you in the bus shelter. He can’t hear you, anyway—Incubus is screaming from the headphones of his iPod, rendering him devoid of understanding spoken English for at least another day. The self-effacing humorist misses no opportunity to make fun of writers, the pursuit of the elusive and most certainly idyllic “writer’s life,” or the dreamy chase of the advance money you will undoubtedly get for your first 120,000-word attempt at entering the Kingdom of Novelhood. Warner pulls no punches as he goads us across the punishing battlefield known as publishing. Muse covers the importance of MFAs and killer queries, overcoming writer’s block and writing hotter sex scenes. If it’s hard advice you seek, pay special attention to the “Motivation Moments”— that is, of course, after you dab your tears from that last giggle fit. Writers, for reasons as personal as our choice in lacy undergarments, spend millions of dollars annually on books that will dish up that one pearl of advice that will deliver our manuscripts into the anxious and grateful hands of parched editors desperate to quench their thirst on the genius of our double-spaced, properly formatted pages. Warner recognizes this and, the bastard, has capitalized on our insecurities. There’s a reason why his book (published by Writer’s Digest Books, a company that has made gazillions on this premise of writerly self-inferiority) has sold so well. He doesn’t have the Holy Grail enshrined in his swanky, professionally decorated home office, from which he can summon the Secrets of Success; he just happens to possess an uncanny ability to divine COMMON SENSE from the mayhem of the struggle for literary supremacy. You know what he’s saying — you know it like you know your own mother’s distinct Tova Borgnine-inspired scent. If you want to write a bestseller — if you want to get anything published, for that matter — you have to W-R-I-T-E. No more “Home Improvement.” Get rid of those stuffed animals (they’re draining your chakras and exacerbating your allergies, anyway). No more paychecks blown on writing advice books or book doctors who only take you away from what you KNOW you should be doing. If you’re looking to Fondling for bona fide advice on how to get published, hang onto your milk money. If you’re looking for edgy, no-holds-barred commentary on how seriously we scribish slaves tend to take ourselves, buy it, read it, read it a second time to satisfy your itch to scribble notes in the margin and use your new set of highlighters, and then support this goofball’s well-earned success by ordering copies for your writers’ group comrades from Amazon. Just don’t be surprised if Warner shows up on your porch on his knees, groveling to your Greatness and showering you with rose petals in gratitude for upping his Amazon rankings. (Trust me-—he’s watching.) Post script: Apologies for the italics. Something happened in the cut/paste from Word into this template, and I can't find it. No random HTML tags that I can find. Whatever. Content's still good, right? ~jsy

2022-12-21 19:39