Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Jim Jamo Lost

I'm pretty sure it's because the Lansing State Journal did not publish my letter to the editor. The Wife was unsurprised by this. (She's also unsurprised that Joe Biden has yet to reply to my chocolate milk question.) I'm not entirely sure how the LSJ decides which letters to print. Yes, mine was obnoxious and full of obvious falsehoods. It was not serious in any way. But who decided letters to the editor have to be serious or, you know, factual? Read through them some time. Most of the political ones are full of nonsense, and I find at least half of them obnoxious. I guess the difference is intent. The lesson is clear: if you want to make an ass out of yourself, don't be too obvious about it.

In other news I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo because as a person living on the planet Earth in the year 2010 I believe it is required. The Wife warned me that there was a ton of backstory in the first 100 pages or whatever, so I was prepared for it and it didn't really bother me. Once it gets rolling it's hard to put down. I read all six hundred plus pages over three days.

Also read The London Eye Mystery and enjoyed it, especially the voice of the autistic main character. Really well done. It's not as good as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, but there's no shame in that.

Closing in on the end of my novel. It looks like the first draft will be done by the start of school, which was the goal. I'll spend a couple of months smoothing out the story, fixing inconsistencies, dropping in details that didn't become necessary until later, etc., and then I'll be looking for readers to affirm my worst suspicions.

I'll be vacationing for most of the next two weeks, so basically nothing will change with respect to the blog. Feel free to reread this post over and over again or, even better, go back and read some old stuff from when I was funnier.

5 comments:

Anita said...

Our local paper occasionally publishes letters like yours. But we're really cool here, so...

Paul Michael Murphy said...

I actually received a card in the mail today saying thanks for the letter but they couldn't publish it because it was received too close to an election.

Not sure I believe that, though.

Robert Guthrie said...

Congrats that you'll be meeting your goal. One of the best feelings.

Jonathon Arntson said...

So did Hoekstra.

Paul Michael Murphy said...

I voted for Snyder. Hoekstra and Cox seemed liked just more of the same.