Writers

I went to a writing workshop recently. There was no writing that happened. Well, there was some. I wrote down a few websites that I think I spelled incorrectly. A few other people there wrote down notes verbatim and I saw one guy drawing pictures of hairy asses. I think he caught me because then he added my face next to the hairy ass and poop coming out onto my face. I turned away out of fear what cartoon me might do next.

The workshop was called “The Nuts & Bolts of Writing a Book.” The three authors there made sure to use that phrase several times when speaking. I guess it was a plug of sorts or a reminder to the fat woman in the back that she was attending the wrong seminar.

And that’s what I want to talk about. How terribly ugly all of these writers there were. I mean, Christ. I have never seen this many messes assembled in one room. None of them even came close to comparing to the great looks of TALKER96!!! The three real authors there were all average looking human beings. They looked like they had families, successful sex lives, and charm. Here they were, three rubes who were convinced to talk to us ugly writers in a New Jersey library on a Saturday afternoon. I e-mailed one of the writers and his wife responded back that he hung himself immediately after the seminar. Nah, that didn’t really happen. Ugly people don’t have that much power in the world.

This is off of memory, so excuse me if you happened to be there and I forget to mention your ugly face. I’ll try to get to each of you in some facet. The room contained about 20-25 people, some worse than others.

Starting with the front row on the left, there was an overweight woman without any confidence, a chubby guy with a ponytail, and a small chubby woman who had apparently already seen the same exact seminar earlier in the day. Their combined weight was probably close to 800 pounds. That’s the same as if me, a lion, and a track star had been sitting there. None of them were particularly good-looking either. They all had bad hair and glasses. These people would be perfect to draw with all of the little details. I could completely see them on The Simpsons if not for the fact that they were incredibly boring.

The front row on the right contained three women. The one in the middle left after 20 minutes of the 2 hour session and the other two uglies remained. The first one looked the way a lunch lady should look. She had grey pubic hair on her head, atop her round body. See where this theme is going? Writers are very fat. On the other side of her was one of the few thin women in the room. What she lacked in fatness she made up in ugliness. She had a very animalistic face. I don’t know what a wombat looks like, but it should look like her. She asked a lot of bad questions too. Questions that writers should know. “What do you mean by a character’s voice?” The collective sound of eyes rolling in the room could be heard by all. She also proposed a really bad theory that I have since blocked out. I could tell one of the authors wanted to tell her that she was stupid then throw one of his joke mugs at her toad face.

Second row on the left was a black man who I thought was a homeless man who wandered in. It wasn’t that he was black that made me think he was homeless. The fact that he had a giant garbage bag made me think it. He also left early. Next to him was a blonde woman who was probably about 40. She seemed normal and was probably one of the few non-hideous or retarded human beings between those walls. Next to her thought was an older gentleman. I knew he was old because of his grey hair and not remembering where his seat was after a visit to the bathroom. During the Q&A session, he was the first to ask a question. It was very detailed and had to do with publishing. The professional authors there speaking were kind enough to give him a full answer. Then he had a follow-up. I never like follow-up questions. They are always created out of anticipating the answer to the original question. I wonder what his follow-up would have been if the authors told him to go fuck himself in his “touch of grey” dyed hair. That only works for guys in their 40s, ass. You don’t look like you have experience but enough energy to get around. You just look like a Jay Leno wannabe.

The second row on the right contained this one really cool guy. Everyone looked at him with awe during the entire session. They handed him money and offered him their attractive friends for sex. That was me, of course. Next to me was another woman who seemed normal enough. She crossed and uncrossed her legs a lot. She wasn’t wearing a skirt either so it wasn’t some sexy Sharon Stone thing. She just has legs that fall asleep easily. On the other side of her was a woman who bragged about having a popular blog and a published book. Shut up. If you knew what you were doing, you wouldn’t be in the same room as me. She looked like she could have been good-looking if her face wasn’t so bad. That doesn’t make sense unless you’ve seen her. I also don’t like that she writes about cooking. She basically writes for housewives that means and I am not too fond on housewives. I’m jealous of them. They get to stay at home and clean their countertops and vaginas all day long. Replace vagina with a taint and I’m so interested in that job. Being a housewife also doesn’t count as a job. My mom, all of my friends moms, and most of my enemy’s moms worked jobs and managed to raise kids. Being a housewife isn’t an excuse not to get another job. Sure, raising kids is tough, but women with more strength than you also manage to bring in some money. Get over yourself. This isn’t the 1950s. So fuck that woman and her cook books. You’re a detriment to the economy by not telling everyone to go out to eat.

Back to the left side of things. The only guy there was a buff guy with a ponytail. What the fuck? I see two guys with ponytails in one day? In the same room? Sitting on the same side of the room? Five feet apart? Shit. I need to buy a hair tie. He had also apparently been to the earlier seminar where they said the same exact information. I guess Saturdays are slow days for him. All of his ponytail friends are busy at work stacking boxes.

Behind me on the right side were two people. The first, directly behind me, was a man who had a face that looked like a mechanic’s hands. It was rough and had a mustache. I knew that at some point in his life, a blind woman has mistaken his face for a large rock. He told us all about how he has written a children’s Christmas book and everywhere he turns they want money for him to publish it. To be fair, I respect that such a creep can manage to write a children’s book. I’m sure there are a lot of innuendos and pictures of naked boys in the book, but at least he has it finished which is more than I can say about any book I’ve ever tried writing. Next to him was a woman who at first glance was pretty cute. Then I looked again and we made eye contact. I think she smiled. I’m positive that I cringed. I turned back around and wondered if my eyes deceived me. Maybe she was hot. I turned back again and she definitely was 20 years older than me. Yuck. She laughed at every joke told by anyone. It was a very bad laugh too. Like a slow machine gun. I think I only thought she was attractive because she was the only woman in the room under 150 pounds that didn’t have gigantic lips. Big lips are fine, but you shouldn’t be able to take off an entire ice cream cone with one touch.

Now is the tricky part. The rest of the people came in kind of late and I didn’t get that great of a look at them. One was a large black man. He seemed nice enough from where I saw him. Seeing him in a different situation with fewer people around might have been different though. I forget what his book was about. Something that caught me off guard though. Hockey? There was another black woman back there too. She said what her book was about and I had no clue what she meant. The authors apparently did know what she meant because they answered her question. They started talking about screenplays and I perked up. Then the nicely told her that her idea was dumb or at least thought it.

A few more people were scattered in the back of the room, but I don’t remember what they looked like. A few were fat white women in their 50s. I guess things look good for me. Nobody looked even remotely like me. I was easily the youngest by 20 years which made me feel good after going to the Flyers game that night and finding out that they have a defenseman 6 years younger than I am. I might be getting older, but at least I’m never going to be a fat white woman without a single writing credit. Unless I lose my penis in a car accident. Then shit, I’m pretty fucking close to it.

The last person in the room that I will mention was the last person to arrive. The funny thing about her was that she was on crutches. Not on the “Yo I have Cerebral Palsy” crutches. That would be cruel to make fun of. She had the kind that you have if your ankle is sprained. I didn’t notice what her injury was as it would only cause me to probably injure it more. That’s how much she bothered me. I don’t want to spend all of my time on her fat marionette face. She had really small eyes. Or really big ones. I couldn’t really tell. All I do know is that they weren’t the correct size that eyes should be. She wore a giant grey hoodie with her University’s name on it. Ohhh a college girl. I’m impressed. That degree didn’t help you when you tripped on that ice now did it? She asked a question about formatting her novel. She has this idea that her poetry would work well as a book and then have stories about her life in it. I don’t think that’s a bad idea. It’s actually kind of original. The great thing is that the authors agreed on that too. Where we all disagreed on her was that she thought it was essential that the stories in it be specifically about her life. Little (actually kinda big) Ms. Sprained College Leg thinks that her life is so amazing that strangers would want to read about it. The authors didn’t want to say it, but they led her into the path of saying “Nobody wants to read about your lousy life, focus on the poetry part.” She argued a bit then mentioned how she’s been through a lot. She said her life is full of tragedy and that she wants to write this book about her life and then her poetry added in then go on a tour of women’s shelters and high schools. I know she means well, but who the fuck is she? You couldn’t even get to this seminar on time. That’s what we all have to face. Nobody wants to read about our lives until we’ve done something else. I would never buy a book about the life of some guy that isn’t famous for something else. One of the authors told her to maybe make the story less biographical and more fictional. She still tried a little more arguing, trying to show off her passion for this and then mentioning more awful things that have happened to her. She didn’t get specific, but unless it involves alien anal probes, your story isn’t too original.

I went to this event hoping to maybe learn something and possibly make a friend. I left with disgust at how there aren’t any hot female writers in my area that aren’t busy at 2 o’clock on a Saturday. I was foolish to ever think that there could be one. Hot girls aren’t creative. Even in the bedroom they have the reputation for being lame. Maybe I should have taken Wombat-Fact, Cook Book Blog, or Crutches the Abusive Victim home. They might be lousy individuals, but together maybe we can create some amazing penetration.