Pauline at Barnes & Noble reportedly said: THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS!

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Pauline at Barnes & Noble reportedly said: THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS!

September 17, 2017 393

Can you use a good laugh?

David Thorne is an Australian writer, humorist and satirist. I think he’s a really funny guy.

He’s got a website that I discovered today. I clicked on a page that details a 2015 email exchange with a book-signing coordinator with Barnes & Noble by the name of Pauline. Apparently David set up a book-signing date at a B&N store without notifying B&N. It came to the attention of Pauline. And it rapidly went downhill from there.

Really funny stuff. Here’s the link. Have fun!

That’s not how it works.

A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

It’s an accepted fact that all writers are crazy; even the normal ones are weird.

William Goldman

I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin.

John Irving

Ever heard of a carpenter not going to work because he has “carpenter’s block”? If a writer can’t write, it’s because he doesn’t really want to, he isn’t ready to get it on paper or he’s just plain lazy.

Chet Cunningham

The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.

Raymond Chandler

I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.

Clarence Budington Kelland

My aim is to put down what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way I can tell it.

Ernest Hemingway

It is only natural to pattern yourself after someone. But you can’t just copy someone. If you like someone’s work, the important thing is to be exposed to everything that person has been exposed to.

Bob Dylan

The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book.

Mickey Spillane

Every writer with half a brain knows to surround himself or herself with editors who are smarter, far more articulate and infinitely better looking.

Chris Claremont

No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.

E. B. White

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

Robert A. Heinlein

I don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

Roald Dahl

Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Mark Twain

Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.

Edward Albee

If the sex scene doesn’t make you want to do it — whatever it is they’re doing — it hasn’t been written right.

Sloan Wilson

The road to ignorance is paved with good editors.

George Bernard Shaw

Plot is, I think, the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice.

Stephen King

Critics are people who sit on the mountaintop and look down on the battlefield. When the fighting is finished, they take it upon themselves to come down from the mountain and shoot the survivors.

Robert Altman

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.