How the Grinch stole Writing

"A family member who doesn’t know about this blog gave me a self-published Harry Potter knockoff by a local writer. There’s a quote from a rejection letter on the back cover." Sean Lindsay. 101 Reasons to Stop Writing.

Proof that ever silver lining has a cloud, witty and amusing blog 101 Reasons to Stop Writing is based around a pretty cynical concept.

"Most published fiction is bad," website creator Sean Lindsay explains. "Some is so plain awful that you wonder how anyone wrote it, let alone approved it for publication. Don’t tell me it’s never crossed your mind how craptacular the unpublished stuff must be."

It's deliciously tongue-in-cheek with just the right amount of sadism to have you wondering if Lindsay really 'means it' or not (much like my 'Why People with a Peanut Allergy Annoy Me' blog.) The best part, or worst part, is that anybody who's hung around aspiring authors for very long (case in point - my wife) can sympathise with some of his 'anti-writing' arguments.

But he won't dissuade me - or people like me. I recently read a novel my mother wrote called Passions Pursued and it made me realise that modern publishers (and cynics like Sean Lindsay) are missing out on a great deal of writing by lumping all aspiring authors into the same slushpile.

Keep writing - and here's to recognition in 2008.