Writing Joke of the Day: Change a light bulb

How many screenwriters does it take to change a light bulb?

Answer:  Ten.

1st draft:  Hero changes light bulb.
2nd draft:  Villain changes light bulb.
3rd draft:  Hero stops villain from changing light bulb.  Villain falls to death.
4th draft:  Lose the light bulb.
5th draft:  Light bulb back in.  Fluorescent instead of tungsten.
6th draft:  Villain breaks bulb, uses it to kill hero’s mentor.
7th draft:  Fluorescent not working.  Back to tungsten.
8th draft:  Hero forces villain to eat light bulb.
9th draft:  Hero laments loss of light bulb.  Doesn’t change it.
10th draft:  Hero changes light bulb.

How many science fiction writers does it take to change a light bulb? 

Two, but it’s actually the same person doing it. He went back in time and met himself in the doorway and then the first one sat on the other one’s shoulder so that they were able to reach it. Then a major time paradox occurred and the entire room, light bulb, changer and all was blown out of existence. They co-existed in a parallel universe, though.

How many publishers does it take to screw in a light bulb? 

Three. One to screw it in. Two to hold down the author.

How many mystery writers does it take to screw in a light bulb? 

Two.  One to screw it almost all the way in, and the other to give it a surprising twist at the end.

How many screenwriters does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Why does it *have* to be changed?

How many cover blurb writers does it take to screw in a light bulb? 

A VAST AND TEEMING HORDE STRETCHING FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA!!!!

Writing Joke of the Day: Ode to the Spell Check

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It cam with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew!

Writing Joke of the Day: Punctuation Parable

Dear John,

I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we’re apart. I can be forever happy – will you let me be yours?

Gloria

Dear John,

I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we’re apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?

Yours,

Gloria

Writing Joke of the Day: How to Write Good (Extended Version)

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1. Avoid alliteration. Always.

2. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.

3. Employ the vernacular.

4. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.

5. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.

6. Remember to never split an infinitive.

7. Contractions aren’t necessary.

8. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.

9. One should never generalize.

10. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”

11. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.

12. Don’t be redundant; don’t use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.

13. Be more or less specific.

14. Understatement is always best.

15. One-word sentences? Eliminate.

16. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.

17. The passive voice is to be avoided.

18. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.

19. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.

20. Who needs rhetorical questions?

21. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

22. Don’t never use a double negation.

23. capitalize every sentence and remember always end it with point

24. Do not put statements in the negative form.

25. Verbs have to agree with their subjects.

26. Proofread carefully to see if you words out.

27. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.

28. A writer must not shift your point of view.

29. And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.)

30. Don’t overuse exclamation marks!!

31. Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to the irantecedents.

32. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.

33. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.

34. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.

35. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.

36. Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.

37. Always pick on the correct idiom.

38. The adverb always follows the verb.

39. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; They’re old hat; seek viable alternatives.

10 Reasons You Might Be A Writer (with apologies to Mssr. Foxworthy)

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“As a writer, I need an enormous amount of time alone. Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It’s a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write. Having anybody watching that or attempting to share it with me would be grisly.” ― Paul Rudnick

You very well might be a writer if…

  1. You find yourself constantly editing, be it in your car, cruising down the street when rolling past a misspelled sign, or stumbling upon grammatical no-no’s on the interwebz, and you fix these errors constantly in your mind—and not always quietly.
  2. You collect things—social interactions, dialogue, life events, and basically anything you spy with thy little eye—and you file them away neatly in a folder, either physical or mental, for later use.
  3. You take a mental step back from your life experiences, examining them with a Holmesian eye and puzzle out how to properly describe the events in words for maximum clarity and impact.
  4. Your imagination is like the Energizer Bunny (is that critter still around? Never get old, seriously) and it can’t stop, won’t stop providing your brain with entertainment and fresh ideas so there’s never a mental dull moment.
  5. After reading a good book, you’re struck with the sudden desire to write. It happens.
  6. You often hear voices in your head… belonging to the characters in your latest story. They just won’t shut up, carrying on conversations with one another, whether you’re ready to capture it on paper or not.
  7. You get sideswiped by a truckload of guilt when procrastination becomes your master and you haven’t written anything for a while, and your inner nag kicks into overtime, pressuring you to get back to business!
  8. You laugh at grammar jokes. Don’t be ashamed, they’re funny.
  9. Everything inspires you. Books, song lyrics, movies, tv programs, street ads… they all fill your head with new ideas.
  10. And chiefly, you very well might be a writer if you simply keep writing, regardless of being published, or lack of praise or a support network. Even if you do not net one thin dime, you write anyway, because what sense would this world make if you didn’t write about it?

No Such Creature As A Bad Analogy (only funny ones)

“Analogies prove nothing, that is true, but they can make one feel more at home.” —–  Sigmund Freud

Normally I shy away from passing on emails and memes, but this one struck me as funny, so I decided to share it. As I’m sure you’re all aware, an analogy is a comparison between two things, typically on the basis of their structure, as a bridge between familiar situations and new ones.

The following list of analogies was allegedly collected by real high school English teachers from their students’ writings.

  1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a ThighMaster.
  2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
  3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
  4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
  5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
  6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
  7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.
  8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.
  9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
  10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
  11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
  12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
  13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
  14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
  15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.
  16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
  17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.
  18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long it had rusted shut.
  19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
  20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
  21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
  22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
  23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
  24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
  25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

Sally forth and be writeful.

— Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys

A Field Guide to Procrastinators

Yeah, I know, this has been around for a couple of weeks, but in true procrastination fashion, I put off sharing it until now because I’m 90% The Watcher, 5% The List Maker, 3% The Internet Researcher, and 2% The Napper. Which kind of procrastinator are you?

A Field Guide to Procrastinators - 12 Types of Procrastinators - Find the procrastinator in you