Oh, for fuck's sake.

[apocalypsos]

The Republicans are holding up unemployment benefits extensions again, along with Reid, who decided that instead of forcing the session to keep going to help families without jobs they might as well just go on vacation for two weeks like they planned, WOOHOO! And it's just another reminder just how sick and fucking tired I am of hearing how the unemployed adore being able to sit at home collecting a check that's smaller than their usual, being unable to pay for their COBRA once the subsidy goes away, possibly losing their homes while they attempt to romance HR people in a career environment where there are five out-of-work people for every one job opening, getting more and more depressed as you start to feel more and more worthless when no one will call you back. Not that I have any experience with being unemplo-- oh, wait.

*sigh*

In happier news, I've been listening to Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter at work and it makes my heart fill with GLEE. I just want to draw pink sparkly hearts all around it.

Although, I was talking about it to the girl in the next cubicle at work and she said, "Let me ask you a question ... if you want to be a writer, why do you read?" And I literally sat there gaping for a long moment because I didn't know how to answer. Not because I don't know why I like to read, but because that is a mind-boggling question to put to words. Shouldn't it occur to someone before they even say the words, much less once the words come out, why someone who wanted to be a writer might read? Or maybe that they just might like to? And I thought maybe she asked because she wanted to know why I might waste precious writing time reading, but the reason I started listening to audiobooks at work -- and I told her as much when I started listening to them -- was that all of my free time was devoted to trying to write. So, yeah, that was a weird moment.

Urgh, I should probably go make breakfast before I starve to death.

Comments

[semmie17.livejournal.com]

The best writers are voracious readers. Why?

- Ya gotta know what the competition is writing.
- Ya gotta be able to tell what's good and what's crap.
- Ya gotta know what the popular styles are nowdays.
- Ya gotta know the old stuff before you write the new stuff.
- Ya gotta know what's out there so you can steal it (I mean, er... retell the story in a timely and sensitive manner.)
- Ya gotta know what you want to say before you write it.
- Ya gotta know what it's like to _be_ read by reading others
- And about a billion other reasons.

Reading IS writing. It's just coming at it from the finished direction instead of the unfinished one. Reading is looking back; writing is looking forward.

Guh! I wanna smack that girl next to you. But I teach writing for a living, so I have to be cool about ignorant twaddling fools like that.