Writers do the darnedest things!

This past week I read some illuminating things about those of us in the writing trade and our psychological peculiarities. One is J. Robert Lennon's essay, "The Truth About Writers," in the LA Times, in which he keeps track of what he's really doing when he says he's writing and discovers just how little "writing time" is spent actually writing. (He doesn't list reading articles online about how writers waste their time, which is now high on my list.) What I like best is how even after he cops to the vast amounts of wasted time, he comes back in the end to that old, foolproof fallback of the defensive writer: "But I am writing! Even if I don't look like I am!"

The other is the cautionary tale of Alice Hoffman, who threw a tantrum on Twitter about a bad review her latest novel got and went so far as to release the reviewer's phone number to the 1,647 people who follow her tweets and encourage them to call and complain. Gawker ran entertaining (if snotty) pieces on the initial rampage and her subsequent half-assed apology. There's no question that her behavior was egregious, but I do understand all too well the feelings that led to it. Remembering a few of my own ill-considered eruptions of bile on Facebook and Twitter and Blogger, I find myself thinking, "There but for the grace of God—or a tiny bit more self-control—go I."