WHAT DID THE UNICORNS EVER DO TO YOU?

Friends, I see a shameful trend of unicorn-hate galloping through the internets. First there was this, and now this (via Regretsy):



Unicorns are magical creatures who spread love and awesomeness in the galaxy. They are not weirdos who sit in the park playing with faux fur and scaring children. He looks like a reject from a My Little Pony-themed furry convention.

Let us save the dignity of the unicorn. My only solace is that this guy will never get laid, ever.

Thank you to the fabulous Count My Stars for the link!

Things I Learned on My Summer Weekend Away-Vacation Thingie

1. That when you've spent a month or two slowly succumbing to the pressures of writing and attempting to sell a fabulous breakout novel (plus the pressures of general life stuff) and it manifests itself in tears several nights in a row in an existential eruption of mucus and whining, make sure you have a very nice husband who will suddenly whisk you away to the Queen Mary for the night to blow off steam and "for the love of God just please quit crying, you crazy person."

1b. That I shouldn't think of fun weekends away as a reward for having an existential snot crisis.

The ship's bell

1c. Ditto for unexpected presents of a super awesome Kindle.


2. That we should live in the now and have fun, like the puppies who play in the surf at Long Beach do. Run run run bark bark bark frolic! frolic! and then S H A K E!!




3. That when you go the Queen Mary you should bring (a) vintage clothes to wear because then you'll match the amazing gorgeous pre-war styling of the ship,






and (b) a ghost costume. Seriously, running down the empty decks saying, "woooooooo! WOOOOOOO!" was very fun, but I really should have had a ghosty-lady-in-white costume to go with.




4. That apparently no one cares if you carry around open containers and make out on the bow of the ship.




5. That staying up into the wee hours and running around the decks like a drunken moron with your equally moronic drunken husband is better than therapy.




6. That DAMMIT WHY DIDN'T I HAVE A GHOST COSTUME?


7. That the happily-ever-after at the end of the romance novel is not the end, but the beginning, if you're lucky. And I am. And I vow to remember that when I feel an existential mucus explosion coming on.

What Form Rejection Means to Me

Our friend the Rejectionist has done it again. She gave her minions an essay topic, and, as a good lemming, I follow directions. Behold, my essay:

What Form Rejection Means to Me
an essay by Lucy Woodhull

In considering the question at hand, it is important to understand what a form rejection is. Let us dissect the phrase "form rejection." First, we have "form," from the Latin "impersonalus," which has the double meaning of, "piss off, fuckwit" and "don't quittus your day jobbus." Next, "rejection," which derives from the Old English word "crusheth," specifically in relation to dreams. As we can learn from this etymology, a form rejection is one person's way of stomping upon the lofty dreams of another, often with great and resounding malice mixed with a dash of fun.

Upon reflection, I have reflected that form rejections suck. How can we, as writers, foil them? I have developed a multi-tiered approach for the obliteration of form rejections:

1. Don't send one to me.

Awesome, huh? I don't give a crap about the rest of you unwashed masses who probably should just resign yourself to being waiters for the rest of your life. But I have TALENT! GREAT AND LITERARY TALENT. This essay is about what form rejections mean to me... I don't care about the rest of you.

I shall direct the rest of my deranged tirade brilliant thoughts to the agents/ editors of the world and explain why I should never, ever get a form rejection.

A. I am awesome. Here's a chart outlining why, in case you don't already know.

Why Lucy is Da Bomb:

B. My book will totes make you four million American dollars, at least.

C: I'm excellent with the grammar and shit. You'll bearley have to edit my brilliant prose.

D. I can wiggle my ears.

E. I should never really get a rejection at all. If you send me back a letter that's not an immediate contract offer, it should read something like "Lucy, this book is so wonderful. Is it possible for you to fit even MORE wonderfulness into it?" and I will be all "Of course, smart and esteemed agent/editor! My Tank of Wonderfulness will never be empty."

In conclusion, I would like to compare my literary style to J.K. Rowling, Ernest Hemingway, Muriel Hemingway, and Oprah. I will outsell Stephenie Meyers, and the dudes who wrote the Bible. In interviews, I will be wittier than Jon Stewart, and prettier than Angelina Jolie. The movies made from my books will be fawned over by the likes of Roger Ebert, the Academy, and The Denver Post. When you sign me with your agency/ publishing house, you'll surely be given impromptu awards from your colleagues with titles like "Agent of the Epoch," or "Sexy Publishing Badass." You will own a yacht and two helicopters. It is highly likely that you will be elected "Emperor of the Earth." I guarantee all these things!

So, what do these insightful words mean? "What Form Rejection means to Me" is exactly nothing. I reject the notion.

I also reject a large portion of your "reality," which is obviously rigged.

* * *

(I hope this goes without saying, but I would like to note that the above is a joke. I have nothing but respect for the agents/ editors/ other writers of the world. Please send me not only one form rejection, but many, over and over again!)

I'm Up in Short Arms!

As of late, I've noticed a lot of short heroines in romance novels. It's about time that Hobbits got their own romances, and were not just shoved to the side as amusing, hairy-footed, ring-carrying sidekicks. This phenomenon is accurate, for did you know that there are diminutive ladies in real life? It's true! When my personal romance novel is written (which I have titled PASSION'S UNEXPECTED BELCH), it will star me as a 5'1" batty redhead with a heart of gold (and stomach of gas), and my husband as a 5'11" geek who lives to tickle her feet even though she kicks a lot.

But the covers, faithful readers! THE COVERS!?

Why do romance novel covers always feature an Amazon woman?

The hero must be six feet tall (like, duh. There are no shorter men in real life, unless they are villains or comical persons), so if you judge the heroine's height on the cover, you do it against the hero. And she's always only about two inches shorter than he is. TRAVESTY! FRAUD! ATTICA! ATTICA!

If they made a cover for PASSION'S UNEXPECTED BELCH, I would be played by Heidi Klum. She's nice and all (for a supermodel), but short people are people, too!

Hath not a shorty (small) hands, (miniature) organs, (scanty) dimensions; fed with the same food (well, maybe less of it) as a tall person is? If you tickle us (especially our freakishly small feets), do we not laugh?

I know that most romance covers do not match the characters' appearances, but replacing the short girl with a tall one feels like an insult. Sniff. It matters more than her hair color. It just does.

I've made my own cover for PASSION'S UNEXPECTED BELCH, so that The Man can't ruin it. Can you believe I did all my own art?




So there.

How to Be Patient, A Primer for Writers

How to Be Patient
A Primer for Writers
by Lucy Woodhull, Perfectly Patient Person

9am: Check Your E-Mail
Checking your e-mail should not cause anxiety. Just because one horrid little e-mail could dash all your literary hopes upon the craggy rocks to total despair is no reason for your heart to beat faster as you hit refresh.

10am: Click "Refresh" No More than Once an Hour
You are a bona-fide adult person who does very adult things like write novels, not some teeny bopper waiting for a missive from the "do you like me yes or no" guy from math class. Have some dignity!

10:15am: Check Twitter
Casually read your Twitter. Make sure to re-Tweet all the happy Tweets from your fellow writers who have actually sold a damn book. Do not feel bitter. This is beneath you. Just because you work just as hard as they do and are a misunderstood artist is no reason to not feel happy for them.

10:20am: Notice that Dream Agent/Editor is Writing Tweets
Well, look at that! Your Agent/Editor just Tweeted that they have a new acquisition!

10:21am: Check Your Cell Phone
Nope, the acquisition was not you.

10:22 am: Check Your Voice Mail
Still Not You.

10:23am: Eat Twinkie
...because Twinkies always love you.

10:32am: Do Not Check Your E-Mail
You have many things to fulfill you in life! Go smell a rose or something. They'll write soon, for you are brilliant and have written a novel for the ages.

10:35am: Eat Twinkie
...Because the first one was so good. And because they are a totally a breakfast food. Creative types like you owe it to themselves to break the rules.

10:36am: Wipe Twinkie Off Your Keyboard

10:37am: Hit Refresh
Oh, look! Mod Cloth is having a sale!

10:38am: Frown
...Because if you sold your amazing novel you could afford to shop at Mod Cloth

11:00am: Resist E-Mailing the Agent/Editor
DO NOT DO THIS, EVEN IF THE TWINKIES TELL YOU TO.

11:10am: Begin Composing E-Mail to Agent/Editor
Make it charming, but not desperate! You're so witty! They won't mind your adorable missive. After all - you're the voice of a generation.

1:07pm: Finish Brief, Fifty-Two Word Letter
Whew! That only took two hours. You should have been working, but your literary career cannot wait.

1:08pm: Convince Yourself Not to Send the E-Mail

1:10pm: Convince Yourself to Send the E-Mail

1:11pm: Convince Yourself Not to Send the E-Mail

1:13pm: Convince Yourself to Send the E-Mail

1:32pm: Send the E-Mail!
But first rub your special troll doll and turn in a circle three times. Shakespeare did this for good luck.

1:37pm: Hit Refresh
Have they responded yet?!

1:55pm: Attend to Real Life Things
It is healthy to do things such as go to the bathroom and feed yourself, even when you're a brilliant artiste.

2:17pm: Check Twitter
Your dream agent/ editor is OUT AT STARBUCKS? What the hell are they doing? They should be in the office, preparing their contract for your amazing book! Has the world gone topsy-turvy?

2:19pm: Hit Refresh
Have they responded yet?! NO? But they have an iPhone - they Tweet about using it all the time. They should be able to offer you a contract even if they are at Starbucks.

2:45pm: What's That, Twitter? Dream Agent/Editor is at Chuck E. Cheese?!?!
It's not even lunch or dinner time! Are they so lazy that they laze about, lazily, eating pizza with their kids instead of scooping up the Greatest Literary Masterpiece of the Twenty-First Century?

2:57pm: Maybe They Should Not Be Your Dream Agent/Editor
This person is clearly undeserving. You bet their five year old named Madison has more taste in her little finger than her parent.

3:01pm: Begin Composing Scathing Break-Up E-Mail
This one will be even better than the time you told off Time Warner Cable.

3:06pm: Finish Composing Scathing Break-Up E-Mail
Not only is the note in rhyme, to help drive home the message that you're the Most Amazing Writer Who Ever Lived, but it's addressed, "Dear Shit for Brains." Ha!

3:07pm: Maybe This is a Bad Idea
Hmmmmm.

3:08pm: But Someone Needs to Stand Up to These Arrogant Agent/Editors!
Grrrrr.

3:11pm: Take a Drink From Your Work Flask
For fortitude in the face of adversity.

3:14pm: Take Another Drink
It worked for Hemingway.

3:27pm: Hit "Send"
Take that, publishing establishment!

3:28pm: Freak the Fuck Out

3:29pm: OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
Why doesn't G-Mail have a recall feature??!

3:33pm: Take Another Drink
They're not even checking their e-mail anyway, so it's all going to be okay.

3:35pm: Be Depressed
It worked for Sylvia Plath

4:02pm: Hit Refresh
O
M
G
You have an e-mail from them. Subject: Your Book.

4:03pm: Stare at Browser

4:04pm: Take a Really Big Drink
You should have brought your bigger flask.

4:05pm: Open E-Mail

4:05pm: Cry

4:06pm: Delude Yourself
They don't understand you, like your mother. You stood up for yourself, and you feel proud, really. Just because you've been called a "nut-job" doesn't mean it's true.

4:22pm: Finish Box of Twinkies
There are a million other dream Agent/Editors in the sea.

4:25pm: Wipe Twinkie Crumbs Off Boob

4:30pm: Check Twitter
Dream Agent/Editor is Tweeting. Uh oh.

4:31pm: They Can't Mean You
You cannot possibly be the new hashtag #howtonevergetpublished

4:40pm: Dream Agent/Editor Has Written a Brand New Blog
Uh oh.

4:44pm: Prizes!
Dream Agent/Editor has posted your poetic hatemail. They are holding a contest, asking writers to compose a response to you.

4:57pm: There are Forty-Seven Entries Already
...And they all start "Dear Shit for Brains."

5:00pm: Time to Go Home
There is more liquor at home. It's hard to be a writer.

6:32pm: At Least No One's Outed You as the E-Mail Writer

6:43pm: Shit
Someone just did. They were your Beta reader once upon a time, but you let them go because they didn't understand your deep, underlying themes.

7:43pm: You Are Famous, Which is What You Always Wanted
Congratulations. You are now an internet meme.

9:00pm: Learn Lesson About Patience
It's about time, shit for brains.

Ode to A Writing Area

The Rejectionist, my evil-gollum-lesbian-girlfriend, has issued a fun blog challenge to only her favorite author-friend-bloggers. Okay, fine, she issued it to everyone, and, since I am an "everyone," I have decided to play! (Bonus points to anyone who can tell me what poem I am parodying.)

I present:

Ode to A Writing Area

by Lucy Woodhull
(of the Infamous Writing Area,
as Mentioned in the Famous Ode,
Which is Below)

Thou much ravish'd bride of messitude,
Thou birthplace of hilarity and mania,
Cheez-It receptacle, who canst thus inspire
A silly tale more stupid than our rhyme:
What red-fring'd lady haunts about thy space
A layabout or dreamer, or one lost,
In Romance or the tales of Inanity?
What short lady is this? A maiden? Ha!
What mad stories? What struggle to create?
What puns and adverbs? What wild adjectives‽

O couch-ey shape! Squishy cushions! with blanket
To warm its mistress’ feet heatingly,
With laptop blinking ‘round the trodden word;
Thou, silent cursor, dost tease us out of thought
As doth “new document”: Hail, plot bunny!
When old age shall the giddy writer waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of living room
Of ours, a friend to woman, to whom thou say'st,
"You could stand to lose some weight,--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

PS: Have you entered my Smurfy contest? (Heh heh -- I said "entered.")

PPS: Have a Smurfy Fourth of July, fellow Americans. USA! USA!

How I Love Thee, "Literature"

Mr. Fillion, I absolutely refuse to READ anything until you take off your shirt.

I'll wait.

Goodknight, Terrible Cliche

Isn't it time to retire the whole "knight" as "night" thing? Please? I'm starting a movement here and now.

I, as a content creator, agree to never use knight/night in a cutesy way. It's not original, it's just lazy, like eating microwave popcorn for dinner -- the first time, it was novel, but over and over again it's sad. I also agree to never give a character the last name of Knight, because Knight Rider did that better than I ever could and every further use of Knight as a last name is obnoxious.

Signed:

1. Lucy Woodhull
2. _________________

PASS IT ON

If You Want to Sneak Away to theWaterfall With the Dastardly Duke,Turn to Page 12

I recently mentioned to my husband that I was thinking of attempting a "Choose Your Own Adventure" romance. Awesome, right? I had been looking for one of the original 80s CYOA books in every thrift store I visited to no avail. Since it had been many years since I read one of them, I needed a primer on exactly what the format was and how the possibilities and choices unfolded for the reader.

Last week I began fleshing out a plot bunny that first attacked me months ago, and I considered that it would be especially fun as a Choose Your Own Adventure romance novel. Ricky to the rescue! After he visited his parent's house for a couple of weeks he came home and handed me this boxed set:


Isn't he the best? It's from 1981 and the set contains CYOA numbers 6, 8, 9 & 10. Poor number seven appears to be MIA. Perhaps it chose to be a lone ranger.

Number ten is The Lost Jewels of Nabooti.



It looks as if it will prove to be mildly offensive in that 1980s un-PC sort of way.

I intend to read them to get a sense of how they flow and how the stories loop back on themselves. They promise "You can read each of these books at least 100 times and never read the same story twice!" I'm curious to see how a story that could end 36 different ways could apply to a genre in which the story must end with a happily ever after.

And lookee! I had forgotten that these books had illustrations.



Just think of the possibilities in a romance picture book. Yeah, baby! I'll take the Duke on page 25, please - and the position on page 42.

SAVE THE UNICORN!

Friends,

I believe that you know, if you've read the blog for more than one minute, that I love the Unicorn. 'Tis a noble beast, and magical, and pretty to look at. Plus, they are super good at making those pretty rosette things out of radishes.

As such, it came as a great shock to me that Unicorns are being ruthlessly slaughtered for their meat:

Woe betide me! How can such a great tragedy happen here in America, land of the free and home of the braves? (Um, except that we slaughtered a lot of Native American braves, so maybe this shouldn't come as such a surprise.)

This disgusting verbiage comes straight from the murderers' website, ThinkGeek.com:

Pâté is passé. Unicorn - the new white meat.

Excellent source of sparkles!

Unicorns, as we all know, frolic all over the world, pooping rainbows and marshmallows wherever they go. What you don't know is that when unicorns reach the end of their lifespan, they are drawn to County Meath, Ireland. The Sisters at Radiant Farms have dedicated their lives to nursing these elegant creatures through their final days. Taking a cue from the Kobe beef industry, they massage each unicorn's coat with Guinness daily and fatten them on a diet comprised entirely of candy corn.

FIRST OF ALL - Unicorns fart rainbows, they don't poop them. Sometimes they vomit them (see Exhibit 1). What they poop is harmony. EVERYONE KNOWS THIS, EVILDOERS. How can you betray the beautiful Unicorn and not even get their sciencey biological facts right? It is a slap in the face to every Unicorn, which is not worse than slaughtering them, but is still not nice.

EXHIBIT 1

SECOND OF ALL - The fact that the Unicorn killers are nuns just makes it all the worse. Maria from The Sound of Music would never do that! She would sing to a unicorn, or at least dress it in a curtain, no matter how old it was. Would you, vile sisters of God Satan, want to be ground up for Nun Spam when you got too old to say a Rosary without spittle flying off your maws? I think not. Plus, how could you waste all that Guinness? Wasting beer is the ninth deadly sin. (Listening to the soundtrack to High School Musical 2 is the eighth.)

AND PART C OF MY COMPLAINT - Anyone can get their daily recommended dosage of sparkles at Joanne's Fabrics and Crafts, or by reading Twilight. (Um... better get it at Joanne's - fewer side effects.) This is the non-evisceratey way to obtain sparkles. If you need them to work quickly, you can always inject them. This is really basic sparkle knowledge, folks. Just go consult your food pyramid, Exhibit 2.

Exhibit 2

ThinkGeek, you may think you are blameless in all this, as you are merely the purveyors of the murdered Unicorn carcasses - BUT YOU ARE NOT! You are just as guilty! How can you sleep at night, or play Red Dead Redemption, knowing the calamity you are spreading in the world? And not computer-simulated calamity, either - real, actual calamity.

I want you to Think about this, Geek, every time you shill a glittery can of repugnance. Actions have consequences. Every time you kill a Unicorn:

- A Teen Miss USA cries.

- Eight puppies develop the horrible puppy-poison ivy/hemorrhoids hybrid. They don't make a topical creme for that.

- Hugs become 7% less effective.

- George Lucas fucks up another Star Wars movie.

- BP blows up an oil well.

- A typhoon wipes out an orphanage.

- Angelina Jolie wipes out an orphanage.

ANGELINA CAN ONLY ADOPT SO MANY KIDS, PEOPLE. The madness must end!

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP

If, like me, gentle readers, you want to help protect the Unicorns so that your children and your children's children* may enjoy their sunshiney goodness, please do one of the following:

- Put down the Unicorn meat, asshole.

- Call your congressperson.

- No, to hell with that. Call Barack Obama. He is a special friend to the Unicorns. How else would an illegal Communist Nazi Kenyan AntiCrist Socialist kitten-kicker be elected President? **



- Sharpen your Nun Stabber

- While praying.

- Call Jesse Jackson. People pay attention to shit when JJ is involved.





* Even though I don't think that children should have children. That's gross. They should be, like, eighteen at least.

** I cannot take credit for the Obama/Unicorn pic. Whoever made it, I salute you!