For the writers in the crowd

For the writers in the crowd, I picked up a brilliant book over the weekend. It's called How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead by Ariel Gore. This is not one of those how to get yourself writing kinds of books, it's aimed at people already writing but looking to bust into print and take the world by storm. Ariel Gore has a wicked sense of humour and has written a smart, funny, irreverent book packed with good advice guaranteed to fire you and get you into print. Or at least on the way to your very own collection of rejection slips. But ultimately that's how you get into print. Trust me. And if Ariel's advice is not enough, she has even included interviews with people like Dave Eggers and Ursula K. Le Guin.

There is a rather touching preface, but it was the acknowledgements that really made me want to be Ariel's new best friend. Okay, it is an odd habit of mine but I always read people's acknowledgements in books. Even when all they do is thank everyone they've ever met starting with the doctor who delivered them, I read through the pages and pages of names. I have no idea why. Anyway, this is what Ariel Gore had to say at the end of her acknowledgements:

Most of all, thanks to you, gentle reader: Thanks for picking up this book, and thanks in advance for telling all of your friends about me, because I'd really like to become a famous writer before I'm dead - I even quit smoking to give myself a few more years - and if you happen to know anyone at the New York Times, could you please tell them I'm a genius? It would really help me out. In the meantime, take care, keep writing, keep fighting, and keep putting your work out into the world, okay? Surely we will meet someday.

That made reading through all those other book's boring acknowledgements worthwhile.