24 Comments on “Interesting”

1. What a surprise! It takes me to you.

2. Oh, sure, Jerry. Ruin it for everybody else.

3. Hey! I just registered for ConFusion (finally). Which brings up the question: Are you going got ConFusion? Because, well, its soon, and it’s awesome.

4. *snort* Just shows that you rule teh interwebs!

5. J:
   Haven’t decided yet. I’m doing a bit of travel in January, and it depends on whether I’m burned out from going places.

6. John you don’t understand… it’s all DIFFERENT NOW. My writing doesn’t suck… GOOGLE SUCKS. The world doesn’t understand me. No one knows that I’m going through.

   But such are the travails of middle age.

7. Ha!

8. It’s also where “scalzi sucks” takes you.

9. Ha! So it does.

10. Sucks to be Scalzi? Ding, Ding, Ding!

    Another winner!

11. When I just tried the “scalzi sucks” search the first thing to come back is Justine’s comment.

12. Hey, you just beat out an article about how John McCain’s writing sucks. To beat such an exalted man in the area of writing suckitude must be quite an honor.

13. Tickled to see that Wonkette is hit #2.

14. Hey John, after reading Old Man’s War I was at the bookstore and picked up Android’s Dream. You’ve intrigued me with the sheep. Anyway, just wanted to say hi, oh and I’ve pimped Old Mans War out to no less then three of my friends, and it’s a hit, my original copy is over in Iraq now with another friend who’s deployed. Your a hit with us military types. Thanks again! Erin

15. Do we want to know why you were typing that into a Google box?

    No, I didn’t think so.

16. You are near the top for “sucks at writing” (3)

17. No sign of ya at “reading sucks”

    Mostly Beavis and Butthead hits for those who don’t want to bother checking.

    “Googling sucks” seems to expertly deflect the criticism.

    P.S. I google–just curious

18. Also “Ghlaghghee sucks”. Not, however, “Kodi sucks”.

    I leave the implications as an exercise for the Chang who is not Chang.

19. Any plans for long and pointed commentary sucky writers who are no longer teenagers? I seem to be running into them a lot more often.

20. My writing sucks, and the wind blows. Thus equilibrium is maintained. :D

21. I smell another Anthology. Yeah, I know you’ve said you’re booked – but hey, it would make a great sequel to Your Hate Mail Will be Graded, if only on title alone.

22. Well it’s not that hard. Last week I googled “Cheese wrapped in bacon” (for non-Scalzi related reasons), put the results into a blog post and now I’m on the first page, although admittedly not number 1. Since all the actual information in the post is taken from the google results it’s probably annoying the half dozen or so people who’ve turned up after googling cheese wrapped in bacon, but that’s not my fault.

23. Hey, how about a followup:

    “Best-Selling Sixty-Five Year Old Author: Your Writing Sucks”

    It could be full of bullet points about how you are surrounded by so many sycophants that your ability to tell whether your writing sucks has eroded, much like your ability to maintain an erection. Also, there should be something about how all of that pontification and introspection that you edited out in novels number 1-7 did not suddenly become brilliant just because you got the BIG letters for your name on the cover of number 8.

    This applies to musicians, too. I just listened to an interview with Paul McCartney about his new album, which he wrote under the pseudonym “The Fireman” with a collaborator named “Youth” (who I’ll bet dollars to donuts is OLDER than 30, but still very young compared to McCartney), and, honestly, it sucks. He wrote thirteen songs in thirteen days, and carefully explained that it’s brilliant because he has written so many songs in his career and therefore he knew *just* how to do it (and apparently his method involved paging through books of poetry–gack–and choosing words that sounded beautiful, like “angels smiling”–oh please kill me now). And, really, from what I’ve heard, it’s very very bad. If he had any balls at all, he would have marketed it completely anonymously, so he could know how bad it is and how no one would buy it, but he was perfectly willing to get outed preemptively (“Oops, you caught me”) upon the initial release of the album.

    Yeah, teenage writing sucks, but they are in such very, very good company. The truth is that once you are established, you must be ever vigilant agains the suck. At any time, your writing may suck again, and it frequently does. (“You,” in general, not “you” in particular.)

24. ah yes. Scalzi is the #1 hit, and Wonkette is the #2 hit. All is well with the world. :)