Smug and Famous, at least to each other

I suppose it is time to explain my obsession with spunk moist torso corduroy.*

Weekends are slow around here, so before I corduroy spunktificate on the poll, I ask you to read this, the preface to the first anthology that ever published my "work." It is written by Jolie "kicks ass" O'Reilly and four years later, it sums up how I feel about my literary coterie.

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We're leading a coup, and you're invited

Over a year ago, I answered an ad on craigslist for a Writers' Group that was applications for a new member. The group was formed and run by a man named Cyril. And from what would turn out to be my first and last meeting, he and another member, Mitt, got into a disagreement about whether to italicize or underline a particular phrase in one of Mitt's stories. The disagreement escalated, Cyril believing that proper format should always be respected, and Mitt believing that meaning superceded format. People were yelling over, I am not making this up, italiticization.

The next day I received a covert email from Mitt with the whispery subject line, "We're leading a coup, and your invited." Did I want to, along with all the other nice members I had met the night before, secede from Cyril and form a group in which writing championed over rules?

Here is what I know a year later about the member of Whiteout Writers' Group" Nina refuses to write in third person and I refuse to write in first person. Jerry doesn't think anyone is interesting enough to write a memoir, and also believes we should all work on semi-identical versions of the song "My name is Luca." Mitt's characters are all brilliant artists walking around pontificating to each other. Luca insists that everything we write is actually a young adult novel. Alana's favorite word is "head-hopping," and she does not consider her work erotic. Yazmeen and I would be the first memeber to challenge another Writer's Group to a street fight. And we all hate the Microsoft Paperclip man.

The title ofthis collection comes from a line in one of Luca's stories about two people not falling in love with each other: "It was important to smug and famous, at least to each other."

Here is what I know about Whiteout Writers' Group: We are named after a state of emergency. Because sometimes, as in the case of our coup, writing is an emergency.

This collection and our first year is dedicated to Cyril.

In First Person,
Jolie "kicks ass" O'Reilly

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If you made it this far, reader, you know that I love my writer friends a whole, real, lot.

And you must also know that the coup, now five years old, is still in power.

And you must know that the controversy over the emotional coloration of words like torso is one that arises at Whiteout meetings.

Tomorrow, I'll elaborate and then you will understand how it is possible for seven reasonably intelligent and reportedly sane adults to converse for hours about how a particular word makes people feel.

*sorry you stopped by? I'll bet. This is, at any rate, a bonus post - unrelated to Blog365 - so you can go ahead and be grossed out and feel rooked. It's my second post of the day and as you know, my standards are low. Really low. Torso low? Oh no.