Six on the brain #4

My goodness, what is the deal with Tony Kornheiser’s comb over?

If that thing started any closer to his ear, he’d have to recruit help from his armpits.

Honest-to-goodness, I actually like this guy’s work for The Washington Post and he’s somewhat tolerable in the booth on Monday Night Football. Which is why I think I want to help him.

So, Tony, from me to you, it’s time to get real: You’re bald… and it’s better to be bald than to look bald.
Konrath has a great discussion going from ~~yesterday’s~~ Monday’s Newbie post about the dichotomy that all writers seem to share: “I’m the best thing since pliers” vs. “You call this writing, you hack?”

Stacey Cochran got the best of it going when he recommended a volume by Susan Page called, Shortest Distance Between You and a Published Book. Stacey explained that Page “points out that its root cause is that writers confuse their hopes with their expectations.”

Stacey continued:

“If you set your hope for a book you’ve written too high, you will never be content and happy. [Page] describes a bestselling author she knows who sold 100,000 hardcovers and felt disappointed because his hopes were higher than that.”

Some folks felt that sounded like self-defeating behavior of the “Hope for the best, but expect the worst” variety. From where I sit, it sounds a lot like the Stockdale Paradox I talked about here.

No matter what your take is, it’s a great discussion there.

Update: I wrote this part of Six on the brain #4 the day before I published it, so I thought I should give credit… Stacey confirms my thoughts.
My partner and I have a big client meeting on Friday. Color us excited.
I’m currently working on a locked room mystery short. It’s my first. Those little buggers are hard.

Right now it’s all in my head, save for a few ideas I jotted down to be sure I remember them. I think I have enough of it to begin writing: I see my characters and have good sense of who they are and why the mystery occurred.

Still, I’m finding it tricky because I’m yet unsure I know how to solve it. I just hafta remember that writing myself into a corner is never as bad as it seems.
I’m also excited about some other freelance work I recently picked up. Shhhh. It’s a secret, but clues abound.
Lastly, I’m not ashamed to admit that I found the movie version of The Devil Wears Prada to be an absolute scream.