Warning: Some Violence and Much Strong Language.SHE WROTE: To Rant or Not To Rant
I am SO enjoying this thigh thing, which you got yourself into, Robert, so no whining. I'd love to tell you he was kidding, but I was there when several extremely successful women writers lined up in Maui to Sharpie his leg. My fave was Gail Tsukiyama who wrote her first name to the edge of his shorts and then grinned wickedly and said, "I have a very long last name" and proceeded to Sharpie her way up his thigh. I wrote mine modestly down by his knee. So I'd have a place to aim my foot when he annoyed me again.
But on the topic of rants. I'm thinking we should leave them up here from now on. Assuming they're not unprofessional which my first one was. The second one, I just finally cracked on the whole "Are you a couple?" thing and went on at length, and Bob said, "You know, if we want them to stop talking about it, we should stop talking about it," which was annoyingly true. So I deleted it.
But some rants might be good. We want this to be an accurate record of this year, and trust me, we rant. Whoever said that Bob needed lessons from me in how to cut loose hasn't been on the receiving end of Bob cutting loose. He does just FINE, thank you. After one e-mail argument, I threw up. It didn't help that I was wrong and he was right and I'd pushed it and he'd finally blown up, but trust me, he can rant. And no we never fight in person. We want to keep the collaboration going for awhile, not end up in a War of Roses double homicide.
The thing about rants is that they can make you look really small and mean because, basically, a rant is I'M mad, somebody did this to ME, somebody should so something about MY anger . . . very self-centered, you know? In the case of Bob's agent rant, he's being restrained. I'd have gone to New York and kicked the guy in the knee by now, but Bob is methodical and calm. I rant on my solo blog; there's an early one on there where Bob did something I can no longer remember and I got drunk on Dove ice cream and blogged about driving six hundred miles and smacking him with a shovel. But I think in general, you have to be very careful about ranting about others. I think yelling at each other is probably fair game, but it would be rude and unprofessional to rant about a poorly organized booksigning or a bad conference. So there'd have to be some kind of Rant Protocol, or we'd just end up bitching our way across the United States, not to mention the internet. Nothing attractive about that.
And the thing is, most of the time we're pretty happy. Overworked, exhausted, mind-fried, brain dead, and at times sick of each other, but we know that This Too Shall Pass, and we'll be back to sending each other dippy e-mails and manuscripts that make us both grin and do the Snoopy Dance. Okay, I grin and do the Snoopy Dance, Bob grins and pops an Amstel Light.
So I'm thinking probably no rants. Unless he really ticks me off again.
14 Comments:
Rant all you want - yes, yes, yes -within reason and in some context. Some days we just want to be that three year old in the mall who has had enough and pitches a fit sitting in the middle of the floor because they want their own way RIGHT NOW.
Thanks so much for verifying you had deleted a blog entry. I checked my lovely bloglines account and read a post. Later that same day it was gone and I thought I had just lost what was left of my mind.
I think I'll leave the thigh issue alone. It's just too easy.
Then again, maybe that was the point?
I think rants are so tempting because anger inspires passion (not THAT kind of passion!), and who wants to write about something about which you don't feel passionately? There's a difference, though, between a mindless, stream-of-consciousness rant that no one wants to read and a well-formed argument. Yours are the latter sort.
Rant Protocol - if you could formulate a coherent one to share I'd dearly love to pass it along. You do it so very well.
Just think of the marketing options- you could gather up all the deleted rant blogs and sell them as "The Blogs you NEVER saw." Hell we'd buy it.
Memo to Bob's Agent: "In the darkness, there is death....."
Yeah, rants are good and it's fun to see what gets another persons goat. Good writing material in these blogs and in the comments. I love the way you two play off each other.
Bob's rant was restrained, but he seems like one of those "still water's run deep" kinda guys. You never know what they're thinking. He didn't even tell me that he hadn't received one of my checks for his services. No! Not that kind of service ... the critique kind. Once I discovered it and red-faced, made good on the check, he just shrugged it off. He deserves signatures on his thighs, M&M's in any color, and at least a six pack of Amstel light.
I used to have a friend ... well, he's still my friend but now we live thousands of miles away from each other ...
Anyhoo, I used to have this friend that I did a lot of volunteer work with, and since we are both opinionated, strong-willed individuals, we'd often clash. And come close to blows, even. This was long before the internet or even the term "to rant" on somebody.
Back then, we took our aggression down to the beach to have a sand kicking contest. I mean, to kick sand literally at each other to the point that we'd exhaust ourselves close to passing out. Of course we'd get the giggles after a few face-fulls, and yanno how when you start laughing so hard you can barely move let alone defend yourself? It always worked ... we'd work the urge to kill each other out of our system, and end it with a good belly laugh. Stress all gone.
Of course there was that one time we got so giddy with the stress release, my friend actually pulled his shorts down & mooned a passing houseboat full of church people singing "Amazing Grace". But that's another story ...
Rant on!
— Bonz
Oh Bonnie -I felt for sure you were going to say, there was this one time we were so giddy with stress relief we boinked like bunnies in the dunes.
Still, I suppose mooning some christians was probably just as fun. And you didn't get sand in awkward places either.
Still...
Rants are OK. I do them often. Whenever my In-laws call or visit actually (not to them, on my blog). All that stress needs to go somewhere. Bottling it up just causes more stress. One it's out of your system you can move on.
Um, as for the thigh thing, how bad did she make Bob sweat?
The thing with ranting is it helps relieve some of that stress. Otherwise things build up inside you and you can be cranky and snide with innocent by-standers (okay, I get cranky with innocent by-standers). But once you put in on paper - real or virtual - it seems to dissipate.
Of course you have to be careful that the person you are ranting against never sees your words because they might not get over it so quickly.
Loved the 'rant protocol.'
And Eileen is so right, we would buy THE BLOGS YOU NEVER SAW.
Must shake image of women signing Bob's thigh . . . not that it isn't a wonderful visual, it is, but wouldn't want to objectify Bob, because that whole "in the darkness there is death thing" can add a fear factor I'd prefer to avoid.
Jenny -- just so you know, even if you delete a post here, it's still available on some of the services like Bloglines.com.
That Dove'll get you.
Seriously, though: Amstel Light? Not Stella?
Bob's "rant" was more of a restrained commentary than an actual snowshovel upside the head threat. He might be more of a gentleman about it, but Jenny's are more entertaining.
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