Sometimes Writers Can't Help Being Twits

WRITERS, AS THE saying goes, write.

The funny thing is that writing tends to be so all consuming that one finds oneself in the need of a diversion now and again. Many writers who work a lot develop different kinds of hobbies. I know many who are obsessed with Golf (yawn.) And others who become serious, like, CRAZY serious foodies. There was a bit of a vogue a few years back to go heavy into the scotch realm -- which carries its own dangers, the personality being what it is and all. Poker caught many a fancy a while ago.

But there are a sad subset of us that just can't let go no matter what. I know writers whose hobbies are to write novels. Andy Borowitz made so much money off Fresh Prince of Bel Air that he has the enviable position of having the greatest writing related hobby of all time: he writes humour columns in the New Yorker. Others dabble in playwriting. I wrote the book and lyrics for a couple of musicals - but that doesn't count since it was before I was really getting heavy dramatic writing work.

It's too late and my fingers are too clumsy to entertain notions of the guitar. I bought an expensive camera at Christmas and I'm still taking stupid baby steps on how to use it.

But there's one funny bit of community that keeps popping up every few days on Twitter. It's one I embrace with glee. The first one I noticed was #firstdraftmovielines (a # tag before a subject on Twitter makes it an easy search term or something.) This was people deliberately mangling or rewriting movie lines. I think the one I came up with that I liked the most was "No Luke, I am your paternal Uncle."

Not highbrow, by any means, but fun. The great thing about Twitter, of course, is that it's all a great big mess. You follow people and they follow you and if you want to search a #hashtag you can see a whole bunch of people you don't know posting on the same subject.

Memes like these are interesting because the quality of the professional writers' output isn't always as inspired as some random thing that somebody else comes up with. And the greatest cultural "props" you can get is someone RT (re-tweeting) your message. That's when they pass it on to everyone on THEIR "follow" list. Imagine a big internetty version of that old shampoo ad: "and they told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on..."

It's also like that long-ago game I remember when people would try to come up with the best porno-title for a then-popular movie. (I still have nightmares about "Terms of En-rearment".) But like everything else in our globalized, capitalist world it seems, that died the the Adult Entertainment Business soon found it couldn't afford the entendre. There's no room for subtlety there anymore. No, no. If you want to stand out, you better be plain and clear. No room for wordplay anymore -- it's "Teenage Toesuckers#18" for you, bub.

But I digress.

Anyhow, the latest meme to fire up the Twitosphere and take my fancy yesterday was #failedchildrensbooktitles. I read a few that made me guffaw -- some real cleverness out there, both from my writer peeps and from the civilians on my list besides.

To give you a flavour for it -- this simple dash of post-internet chuckling, here's a few of mine that got big retweets:

Anne of Gangrene Gables

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Mercury Poisoning

Where The Sidewalk Ends in a Hail of Gunfire

A Wrinkle in Tim

Aladdin and the Relentless Carpet Bombing

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret Thatcher

Bob The Builder Who Doesn't Show Up

Horton Hires a 'Ho

The Tragic School Bus

See? Not exactly Leacock Medal level humour here, but undeniably fun. And it was also kind of a trip to remember some of those books I loved as a kid. I also think one of the reasons why I find it so fun is because in a weird way it's a lot like a story room. That's what you do in a story room: you toss out idea after idea after idea.

You try to make people laugh.

Some ideas are dumb and die slow deaths of silence, (usually punctuated by some variation on 'hahhaha yeah, fuck you guys!) and some hit.

And that's why it's a joy being around story rooms when they're on.

So if you've ever wondered what the story room thing was like, get on Twitter. Every once in a while, a meme breaks out and the boundaries between the pros and the people fall.

And yes, it's been pointed out, there's something a little sad about writers in their off time procrastinating from their paid writing work by trying to write for free to make a bunch of strangers laugh, but hey, it's better than stalking, right?

Now, if you'll excuse me, I gotta go buy a new lens for my Nikon. There comes a time when a man must put away Twitter things and get a real hobby.