Blowhards

Confession: I do not want to be posting right now... so sleepy...

Reading:

• Someplace to be Flying, by Charles de Lint

Writing:

• "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse"

Revising:

• "Dolly Hobbles"

I went to my bi-weekly Writers' Guild meeting today. I briefly want to mention the Blowhards. I won't say that there are only two, but there are two in particular that came to my attention. The first is a somewhat robust lady with giant glasses and a voice like a rusty bandsaw, to co-opt one of my own metaphors.

She barely allowed me to sit down before subjecting me to a barrage of questions and advice. She was uninterested in my answers, and indeed, barely paused to hear them. She was enjoying being the center of her own attention. I could barely make it to the restroom... she kept trying to call me back, and my repeated polite demurrals didn't make a dent in her attitude.

When she read, it was a story we had all heard before, barely altered. A picture book, but with no pictures--she couldn't draw. Then she lectured us all on how to get published, although she never had. It took an Oscar-style intervention to get her to stand down. Why do people feel they have to center everything on them, in perpetuity?

The other Blowhard? Oh, he just runs it.