I often write book reviews for publishers so they will send the Philly Chix group more free books. I thought for a while that them sending books for “just a simple review” was a loss on their end, but I’ve wisened up a bit. Reviews aren’t “simple” for most people, with a job and other hobbies reading a whole book and taking a look at it objectively is time-consuming. Now that I have a job and my free time is eaten up before I can blink, I realize this.
Anyway… I write reviews, and I really enjoy it. Recently I wrote a review for Unix Shells By Example, and the publisher asked me if she could use a quote from my review on their website. Cool. Then earlier this week she sent me a mail asking if I’d be willing to contribute “A few sentences” about what I use linux for for their catalog at the Linux World Expo next month. Cool! I quickly wrote a blurb and today she mailed me back:
Elizabeth, precisely!! This is excellent. You certainly do have a talent for writing.
[I can't say that about all computer gurus! :}
*goofy grin*
Perhaps a compliment such as this wouldn’t make most writers excited, but it did me, probably because I never seriously looked at myself as a writer. I always struggled in school to be successful in “Language Arts” and I never got very good grades. Looking back I think my trouble was mostly that I lack the type of creativeness needed to write fiction. If I read through my old reports, I wasn’t such a bad writer, and one of my English teachers even got a non-fiction story (about my cousin and I) published in our yearly school magazine. Still, the “I suck at english” idea has suck in my head for years, no matter how much I’ve worked on improving my skills.
Maybe all that hard work is starting to pay off.
Now I just need to become brilliant in a technical field that doesn’t have a good book and hit this publisher up for a book deal %D! Hehe…
Bedtime now.
*wanders off*