What a Yahoo You Are Not (maybe)

I wanted to say a little something about yahoos, while we're on the subject. I know a lot of authors, and I know quite a few of them well enough to have a window into who they are personally, and the quirks of their creative processes.

And in their little ways, they're all yahoos. There's the one who believes her house is haunted by the ghost of a jazz musician, who only shows himself in the occasional scent of cigarettes in one room. There's the one whose writing room walls are covered in plastic insects. There's the one who always wants to argue with me about serial commas.

I recognize and embrace the fact that people are not homogeneous. We all have our oddities and weirdnesses, and creative people generally are more likely to see the value in their own quirks.

So if you've been looking at my injunction to prove "what a yahoo you are not" and thinking, "Crap, I think maybe I am a bit of a yahoo," that's OK.

It's not that I don't expect authors to be weird. Only to be high-functioning enough to recognize gradations of weird (eg that their collection of images of people sticking their tongues out is less "weird" than the collection of pickled roadkill in their basement), and socially-adjusted enough to know at what point in a relationship to reveal each weirdness.

Cover letters are not the place to bring across your oddities, but once I love your writing and have the sense that you wouldn't be a complete embarrassment at a cocktail party, you can start showing me some of the less-for-the-public aspects of your life if you like. Though, since clarity is never a bad thing, I still don't want to see pictures of the way you "dress up" for your husband. Ever.