Instant comment gratification? Sorry, not here
November 29th, 2004One of my many pet peeves is people who ask stupid questions at author readings. I feel so bad for authors when they are asked “Where do you get your ideas?” I like Jennifer Weiner’s response, “Target.”
While all authors I have ever seen have graciously answered this question, I’m not sure that I would be able to be so polite. So when I have my “when I get my book published and am doing readings and someone actually comes to them” fantasy rolling in my head, I think it would be a good thing if questions were submitted in advance, so I could weed out the “Where do you get your idea?”s and all the questions that aren’t really questions but just a way for the inquirer to sound erudite in front of a crowd. In real life, though, I haven’t even put together a good submission package for my book, so I think I can say with certainty that any author readings on my part are a long way off.
Censoring comments, though, is happening right here, right now, because as soon as we put this site up, my comments feature got spammed with poker solicitations. So I have to approve comments before they get posted. This actually is far more like abashed agony then my authorial fantasy. I don’t get tons of comments, and I’m thrilled by each one, since they affirm that people are actually reading this. So believe you me, readers, I don’t want to make commenting harder. But I did want to let you know why there is a delay in seeing your comment posted.
Blame the poker spammers. I didn’t want it to come to this.