A writer always reads

Magnet #728 - Thomas Jefferson's Library

If you think I picked up this magnet as my secondary magnet from my superdupercool Library of Congress tour a couple of years ago, you've got another think coming. A friend of mine picked this magnet up for me at ALA in Anaheim a few years ago.

That phrase "you've got another think coming" always cracks me up. It was the root of one of the first professional arguments I ever saw in the workplace. One of my colleagues always thought it was "you've got another thing coming," and made sure to change it in the manuscript that she was proofing.

Right? I mean, that's how most people think the phrase goes!

Instead, one of our other most OCD supervisors - ever - took much pleasure in correcting this thought.

I have never seen my friend so mad! She was arguing her own point to me days later, saying that the ordinary reader believes it to be "thing" and we should just fix it in the mass-market book she was working on.

Now, it's entirely possible that this type of "catering to the mass-market" in our editing and proofreading is what's helped chip away at our collective intelligence. But I worry that it might start even earlier than that.

Today, we had the pleasure of three 10-year-olds and a 4-year-old in the office. Great fun! And a good reminder of how much I love kids. And sending them home with parents.

Anyway, I pulled out a stack of books - I know! The nerve of me! Books! - for the girls to read to the 4-year-old. And all three older girls were like, uh, we don't want to read. One went so far as to say, I'm not a reader. I'm a writer.

Gasp!

I couldn't stop myself. I blurted out, But a writer always reads! She said, nah. I don't like reading. I just like to write. Which then led us into this tangent of how she's a blogger. No kidding, here. She's a 10-year-old blogger. Of fashion. (Of course, this was the girl who gets up an hour earlier than she needs to, to wash, dry, style, mouse and gel her hair, for her headband to stay in).

Eh, despite that, I do love this kid, and think she's the smartest thing ever, but I so wanted to cry when I heard she's a writer not a reader.

Sheesh.