She reads your work.....
She cannot comprehend your cheerful, sometimes Brutal honesty?

I suspect she isn't really reading it.
Not for comprehension anyway.

If I did not want to hear the honest truth, I'd not write to you. She oughta be happy, you even wrote her back.
Talk about lost........

Amy, some people just don't get it. She's one of them. o_O

Abuse of a metaphor is only a misdemeanor in most states. However, failing to use uppercase letters when appropriate in standard English is a capital offense!

I really doubt she reads me at all. She lives in 90045:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Los+Angeles,+CA+90045,+United+States+of+America&sa=X&oi=map&ct=title

And remember, my column is banned from my local paper, The Los Angeles Times (although they fired creepy John Montorio, the features editor, one of the people keeping me out of the paper, so maybe there's hope!) It's possible she grew up in OC, where my column is popular in The Register, but if she's shocked that I was at all honest with her, I think she's never read it, or skimmed my site on the way to getting my e-mail address, and was just trying to flatter her way into a book review.

Not that you have to have read me or like me to have me use your book in my column. You just have to have actual writing ability -- this woman's writing was so bad that I didn't post much of what she wrote; seemed too mean.

She later wrote me that she comes from a long line of cops and attorneys and said she was forwarding my e-mails to them, blah blah blah, and I'd be in some deep doodoo for "threatening" her. Heh. I couldn't resist mentioning that I sometimes see Chief Bratton and his lovely and charming wife, lawyer/legal expert Rikki Kleiman, at a monthly dinner (Rikki also happens to be best friends with a friend of mine from New York), and also know (constitutional scholar) Eugene Volokh, who gave me his book, "The First Amendment" about issues like this...but none of that matters a whit: it's not who you know, it's whether you've broken the law, which I haven't.

I hate when somebody's too dumb to understand they're an idiot.

Amy, I think it is cool that you got some blog mileage out of the twit.

I think it is creepy that she starts out nice and flattering, then morphs into an over reacting tattler.

Amy, I'm shocked that would would THREATEN to WANT to do something to that poor innocent wanna-be-a-writer who clearly hadn't even bothered to ever read your column or blog before asking you to review her work! You should feel honored that she offered to pay - I'm sure she'd have been willing to throw $25 or $50 at you for your service.

Goodness knows how bad it could have been if you'd gotten all the way to actually WANTING to do something to her . . . .

Sounds to me like she's shocked to discover that only mommy and daddy are going to put big red smiley faces and sparkly stickers at the top of every piece of little snookum's writing.

This girl, who's probably close to my age, reminds me of assistants I've hired by accident who seemed to have gotten zero criticism as children (I'm better at hiring these days - my assistant is amazing, and a terrific writer herself).

Dilbert writes a poem and presents it to Dogbert:

DOGBERT: I once read that given infinite time, a thousand monkeys with typewriters would eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare.
DILBERT: But what about my poem?
DOGBERT: Three monkeys, ten minutes.
Scott Adams, Dilbert comic strip, 15 May 1989.

If a monkey-hour is defined as one monkey working one hour then how many fractional monkey-hours did this passage require?

"Lost in the curves of the forest, a magic comes forth and we are no longer just readers cradling a captivating tale but vibrant page travelers kissed by a rose.

I'm guessing that the monkeys outsourced it...

Your reply was polite and to the point, and also let her know that her inquiry wouldn't likely do well with others, either.

Life is full of little disappointments for people like her, isn't it?

"i wouldn't want to think you are not a nice person. thanks for your reply." FSM forbid that someone not think you are a nice person. I'm sure that's a great way to motivate people to reply. I know I worry endlessly about whether or not people think I'm a nice person.

I get a few e-mails about science stuff. Sometimes it's a physics teacher or electrical engineering student asking me specific questions about some of the videos I've made. I look forward to those e-mails. Then you have someone who's likely 10, asking me for specific details on how to make some of my more dangerous demonstrations - and clearly don't have even a basic grasp of the principles involved. Worse, are the science homework questions (can't people use google?). I usually reply to the latter two types by suggesting they try something a little less lethal and directing them to their science teacher who would likely be more than happy to explain the science to them - which is a lot less likely to result in them getting 'sploded. They don't get quite as bent out of shape as your writer, but they don't seem to quite "get it," either.

The hilarious thing for me in terms of being called "not nice," is how much time I spent this weekend going through back e-mails (and current ones). I had quite a bit of correspondence with a guy who was really losing it, and I think, helped him out...among others. I also wrote back to the girl who had me speak at University High to continue the speaking program for inner city kids. I got sick in January, but I'm supposed to be doing one a month at least (personal goal). In short, I sleep fine at night, even with jet lag (cut out sleeping pills for that, now just take Benadryl a night or two, and on the plane).

Rarely do spoiled people take that (everything "nice" that you do, for people who actually can use the help) into consideration when they feel that they aren't being treated as nice as they'd like.

I'm reminded of when a child tells their parent "you don't care!" because they don't get to go to Chuck E. Cheese...RIGHT NOW. They hardly factor in all of the things their parent does for them on a regular basis that proves they care.

It was all worth it for Curly's monkey post.

Non-idiots who write me generally write back to thank me for slapping them around. Oh, and I mean that in the metaphorical sense! Who has the time to get arrested for battery?

Lessons to take home:
1)Amy is awesome.
2)Must remember not to get on Amy's bad side.

I'm a good friend and a crappy enemy.

And if you write me for my opinion, don't be surprised if you get it, and not in the form that you necessarily wanted; ie, "Why, you're the next Chaucer!"

She's been listening to too much Seal.

The best part is the underlying attitude: "Well f*** you then! I'll show you!"

I know it's hard to believe but if one tries, one can quit acting like a four-year old.

[i]...it is tragic that this is how you treat your readers of inquiry.[/i]

No, dear LW, it is not tragic that Amy responds to her readers with something other than enthusiasm for their every utterance and praise for the fact that they got out of bed this morning. However, it is tragic that people are being slaughtered in Darfur. Try to remember, dear, that thing spinning around you is not the world. It's probably a moth trapped in your ego field.

WTF is a "reader of inquiry?"

"I know it's hard to believe but if one tries, one can quit acting like a four-year old."

Well, we could start a collection and send her Chuck E. Cheese gift certificates. Maybe that's all she needs...ticket games and guys wandering around in furry suits for minimum wage. Guess she could get the same thing, minus the tickets, at a gaming/fantasy convention.

"It's not that millennials lack the creative genius or technological know-how that he's looking for. Far from it, he says. It's more that they lack the real-world grounding it takes to deal with responsibility, accountability and setbacks."

"They've been overparented, overindulged and overprotected," she says. "They haven't experienced that much failure, frustration, pain. We were so obsessed with protecting and promoting their self-esteem that they crumble like cookies when they discover the world doesn't revolve around them. They get into the real world and they're shocked.

"You have to be very careful in how you talk to them because they take everything as criticism."

from the Dallas Morning News (reg may be required for full article): Millennials need to get real about work world

From the article: "Parents – both boomers and Gen Xers – thought they could give their kids self-esteem, forgetting that each one of us earns our own self-esteem."

Now, if we could just make sure that EVERYONE gets the memo...

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm a little concerned that the writer actually may be 12 years old, and doesn't just sound 12 years old. Do we know that she's an adult?

"I'm a little concerned that the writer actually may be 12 years old, and doesn't just sound 12 years old. Do we know that she's an adult?"

If she isn't an adult, then she just got a small - rather polite really - dose of the real world. Even more so if she read this blog. If she had, she sounds the type to have replied with outraged indignation by now.
However, the scenario doesn't sound likely for an adolescent. Self-publishing a novel and trolling other writers looking to pay them for reviews?

If she really think's the world is full of helpful advice columnists waiting to review her lurid prose... well I can't help but think her book will be more fantasy than most of the fantasy novels I read. At least most of them have characters, with, y'know, character, which someone this far in la la land cannot begin to understand.

I bet you'll be the villain in the next one Amy, villainously abusing metaphor and telling poor defenseless writers to leave you alone.

WTF is a "reader of inquiry?"

An asshole.

Well...you tried, at least. The clues just kinda flew over her head like Douglas Adams's deadlines. She shoulda stopped e-mailing at a certain point. Oh, and you're uh, REALLY going to turn her into a pile of ashes how now?

A few lines from my last e-mail to her, which seems to have gotten my message across:

You don't write me and then order me not to write back and expect me to comply, and then write me again and order me not to write back. It just doesn't work that way.

...you have to try to scare me into shutting up...which makes me squawk like a chicken being plucked, as you may have noticed.

Just so you know: Write back to me, and I will respond. If you don't want to hear from me further, it's real simple: Don't write back.

Do you think she thinks I'm hopping around my house in a giant half-plucked chicken suit?

She has not come off as the sharpest pin in the cushion but still- threatening police action for an email confrontation that she herself started (and continued) after effectively offering a bribe seems a little more than batty.

-Aside: She reminds me of the girl in high school who would get confused in conversation and ask me to define words like sinister. Seven years later and I still am bewildered and slightly disgusted.

Amy, I applaud your restraint- I doubt I would have dealt with that panjandrum of publishing with as much aplomb. (LW's florid styling seems to have influenced my commenting ability- I need a shower. Wait, that was mean. It’s a good thing I don’t live in LA or I might have the cops at my door for battery with a deadly blog comment.)

Amy, *Snort* You meanie!

I was hoping this would escalate into a hair-pulling catfight, dammit.

Hey Amy, your post on Feb 25 at 5:18 PM, about the Linda Yee article, was that meant for the other thread, where "lady" is having at me? Just wondering! o_O

Thanks. Deadline and jetlag, an embarrassing combination. Will move it!