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August 20, 2005

The One Where Lani Doesn't Give a Crap

From Lani, in Crankyville Central...

All right. I usually try not to do this, but I just had to respond to the big kerfuffle over the latest chick lit bashing, this one occurring at Number One Hit Song, a blog which - although I didn't spend too much time there - seems to be based on... things people hate. Forgive me if I'm oversimplifying, if this is a great bastion of intellectual debate, but as far as I can tell... not so much.

Which works for some people. God bless.

With the exception of the fact that the writer takes personal shots at Jennifer Weiner and Stephanie Lessing while remaining a big fat coward anonymous, I really don't give a crap what she has to say about chick lit.

Yeah, I said it. I don't give a crap. Your question? If I don't give a crap, why am I writing about it?

Good question. You try coming up with a fresh blog twice a week when on deadline. I takes whats I can gets, baby.

So, basically, I'm using this loser as an opportunity to say to everyone that if people don't like you and don't like what you do, don't do it for them.

This is a big concept. Was for me when I started to understand it a couple of years ago. It's what helps me deal with bad reviews and the people who for various reasons, not all of them unjustified, just don't like me.

Yeah, well, those people? I'm not in it for them. This is an especially hard concept for women to internalize. While we enjoy disliking whomever we wish to dislike, most of us have this "be nice" gene that goes off like a behavior-correcting device every time someone doesn't like us. Makes us crazy, makes us insane, even people we hate must like us because...

There really is no good reason. Screw that gene. That gene is fucking inane. Just remember, girls - you're not in it for them. You're in it for the people you can affect, the people you can help, the people you can love and damnit, the people who love you. Everyone else matters only in the grand scheme of things, in the fact that they are living human beings doing the best they can in a world which consistently screws with them, but in your world, in the context of you? They don't matter. You're not in it for them.

Kinda freeing, isn't it? Like going commando on a fresh spring morning...

So. Back to the big fat coward Little Ms. Anonymous. If you don't like chick lit, don't read it. If you don't like me, go visit someone else's blog. Life is too short to bother with things you don't like, and it's definitely too short to wish violent death on someone who did nothing worse than write a book with a happy ending. You know me, I'm always up for a good joke. Or even a bad one. But taking a swipe at chick lit writers just to take a swipe? Someone needs to up their dosage. And their originality. S'been done, babe.

All right. Fine. So I give a little of a crap. But very little. And mostly because she didn't put her name on it, which typically hacks me off. I'm all for having opinions, if you have the integrity to stand behind them. But mostly this rant is just the result of PMS, deadline hell and my total lack of motivation to find something else to write about. So this essay probably doesn't reflect real well on me.

But at least I put my name on it.

[end rant]

Posted by Lani at 7:26 PM | Comments (3)

Comments

Posted by: goodapple at August 21, 2005 10:35 AM

Posted by: Amy K at August 22, 2005 12:14 AM

Posted by: Michelle C at August 22, 2005 10:44 AM