Writing Pet Peeves - Blog hop edition

When some people pass away, they want to be remembered for their work or what they’ve done. I honestly want to be remembered for how I am as much as for what I did because I try to be as kind as I can as a tribute to my parents and a great childhood.

That said, there are things that do annoy the piss out of me because after all, I am Only Human.

The highly talented Larysia Woropay made her list of things that spur the Amazon woman to behead a worthy victim or two, which you can explore by clicking here. In the process, she tagged me and several classy people to give our version to the list. Looking at pet peeves from a writer perspective, there’s tons of things that do annoy me, but here’s a list of the ones that REALLY get on my nerves:

In writing

• False advertising: Blurbs that are nothing like the book, misleading interviews, or people who say they kinda sorta include certain elements yet jam their stories full of it. I.e. a bit of romance is different than nut cringing lines about how much love is shared by two people that can’t be together but will, but can't, but maybe, but they should… sigh. I don’t mind romance, just be honest about it.

• Abuse of hinting… eventually you should stop being a complete tease and give us info but not hinting…. And hinting….. and hinting…. And hinting…. It can get old and you should always explore great care when hinting to pique interest but not annoy.

• CLEARLY using the synonym function of your word processor. It’s good to push vocabulary but it’s not good to abuse that and be hard to understand. The best stories shall never rely on big words and you should focus on story rather than vocabulary.

• Excess of typos. A typo can happen, but when you find over 30 typos in a book two things happen: 1. You look sloppy and take me out of the groove of the story and 2. you make me feel better for having books with less typos and basically doing all of this solo.

In Social media

• The Follow/Unfollow tango: This refers to the people that click follow and no sooner have you sent a thank you message that they unfollow you, so they can have a bigger follow to follower ratio. Sincerely, bite me.

• Automated messages: It is as big a turn off as I can ever get to interact with anyone. Seriously, I’m interested in people, not bots. No offense Skynet.

• People who lash out after a bad review. Firstly, what are you? 9? Bad reviews happen and you should take them as constructive criticism and push yourself harder. After all, there’s no crying in baseball and shouldn’t be any crying in writing, on our side of the writing at least.

In general

• Spamalamadingdong – you have a book and you want me to read it. Guess what? So do I, but I don’t send you dozens of messages force feeding my work because it is not the right way to establish a connection. I know I under promote myself, which is on me, but I prefer that than leaving that spam after taste with every message.

Are there more things that annoy me? But of course, but instead of rambling on, I’ll tag some highly talented people that can add to the list:

Cate Evans (https://lifeviewpoints.com/)

Miss Evans may be an incredible professional in her field, but don’t let that distract you from her writing talents. She is thoughtful, kind, and has a level of intuition that connects at a very deep level. I’ve had the pleasure of reading her work on Wattpad and as a Beta reader and I can say with every certainty that you can expect great things from her.

Sarah Brentyn (https://sarahbrentyn.wordpress.com)

The snark shark of the Lemon Shark reef is one of the most interesting bloggers I’ve ever read and I’ve been reading blogs for about a decade. Deep, questioning and with a heavy dose of smartassery, her blog is not only excellent in the content, but the comments are always, and I mean ALWAYS enlightening, showing that great communities can come together and share the snark.

Kimberly Vanderhorst (http://www.kimvanderhorst.com)

Yet another lovely Canadian I’ve been able to connect with through social media, Kimberly grew up sandwiched between the mountains and the sea of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. A writer of books, great flash fictions, and a good kind person, how could I resist peeking into what brings out the fury? Lol.

Hope Denney – (https://twitter.com/HopeDenney2)

Hope is a great gal from the state of Tennessee. Fun, bubbly, kind, and talented, It’s always nice to see what she’s up to and what surprises she’ll tweet up.

Reve Ree – ReedWithaBee (http://dodoaugogo.blogspot.com)

Hailing from down under, ReeDaBee has a blog, a fascinating twitter account, and an intense amount of stories in her head, she’s prying away one word at a time. A wonderful traveler of the River of Imagination, many delights await if you give a click.

SR Martin (http://srmartinblog.blogspot.com)

A Shih Tzu lover into Harry Potter, movies, books, and video games, SR Martin has a lovely blog and does great interviews of which I was able to be a part of. Great blog from good people are always appreciated.

How about you though? What annoys you to no end? What peeves grate your nerves to the next level? Let go of that anger. After all it'll make it easier to enjoy the...

Peace, love, and maki rolls