Sunday fun at Barnes & Noble

Eavesdropping on a conversation at the local Barnes & Noble coffee house, I oh so subtly took a seat near a table with three wannabe writers discussing their works in progress, pretending to read my Paste magazine.

I found their earnestness amusing, considering they were in a mall chain where they hold discussion groups on shit like He’s Just Not That Into You.

On the other hand, why not whittle away your time on a novel instead of typical suburban crap like overreaching home improvement projects or evangelical theatrical pageants.

And for me, it was more fun than anything on TV that afternoon.

Being a guy, I tip my hat to the male of the three, a nerdy looking guy who by playing the writer card at least got to spend part of a slushy day with two women. Judging by his looks, he would probably otherwise be home playing Dungeons and Dragons on the Internet or listening to Yes on vinyl or ironing his outfit for the Star Trek convention.

He was talking about how someone had told him his characters were too static.

Theories on that ran through my mind:

1. You live in the suburbs where progress is measured in subdivisions and new Home Depots. You’re in a place where, until this bookstore opened last year, there was just a mom and pop bookstore for at least a 15-mile stretch of the county -- and area that holds at least 150,000 people. The town of Elgin still only has the little place, and it has 100,000 of those. In other words. you live in a boring place.

2. People watch too much TV, and most novels are too slow for them. Ulysses is damn long and takes place on just one day. Hmm, maybe the people have a point.

3. You look like you smoke too much pot.

4. Has he thought about trying one of those static free strips. You just put it in the dryer.

Anyway, to cheer Mr. Stasis up, the alpha gal of the group tells the guy maybe he’s a man out of time, his writing better suited to the 70s, which leads one of them to bring up Harold and Maude.

That made me tune out, as do most discussions of 70s cult movies which substituted quirks as character development and, were indeed, boring, Unless you smoked pot.

Alpha lady then started reading from her own novel, some sort of Anne Rice crap with a Victorian/gothic type stretched out on a grave. Then she started harping about the research she did on tuberculosis treatment from 100 years ago.

Apparently she hadn’t got to the part about some trendy types thought it was cool to look like they had the ailment, an affect they could get from taking drugs.

Now that would spice up her story -- if the people who saw the goth on the grave started mocking her for being a T-B pretending drama queen.

That I would read.

I wanted to thank the fledgling writers for their conversation, but I didn’t want to creep them out. Yet, they need to learn dammit. Writers are thieves and spies.

Instead, I just paid for my magazine and went home to do some laundry.