Look! Shiny! Ooh, Squirrel! (and a joke blogfest entry)

Leigh T Moore and Lydia Kang are hosting a blogfest today!  The purpose? To laugh a little (or a lot)! 

• Post a joke that pokes fun at yourself, or writing, or your job (including parenting, of course!), or anything personal. Or if that's too much work, any joke that you think is funny will do.
• Visit all the sites on the linky (at each of their blogs) to get a good ab workout!

Here goes!  (This joke comes from a site I found and referenced on the A-Z challenge day J.  For more writing jokes go here!  It's worth another stop.)

There was once a young man who, in his youth, professed his desire to become a great writer.


When asked to define great, he said, "I want to write stuff that the whole world will read, stuff that people will react to on a truly emotional level, stuff that will make them scream, cry, howl in pain and anger!"
He now works for Microsoft writing error messages.

(LOL. My (christy's) hubby is a software architect so I found this one particularly funny.)

**And now, for erica's planned Monday post.**

Bright, shiny ideas. They're the dream of every writer. They make it feel like you can do anything.

Switch genres? YES!!
Develop new characters? FUN!
Become a pantser? Of course, that's what bright, shiny ideas are all about!!
Complete, edit, and complete again in two months? HECK YEAH, THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKIN-

Wait a minute. I just got a new idea. This one is EVEN BETTER!! And it's way more fun than plowing through this tricky plot point. God, what was I thinking? My WIP sucks - it seemed like such a good idea at the time. Screw it, on to the next. Nobody ever gets their first second third book published, anyway.

Be honest - does this sound like you??!!

(because, well, it sounds a little like us, too)

I (erica) have lots of bright, shiny ideas. I'm trying not to let them distract me, but seriously, I have *pauses to check* 8 books started right now. That doesn't include my completed ms.

EIGHT!!!!!

Is that normal? Do you come up with ideas easily and jot them down right away? Then what? Do you work on them for awhile? Or do you ignore them and keep plowing through bettering your WIP?

Okay, if you're interested, here's what I've got (word counts/progress in parentheses):

(my completed ms is a 67k word YA contemporary)

MG paranormal/ghost story (21k, then stuck, 4k into the rewrite)

MG contemporary/sports (2206)

YA sci-fi (bunch of research and 2 pages written)

YA contemporary "edgy" (2055)

YA dystopian (that is really just a horrible first page that will never see the light of day and I should delete it)

MG/young YA contemporary (10k) (I wrote this a long time ago and don't know if it will go anywhere)

PB (very rough draft)

Non-fiction for adults (roughly outlined, first chapter barely started)

Hmm, now that I look at that, I just had a great idea for a chapter book...

(I wrote this post last week. A few days later, I found out my grandfather had passed away. My husband, my kids, and I are taking a several days to be with my grandma, visit family we don't get to see often, and pay tribute to a wonderful man. Sometimes, no matter what, you have to do what your heart tells you to do. I am offline, but will return soon.)