Writers’ Gremlins

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

As we all know — or at least as R. A. Laferty did his best to warn us about — modern life is filled with a kind of gremlins.  For instance, paper clips reproduce and create excess hangers who, in turn, create bicycles, which–

You see what I mean, right?

Well, turns out writers suffer from this too.  I’m going over a manuscript that has rested for no more than a month, and already I’ve come across gremlin activity.

1 – Odd typos appear.  They’re not typos you’d ever make, not on your lifetime, so they’re evidence of the malevolent activity of typo gremlins who rearrange your electrons so the words are misspelled.

2- Sentences that you know were perfectly clear now seem to have twisted themselves so as to be as hard to understand as possible.  You know you did not write them that way, you’re not insane.  So, it was the sintax gremlins moving words around and random and adding an excess of “because” and “therefore”.

3 – Tension gremlins — those scenes you thought were nail biters have somehow been drained of all tension and ready “um… okay.”  Curse you, tension gremlins.

4- world building gremlins — you know you didn’t at any time contradict your worldbuilding within two pages.  No, it’s the world building gremlins, throwing random stuff in again.

Take heart.  They afflict me too.  I suspect they afflicted Shakespeare and Austen, too, possibly aided by the ink-blot gremlins.

But I shall go back to work.  And I shall win.  I just wish someone would create anti-gremlin software.

14 thoughts on “Writers’ Gremlins”

  3. I would make a cleaver quip. As a dyslexic who also suffers from a tendency to overwork material, I really cannot claim that anyone outside my loansome is responsible for the mess I find when I come back to something.

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  4. The problem is that when you write something and then immediately re-read it, you see exactly what you think you wrote.

    When you re-read it two weeks later you see exactly what you wrote.

    And the two are different. God knows they are when I write.

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  6. It’s those Free Association Gremlins, the ones who strike when you’re feeling sleepy while typing. And then they won’t come back and tell me anything about the magic door or who the doubting Miss is.

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  7. I always blame the Balseraphs of the Media, from a roleplaying game. Their special power is to modify text. All the wonky typos are THEIR fault! Nasty demons.

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    1. If we resort to other’s people’s imaginations to find our cause the answer is simple, some how your piece has been consigned it the Well of Lost Plots and is being salvaged as we speak.

      MataPam: This would also explain the arrival of miscellaneous plot points and devices turning up. Some literary smuggler must have accidentally dropped a bit of contraband as they used the semi-conscience state as it was being used as a conduit to the world.

      But as Thursday arrives tomorrow everything should get sorted out…

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  9. This whole topic – software gremlins resulting from unanticipated “moves” from users or simple errors accumulating over time, and writer’s gremlins, as described above, should serve as a cautionary note to those who think humans capable of designing “sustainable” societies … or who are inclined to grumble about a perfect Creator who made an imperfect world.

    And there we see that, in spite of yesterday’s post and our hostesses’s intentions in this post, some gremlin has managed to insert both politics and religion. See: that is why Football, which attempts to impose plans and order on reality, sucks and Baseball, with its reactive improvisational nature, more truly reflects the human condition.

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    1. Ook? We’re all gonna die, we’re all gonna die, we’re all gonna die!?! (Please remember to place a squashy ripe banana in the leathery hand of our most likely savior as we go running by … whatever you do, don’t depend on the Lady, she’s a bitch who likes to play games.)

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