It’s Time to Come Clean
Well, I figured that I would’ve written this after having approximately 6 beverages (and by beverages I mean SHOTS), you know the whiny blog entry from that occasional blogger that is usually along the lines of, “Ohmigod iloveuguys and…Im sry for what i’ve done an i wont due it agin, I promiseeeeeee you guyz rock!!!!!111oneoneone”.
You will be pleased to know that I am neither drunk, nor have I been drinking. So, let’s get to it before that all changes…rapidly.
I am published in a book. A real-life textbook. I have no idea why I didn’t blog about this, uh, THREE YEARS AGO, you know, when I received said textbook? However, sometimes I have to take a step back and say to myself, “What ARE you thinking in there?!” It’s a mystery even to me, sometimes.
Also, before we get started I would like to personally apologize for the quality of these screenshots from the book - I took them with my digital camera, because I don’t have scanner, yet… (Cackles)
Click on any picture to enlarge it.
First, let’s start out with the e-mail, because you KNOW that this gives credibility. I mean, something that I can completely fabricate AND make it look real.
Oh, wait.
Well, for those who are believers, most of my replies went something like “OH MY GOD, LIKE, TOTALLY AWESOME YES!” Followed up by asking them to send me a free copy of the book if that was at all possible. A week after the book was published, I received mine in the mail.
Of course, that was three years ago. The other day I was unpacking my final box and I came across this book, actually. I remembered when I first got the book, I ripped open the clear packaging and started tearing through the book, looking for something about my website. I started to get upset, and it was then that I realized that it was 800 pages long, maybe I should think about this rationally. I flipped to the Credits part of the book, where all of the citations are.
My site was at the top, but, I was sure that my blog was probably somewhere in the middle of the textbook, certainly not on the first page as this was saying. It was probably a typo, I thought, them putting “page 3″ as the page number my site was on. There was no way that I could be at the front of the book, it’s probably a misprint, right?
I flip to the front of the book, and open it up to the first chapter. “Chapter 1: Thinking Like a Writer”, the first page says to me in clear, textbook BOLD print.
And there it was. The most popular blog I have ever written for, Boredom on a Stick, mounted on one of the first pages of this textbook.
I first look at the screenshot of my blog on the right-hand side of the page, because, let’s face it, a GIGANTIC screenshot of my own blog on PAGE THREE, it probably would have caught your attention first as well.
Wait, you don’t believe me that it was on page three in “Handbook for Writers, Eighth Edition”?!
Oh, now you know. Yeah, PAGE THREE. I’m still in disbelief. I read the entire first page on the left, and not only do I have my own screenshot in a textbook, but I also have a quote right on the first page, after the start of the chapter-page (which, shouldn’t count anyways) Page 2.
As you can see in the middle, there is a genuine reference to my screenshot in “Figure 1.1″. And, it says: “Figure 1.1 shows part of a blog that college student, Jillian, keeps to entertain herself and her friends–and sometimes to blow off steam.”
I couldn’t write like that if I tried. It is, quite possibly, the most beautiful sentence that I have ever seen, in my life. Maybe I should take my diploma out of the frame my mother got for me, and put this in it instead. It’ll probably be the only time in my life where I can say “I was published in a textbook”.
Wow, that just sounds creepy when I say it aloud.
Oh, you just went skydiving?
I am published in a textbook.
Oh, you have a Ph.D. and own your own business?
That’s funny, because I’m published in a textbook.
