He was dead before he hit the ground.
How's that? Over at Yahoo Answers - apparently the "second largest community on the web" - blarney wants to know "how would one go about starting to write a novel?".
Kja63 and Assaye10 get the ball rolling with a couple of old chestnuts. Then Huge, nosy old lady and Moorglade chip in with advice ranging from "just write man" to "get yourself enrolled on a creative writing course". But things start to get a little more interesting just a little further down, when a user called Michael Crichton chips in. "There is a famous answer to this," says Crichton. "Put seat in chair. Keep it there eight hours a day. Face the paper or computer screen. Continue to work until something useful happens."
He goes on to paraphrase John Cage with "Have something you want to say, and then say it," before concluding his advice with the revelation that "there are no tricks. You just have to do it. It's rather like a construction project."
The bright green badge marked "official", the dutiful use of the feature which lets you quote your sources (in Crichton's case, "experience") and the accurate deployment of full stops, capital letters and proper paragraph breaks throughout leave no room for doubt. This really is the official Michael Crichton giving blarney the benefit of his years of writing experience.
Which leaves the next posting - a recommendation to "take a creative writing course" - looking a little flat. Precisely zero thumbs aloft for poor star, compared to Crichton's mighty 37.
But I didn't know Crichton was a fan of Yahoo Answers, you say. Well, take a look at his profile. He's been a member since, ooh, Monday, and has answered three questions already. He's also asked a question about genetics - which according to his "about me" section is coincidentally the subject of his latest novel.
All of his answers are doing pretty well - with a massive combined total of 89 thumbs aloft so far - but he's got a long way to go before he takes on the global champion, Richard (not me, honest). He's amassed a whopping 195,539 points, by posting 589 questions and 6297 answers, 52% of which have been judged by the users of the "second largest community on the web" to be "best answers".
So is Crichton - or his PR - really going to put in the required effort to pull his measly level one rating up to something a little more respectable, or is this just a brazen publicity stunt that's going to wind up annoying all those good people who are actually interested in being part of the Yahoo Answers massive?
