Scott's Question Emporium

Send me your questions with "Question Emporium" in the subject line. (Click on "Contact Me" at the bottom of the homepage) or just post them in the comments section.

Any question. Any topic.

A selection of the finest (and least offensive -- seriously, folks, my mom reads these things) will be answered by me LIVE on the internet.

Q: Will the answer be correct? \
A: What am I, Cecil Adams? Ok, I won't lie... the answer is "Maybe". If I know the answer I'll give it thee. You never know, I have a lot of strange things crammed in my melon. It could happen. But as someone very smart once reminded me... "If you can't be right, be funny." And that shall be the guiding doctrine.

Honestly, I'm still feeling my way along with this "blogging about writing" thing. I write every day. Reams of words pour from my poor, tired fingers. But you wouldn't want to watch a YouTube video of my writing. It's a guy drinking coffee and typing on a laptop. It's a solitary endeavor most of the time.

This blog helps me keep a perspective, and a focus that might otherwise be lacking. Every writer in history - myself included - has tried to make the process interesting to outsiders. It isn't. It's barely interesting to us. When I'm interviewing experts and poring over ancient manuscripts... that is interesting! And I will find a way to share those experiences. But I can't do that every day or there would be no book. Just me essentially getting a degree in textual analysis. Or maybe journalism. But that's not generating much readable fiction. Have you ever read a doctoral dissertation on textual analysis? I haven't either. But I'll wager if you did, you would find it wasn't scintillating fiction.

So... while I'm searching for my "Blogging Voice" (whatever that is) and trying to figure out the best blend of content between the many facets of the writing life, I want to hear from YOU. Remember when I said this should be a conversation? That goes both ways. Some of you've answered some of my questions. Time for me to reciprocate. This experiment is about finding a balance between my tendency to ramble about deep introspective topics like the fact that elevators in the Pierce County Courthouse don't go all the way to the top floor (which is a fact; it's also where the alien experiments take place), my strange affection for parenthetical asides, ellipses (...) and the occaisional truly writerly stuff. So send in your questions! All topics are open (keep it clean, please) but I will give special precedence to topics of literary merit, writerly stuff, and the occaisional odd alien experiment.

P.S. Yes. I know. Technically it's not an "emporium" because things are bought and sold in an emporium and this is going to be basically free. So it's probably more accurately "Scott's Question Swapshop" but that has less of a ring to it, don't you think?