Learning Day: The Professional Writers’ Phrase Book

Sometimes, I think about writing a book, but I’m just not sure I have  enough pizzazz. My work is flat, utterly unzazzy. Luckily, one of the  authors of The Romance Writers’ Phrase Book birthed into the world a sequel to her debut that I hope will teach me how to make my work sound as moist as possible.

Candace Shelton is out. I’m not sure what happened, but I’m worried it  was terrible, and this is foreshadowing. In her suspicious absence,  Jean Kent wrote The Professional Writers’ Phrase Book, which may remind you a lot of The Romance Writers’ Phrase Book, yet the cover calls it “THE ONLY BOOK OF ITS KIND”. Since this book came out three years after The Romance Writers’ Phrase Book, and  it specifically mentions that extremely similar book right on the  cover, I know that isn’t true. It might not even be pizazz.

You can’t stop Jean Kent from making these books. Surely someone has made that their life’s crusade. The Professional Writers’ Phrase Book isn’t quite as spicy as the Romance Writers’ Phrase Book, but it is more upsetting. For example, I never want to open up a book and see that one of the first few chapters is called…

Are there a lot of limbs involved in copywriting? I can’t picture any  of the phrases in the limbs section appearing in a Taco Bell commercial  unless they spice up their old slogan by adding “They Found the Torso®”  to “Make a Run for the Border.”

Actually, limbs is one of the least unsettling chapters in this book.  Its only crime is being weirdly horny in the same bad way The Romance Writers’ Phrase Book was. It seems like no matter what Jean is writing about, her mind  wanders to heavily mustachioed men swatting women on the behind.

As a professional writer, I try to avoid describing women in horse  terms. There aren’t a lot of solid writing rules that I follow, but  Women Don’t Have Horse Butts is definitely one of them. Adult books also  don’t typically use children’s terms for body parts. He swatted her  behind, she touched his pee pee, they gave each other cooties – all  things I would recommend avoiding in that knock-off Murder She Wrote novel you’ve been dying to write.

I figured not every section could be as thirsty as limbs, so, as my  thoughts usually do, I went straight to depression. It’s pretty hard to  make depression sound kind of horny, but I knew Jean would find a way,  and she didn’t let me down.

Life in the last lane isn’t horny, but frankly, the entire book feels  worth the price of admission just for that. Add Heathcliff in a ham  helmet® under that, and you’ve got a newspaper syndication deal. It’s a  Dilbert-worthy caption, and I love it.

At this point, like a Mormon missionary on spring break, I desperately  began to search for something, anything not even slightly horny. I  turned to the section called CRIME AND FIGHTING. Surely, this book  wouldn’t do sexy crimes? Wrong; it was one of the horniest sections I’ve  seen so far.

I’m trying to imagine a professional crime reporter who writes like  this. Everything sounds like it’s being delivered straight to camera on a  soap opera. Again, I have to wonder where this writing is going? Do you  want to give that Just Say No pamphlet some real weird energy? You’re  writing a western? Can the cowboy get kicked in the testicles? Can he  kind of like it? These are the tough questions about the craft of  writing this book isn’t afraid to ask.

One thing I respect about this book is that there isn’t a lot of  crossover with the previous one. Jean is one of the few authors who  says, “I’ve got a million of these lines,” and means it. They’re not  good, but she certainly has them. The only real crossover I’ve found is  that both books contain a section on smiles, but only the topic crosses  over. This time, the smile section is oddly tooth-centric.

Every single one of those smiles is menacing me personally. The only  appropriate use of “a perfect keyboard of teeth” is advertising the hot  new collab between OfficeMax and Hannibal Lecter. I miss the  uncomfortably sexual descriptions of crimes. Let’s try for a horny  chapter this time. Don’t disappoint me, SMELLS.

I’ve smelled a cow before, and it was not a lusty experience, and I  don’t want a gust of smell from anyone. If your smell gusts, it’s an  issue, and let me tell you, cows gust hard. I don’t usually advocate for  less descriptive language in books, but I’m starting to learn that  maybe some things just don’t need to be described, and that’s okay.

If this book came out today, I would swear it was written by AI. There  are so many sentences that lack not only all of the pizzazz the cover  promised but also a basic understanding of the human experience. It  would be a great book for a monster that was trying to figure out how to  trick people into making themselves taste delicious.

The sentences in the UNEASY section are a little too good. I’m  uncomfortable with the idea that someone would publish “the effect was  graveyard” and think that means something. When you put some of the  suggestions together, they do have a fun seventh grade goth slam poetry  reading vibe.

If there’s one thing this book definitely understands, it’s teens. The  section on SLANG EXPRESSIONS taught me so much about what the cool kids  were saying in 1987– stuff like “this is too heavy for me” and “can I  get a transfusion around here?” or the classic “burger corral.” I made  one of those up. Just kidding, no I didn’t, but I get it if you were  relieved to think one of those wasn’t real.

Those crazy ’80s kids were always saying Thoom! And talking about  snapping ass. Right? That happened, right? At this point, I’m beginning  to think Jean Kent ate Candace Shelton. This book is giving “Here is  proof that I am human, officer. Say, your teeth would make a perfect  keyboard! As our people say, would you like to come to my place and see  my compact digital audio-disc system?”

The most human thing about this book is how damn moist it is. Jean  can’t remove all of the moisture from her book. It’s still there, mostly  in the section on kissing, but I have hope the real Jean is still  somewhere, adding 37 sentences about moisture to the cliff notes.

The section on LOVEMAKING, however, is totally dry. It’s maybe the  driest section in this entire book. How is the crime so much sexier than  the sex? I don’t know, but I’d kill for some writhing and swatting in  the chapter where it should actually go. Instead, we get a lot of  burning, which is never good when genitals are involved, and some  conquering. Add pillaging to this list, and it’s a whole Attila The Hun  of romance.

We may never know what happened to Candace Shelton. Did she simply  retire after a satisfying career of writing things like “his spider-like  appendages wandered my aching womb?” Some say you can still hear her in  the hills at night. She’s lost, calling out to a buff, shirtless,  stable boy she read about once. You can barely make out the word that  she’s saying, but, oh shit, it’s moist.

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