A few days ago, I sent an e-mail to Clare Williams and Victoria Fielding. In it I asked, ‘Have you read Daphne’s brilliant comment on Adrian’s latest Q?
‘Possibly the 2nd best comment that I’ve ever seen on Q&As.’
Clare fell for the bait almost immediately: ‘If that was the second best, what was the #1?’ Victoria hasn’t yet asked the question: I assume that she’s been too busy scraping porridge and jam out of her (and her family’s) hair.
Alright, here are MY favourite 2 comments of ALL TIME on Q&As.
#2 https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/question/view/2823 Q: ‘Are you a pantser, or did you plan your novel?’
Daphne Milne’s A: ‘I had a plan for a three volume novel. It had a plot, several sub plots, various characters, and ramifications all the way to Timbuctoo. It ended up as a 16 line poem. I read it a lot at literary festivals, it always gets a laugh.’
Please visit that page and give her a few more thumbs up: she well deserves them!
p.s. The poem is GOOD, too!
+++
I’ve just run several Internet searches, using variations in phrasing the Q, in order to trawl up #1, but I either get thousands of results… or just 2 or 4, none of which is the original. However, in my own Q of some years back, ‘Can we ask Kate Baxter to bring out a book of her one- and two-liner comments on Q&A here?’ (https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/question/view/2173), I [evidently] paraphrased the question thus:
Q: What do you say when people ask you what you're writing at the moment?
Kate took one reply box to A: ‘Words.’ (A pretty good reply, you must admit.) Then she took another box for a reply about which the Germans would so expressively say, “Das ist der HAMMER!”
A: ‘On a good day, sentences.’
Where are you now, Kate? I miss you terribly!
***
Soooooooooooooooo… what is/are YOUR favourite comments on Q&As? (Please give Q AND A – and URL, if possible.)
Come, come, Girls [sic]! We're getting ever so slightly off-topic here. We're supposed to be nominating PAST glories, not attempting to create new ones. [looks sternly over top of lorgnette]
Although originally posted before my time, I'd have to vote for Kate Baxter's 'HAMMER', "On a good day, sentences."
Following Clare down the dark path into TOTAL ANARCHY, I'd give at least an honorable mention to a comment of Adrian's on one of my shared works (https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/profile/emilie-van-damm/work/57ccc0f4387140b07f8b4569). Allow me to set the scene:
In a forest clearing, all sorts of shouting, screaming, jumping out of trees, and other loud noises have been going on. A certain Prof. Wombat has slept through all of this hullabaloo. And now, Dear Readers, read on...
Ignoring the prostrate, whimpering Jon, the 7-metre-long snake (far above average for her species, but shorter - by 20 cm - than the title holder officially recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records [a fact that did nothing to improve her temper]) began to slither up Aisha’s legs. – EvD
“Morelia amethistina is a non-venomous species of snake, known as the amethystine, scrub python or Sanca permata locally, and is found not only in Australia, but also in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea,” explained Professor Wombat, chair of Reptile Studies at Wangaratta University (Wangaratta, Victoria), and who had been awakened by the sound of slithering.
So much for the passage. And now the brilliant comment from Adrian:
'Was it loud slithering?'
A genius of deadpan humour!
Good point well made, Wilhelmina :)
@ Clare: Oor wee Jummy is a shy flower. If it has taken him this long to reciprocate the declaration, it could also have SOMETHING to do with the facts that:
a) you're a married woman, and
n) you write thrillers about violent husbands.
Jummy got a place at university to study Maths and Physics... and is well capable of putting 2 and 2 together.
I'd call him VERY brave, meself.