[BLOG] dooce redux

From the comments: Good god, I can't stand Dooce. I'm surprised you like her. She's so whiny and boring--all that momminess, ugh! One of my other blogpeeps mentioned her latest kerfuffle with a publishing company she wigged out on. But Dooce is always the victim, wah wah.

That's it! That's where I'd found her and why I'd stashed the link away.

Miss Snark wrote about the dooce vs. Kensington kerfuffle back in October and I toddled over back then to look at the blog and blogline'd the link. Hadn't been back until yesterday.

The kerfuffle, for those just joining us, had Kensington offering Heather a two-book contract late last year and Heather accepting. After months of negotiating as to the details of the contract, Heather refused to sign the dotted line last May after her legal representative told Kensington the contract was a go because the editor Heather'd been expecting to have at Kensington was leaving the company. Oh, there was more to it than that. Heather said the negotiating took too long. She was upset that they hadn't told her the editor was planning to leave. &c. and so forth.

Kensington said they had an oral agreement to a contract and were just working out the details. Heather said they had no contract at all until she signed. Kensington sued.

Great and gory gobs ensued.

Heather wound up settling and agreeing to edit an anthology of some sort for Kensington while she took her whatever she'd planned for them elsewhere.

Maya Reynolds wrote what I'd been thinking about the Kensington episode in a clearer fashion:

My first reaction upon reading Heather's post was to shake my head. She seems to have no understanding that a verbal agreement negotiated by your duly appointed legal representative is a binding agreement. Then it occurred to me. Why should she?

As near as I can tell from her blog, Heather's professional experience in the working world was limited to the period between her graduation from college in 1997 to her firing from her job in 2002. Five years as a graphic artist/web designer. While I can't state this with certainty, she appears to have tumbled into her career as an "author" in the same impulsive way she began blogging--and with similar consequences.

As I mentioned yesterday, I'd wandered back to the blog yesterday, not remembering why I'd saved the link to it to begin with.

The blog's quirky and entertaining to me. I like reading her view as a used-to-was LDS living in Salt Lake City. (Has she been officially excommunicated? If so, why is her family still hanging out with her? Naughty! You're supposed to shun excommunicated members whether they're family or not.)

Heather reminds me of another Heather I know (Hi, Heather!) in that she is an unabashedly self-centered navel gazer who's wound up goo-gaw over her daughter. The Heather I know is less teetering-edge frail and neurotic in the head. (November 28th, f'rex, dooce wrote about her over-the-top worrying.)

Both Heathers write entertainingly about their it's-all-about-me! lives. Well, dooce does. My other Heather seems to be too busy with the now-two-years-old (or is it three-years-old by now) baby to keep her blog going. We're waiting, Heather. ...

Heck, Paula. I wouldn't want to live dooce's life -- drama exhausts me -- and I certainly wouldn't want to be the one she calls when she drops her marshmallow in the fire and wants someone to rescue it, but I like her voice, her out-there-ed-ness.

She'd make a great character in a book.

Say .......