Things Writers Like

- Eavesdropping (someone wearing headphones near your interesting conversation? If that person is a writer, there is a 98% chance the ipod is on pause).

- Book launches (free food, free drink, someone reads a section of the book so you never have to read it but can opine with authority).

- Describing the act of searching "funny animals" on youtube as not only research but a tax deduction.

- Hearing about other people's day jobs (you did WHAT for eleven hours? They told you off for wearing WHAT? etc).

Things Writers Do Not Like

- The fact that other people get paid actual money for their day jobs (you did WHAT for eleven hours? They paid you HOW MUCH?)

- Dreadful television shows made with public money and used as an argument for importing ready-made TV programs from overseas.

- The fact that membership of the Australian Writers' Guild, which is apparently designed to support Australian writers at all stages of their careers, costs more than a second-hand laptop, a freelance paycheque, or, you know, searching the internet for tax-deductable funny animals for two months.

- People who think any word ending in a vowel must have an apostrophe insterted between the vowel and the letter 'S' in the event of the word being plural. Hence tomato's.

Tomato is, says the writer. Tomato is what?

Then the writer realises that sometimes, there is another thing the writer doesn't like:

- The writer does not like the writer.

This only happens briefly and is usually solved by going outside and eavesdropping. Hence:

Workman 1 to woman walking down street: Oop. Sorry.

Woman: No, you're right.

Workman 1: No, no, after you. Beauty before... what are we?

Workman 2: Brawn.

Workman 1: Feckin brawn. Beauty before brawn.

See? Everything's better after those little moments.