Anybody with a pen and piece of paper can do this.
“I’ve always wanted to write a book!” I hear quite a bit.
“Do it!” I say.
Writing a book has the lowest barrier to entry of any craft, hobby, art, free-time waster I can think of.
Language is accessible to everyone. Everyone can find something to write upon and write with. If you’ve ever heard about back-of-the-napkin ideas/art, just know it’s A Thing. Creators will take any damned thing that can hold ink or graphite.[1]
Therefore, writing a story or book is felt to be easy. That’s okay. Most people won’t do it. They’re just not interested. Some people will and they will feel a sense of accomplishment and it’s a once-and-done and they scratch it off their bucket list. They may or may not share it. A few people will be infected with The Dream and learn how to submit queries and proposals to publishers. Some will publish themselves[2]. The marketers will make it to living (or better) income.
What The Cult of Traditional Publishing fosters is the delusion that if you are any good, you will publish. It really is a religion: Take Simon & Schuster into your heart as your personal publisher and it will reward you with a book on the bestseller list. Remember, you are a child of Shakespeare and he is your lord and savior.
You just gotta have faith.
I bought into this delusion. It was easy to believe before the internet, because you had no idea how many other writers were querying and you just knew yours would hit the slush pile just right. There were probably a lot, yeah, but it wasn’t unmanageable[3]. I had an extra reason to believe because editors demonstrated they liked my writing but freak things happened.
I was special.
But the math don’t lie and here is the formula:
Number of publishing slots < number of quality authors
Quality is the real lie. It is the most pernicious lie because no one knows exactly what that is. Everyone assumes it’s hitting the formula right and knowing one’s way around the language. That is objectively true. It is also only ostensibly true.
JK Rowling got lucky when “the chairman of [Bloomsbury] gave the first chapter to his then eight-year-old daughter, Alice, to read. Upon finishing, she immediately demanded the rest of the book. However, Bloomsbury was not convinced that it had a bestseller on its hands. Rowling’s editor, Barry Cunningham, warned her that she needed to get a day job because it was impossible to make a living writing children’s books.” This is a children’s editor and he didn’t recognize a gold mine.
It’s easy to delude yourself into thinking one writes quality when your critique groups keep telling you this and you really don’t understand the massive number of people who believe the same thing of themselves.
You become like the beautiful small-town homecoming queen/leading lady in local theater who thinks you can make it big in Hollywood, where no one’s as pretty and talented as you are. You are the prettiest of all. You are the most talented.
And then you find out LA is filled with beautiful, talented women and you look like everyone else and if you catch someone’s eye, you’ll eventually have to fuck Harvey Weinstein to get a breakout role and if you don’t, bye bye hopes and dreams because you’ll never work in this town[4]. And you may or may not go back home with her tail between her legs[5].
If you are a good writer, you WILL get published. Don’t give up.
2006
I’m doing medical transcription and part of a Usenet group with other MTs. Most are women, most are bleeding-heart liberals, and every MT in the world has one thing in common: We are all voracious readers[6].
An ancient woman, single, never married, with cats, a robot that mows her lawn, lives in San Francisco, and is about to retire. Now, this woman already irritated me because she felt very entitled to other people’s money. She writes a book and she announces that she’s been published. I’m immediately green. I wear that color well. A lot. So I go looking and lo and behold! She self-published with this new-fangled thing called print-on-demand. Wait, what? Print-on-demand?! Therein begins the toxic stew that churns in my gut.
She’s not supposed to do that! Nobody said she could do that! Doesn’t she know how this is done? That’s not an accomplishment! You can’t be a good writer if nobody published you! I had that idea before you did and I couldn’t afford it! I have been writing for years! I have a degree! My professor said I could write!
HOW DARE YOU DO SOMETHING I AM TOO SCARED TO DO!
So I go to my secret hoard of MT friends and rant. One of my friends, the only other female conservatarian MT I know (who has her own business) (whom I subcontract for) (who knows good fiction) bought the book and could barely read it. “Don’t worry about it; it’s crap.”
I felt better, but later, the Usenet group had a conversation about fiction in general and this woman says, as authoritatively as she says everything, that she hates reading books that are grammatically incorrect. To clarify, I politely asked if she meant dialogue, too. She said yes. I said, “That is not the way people talk.”
“They should. And I make them talk that way because it is correct.”
Shut up. I was 16 and poor.
She is a medical transcriptionist. She listens to people talk all day. Doctors mumble, stutter, chew, shit, pee, drive, and fuck while they’re dictating. Furthermore, I had cut my transcription teeth on transcribing my PI dad’s telephone interviews when I was 16[7], and had developed various punctuation protocols to replicate on paper how people really talk.
So I copied and pasted a small snippet of dialogue from one of those old books I had written but han’t looked at in years. She ripped me to pieces up one side and down the other and pasted a good piece of hers (which was, indeed, crap), but shocker—the others agreed with me.
People don’t talk like that[8].
Satisfied that she was a dilettante and as much of an annoying idiot as I had already thought she was, I went about my medical transcriptioning business, comfortably smug that she had to self-publish because she really was crap. My church and prophets were right, and my theology was pure:
Only people who can’t write must self-publish.
But there remained the tiniest pebble in my soul I was worrying like an oyster worries a grain of sand: I write better than that. I am better than she is.
Aren’t I?
2007
The Proviso, book 1 of my restarted writing career, was as finished as it was going to be without editorial help. I started looking for online critique groups. They were not helpful. I found a couple of critique partners, but they didn’t grok what I was doing[9], deliberately hearkening back to ye olde dayes of soap opera books.
Didn’t matter. An agent and/or editor would see how special it was and whip it into shape.
Then I realized there were these things called ebooks and ebook publishers and that was where most of these people were concentrating their efforts. Pffft. That was little better than self-publishing, but I continued to look for a decent critique group and partner.
Well, it took a while but I figured out I wasn’t going to get any valuable critiques[10]. I started preparing my submissions according to the Old Ways and when I went looking for agents and publishers, I was ecstatic to find out they took subs by email and the restriction on simultaneous submissions was gone.
I cracked my knuckles and gleefully copied and pasted my carefully personalized cover letters and “first chapter into the body of the email—no attachments accepted” into one email after another after another and confidently hit the SEND button.
__________
[1] #ProTip: Don’t use pencil; it fades and you may need that idea someday.
[2] This was always true, even when self-publishing was of the devil.
[3] You weren’t allowed to submit to different publishers and agents simultaneously back then, so it was a long process and you might never hear back. If you did so anyway and both publishers offered, you’d have some ’splainin’ to do, Lucy. The brainwashing was so complete that you obeyed this edict because you thought there was a very good chance more than one publisher or agent would want it.
[4] Mira {sad trombone} Sorvino.
[5]
Yeah, you were gonna change the world
Walking back, a child in the rain
…
Just keep your eye upon that endless broken line
Throw bag beneath the bus
Sit among the curious
It happens to the best of us, you know
[6] Flyover Country rubes who don’t read? Please. We just don’t read various flavors of mid-40s men detailing their midlife crises and sexual fantasies masquerading as “literature.”
[7] Picture this: A tiny bedroom in a small house in the ghetto, painted pink, frilly pink gingham curtains handmade by my mother, a pink gingham quilt hand-made by my grandmother, a French provincial desk from Sears, a kitchen chair, an old Royal typewriter with a manual return, and a boom box. I stayed up till the wee hours of the morning typing and made excellent money for my age, for a work-at-home job, and managed to please my dad.
[8] The rhythm of the way people talk is a kind of music. You have to alter the time signatures, put in rests and fragments and somehow convey allegro and adagio. You have to drop letters, syllables, and somehow spell non-word noises that actually mean something like “uh huh” and “nuh uh” and “ope!” You have to have alternate spellings for regional accents: “a’ight”, “innit”, “doan”.
[9] They always “just don’t get what I’m doing.” Idiots, clearly, every last one.
[10] “Real heroines don’t mutiny their captains by beheading them with battle axes while half-naked—and they certainly don’t do it on the first page. She’s totally unlikeable. I’m not going to read this and nobody else will, either.”
I’d read it. That’s why I fucking wrote it.
Damn. Footnotes don’t work. Edit fairy help?
Still a fun read…
There is truth in what you say, Great job Mo!
Yusef, how is Wendy?
(sorry Mojeaux… based on your previous work I think Yusef is right you did a great job, but as I have to make some calls and leave for a doctor’s appointment, I’ll have to read this later)
Probably too late to be noticed, but: always good to hear from you, Yusef.
I started with pencil. Then moved to ink.
A housefire destroyed all those original stories. The fire also did far worse things.
Opening lines of a book?
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.
An understated statement of fact. Aside from destroying everything from my childhood, and all of my mother’s things, and rendering her homeless at the time, it also killed my nephew. He was seven.
My sister has gotten back to almost functional after the loss, but the anniversay is coming up again, and she doesn’t take reminders well.
Oh, I am so sorry. I guess I didn’t make the connection between the first time you said “house fire” in which you lost work to “devastating tragedy.” I should’ve. I’m sorry.
I don’t talk much about these sorts of things. I tend to have to be the dependable one when shit hits the fan.
You’re a good man, UCS, even as I add to your load. A compassionate likeable guy that I happily call my friend.
leading lady in local theater
just another Eagle Scout at West Point
I saw this in law school. 550 people who had always been at the top of their class, and had egos to match, were thrown together and allofasudden most of them weren’t at the top of their class any more. Looking back, the Socratic method (still in use at that time) was an excellent technique for dealing with this – everybody was driven past their point of knowledge/competence in full view of their fellows.
While most managed to preserve their adamantine egos intact, it still brought home that everyone, everyone, was ignorant about and incompetent at our new thing.
+1 brains full of mush
EscapedJunior is halfway done and in the top fifth of his class.
Somehow, I managed to get through undergrad with a lot of incredibly smart, top of their class, but humble classmates. I thought that was normal. Then I went to a top-tier grad school. Ugh.
^^ this. Turns out most of the cool people get a job after undergrad.
My undergrad classmates were more interested in the tech than pissing matches, with a few exceptions (the Marine Officer who didn’t understand the concept of ‘group’).
What I learn from school group projects:
10% -Information to complete the project
2% – How to work with people
38% – How to complete the project by myself
50% – How much I hate people
A saying at the U. of A. Faculty of Law:
The top third of the graduating class make the best judges and professors;
The middle third make the best lawyers; and
The bottom third make the best money.
Now that I’m an adult, I often wonder what life would have been like if I tried to get into West Point. The recruiter that told me to never fucking apply to the military told me I probably had a reasonable shot at getting in, which, I still don’t know what to make of.
A kid from my (very) tiny higj school got in.
I have no point to that except to say he got in.
He was also a bronc buster. In high school.
Meh. Service Academies are a relic. Officers should be drawn from the NCO and enlisted ranks….Those whom would rule, must first serve, etc.
More just musing about my confusion. Now that I’m older, I know that life in the military would have been the worst thing in the world for the me that developed. But I was an Eagle Scout, and my ASVAB test scores where very, very good. Would I have developed into a very different person? Would I have done well and hated it? Would I have done poorly and ended up with a very different life?
I very much like the life I have, and getting into a very un-structured university setting was vital to that. Would I like another life that is very different just as much? Getting here involved a series of very unlikely events. Would I be anywhere near as happy if I followed any of the other forking paths in this garden?
Seems like the twists and turns of life make the difference between success (as self defined) and failure (as defined by others). We lurch and bounce sideways but mostly continue on in a forward direction.
I look at my high school friends, most were successful, in terms of family, financial (some way more than others) and very few real losers. At reunions we’re all just happy to see one another.
We muddle through life, trying not to be obvious.
Imma disagree some with Swiss. I was prior enlisted who got to go to the South Hudson Institute of Technology, the Army Trade School, My Rock-bound Highland Home. I got a “free” $250K education, shoved up my ass a nickle at a time.
The officer corps needs to have diversity of background. More officers need to be drawn from within, but I don’t believe USMA is a relic. If anything, it should be more of a relic, because attempts to modernize it have watered down the unique product the Academy once provided. Officers drawn from within tend to make the best Company Grade officers, but often have issues transitioning to higher levels.
Having said that, the experience mostly sucked. It was like being in jail, except you volunteered to be there. I made friendships there that are tighter than family, and got a world class education, but I hated my time there and had nightmares about getting sent back for 18 years (grad school finally fixed that).
I was going to say it was nicer than what I had at that age. I was using Bic disposables on loose leaf paper… Secondhand Bic disposables on loose leaf paper. If I was lucky, it was even college ruled.
I didn’t write on my typewriter. I did my dad’s transcription on it.
I would have thought you’d put it to more than one use.
I wanted to write in private. If I had no work, my dad would’ve wanted to know (curiosity, not controlling) what I was working on. If I admitted to him I was writing a story, he’d want to read it*. I didn’t want that, so I wrote in pen and it looked like I was doing homework.
*There’s a story to that, but I don’t want to tell it.
fire of my loins
At the risk of having posted this here before, a lovely argument I have with an Arkansas alumnus is who is the greatest novelist in English for whom is not his native tongue.
I say Conrad; he says Nabakov.
Jack Kerouac is another possibility. I prefer Nabokov of the three.
Joyce?
well played
Rand?
“Number of publishing slots < number of quality authors"
Yes. I've been in a writers' group for eight or nine years, maybe 35 or 40 members have attended meetings during that time. I'd say that probably six or seven members have brought stuff to read that's really good enough to be published (and at least a couple have proved it by actually getting published).
Now that's just one writers' group in one town. Some of the writers in our group have been to other groups and say that ours is of unusually high quality. Very possible! But surely most writers' groups have at least one member who could be published, right? My lowest possible estimate is that there are 5,000 active writers in America right now who are writing publishable stuff, very often better than what actually reaches the shelves of book stores. Might be actually 10x that.
There have been times, few, so I don’t think it’s my ego talking, where I’ve stared at a book in dismay and said “Even I write better than this!” The reaction only comes from stuff that got past traditional gatekeepers, since I don’t have an expectation of a minimum standard from indies.
“what actually reaches the shelves of book stores”
Having spent years working in retail book stores, I was never concerned with the quality of the writing. Always, the question was, “Will it sell, how fast and for how much?” The buyer/reader would make the determination about the writing.
I think the store is a proxy for “actually published by a big house” rather than being the decision maker with regards to content.
<a href="
” title=”TW: rant” target=”_blank”>just don’t write about women sword-fighting !
To be fair, the only way to win a fight using Ciri is to spam short range teleport.
I don’t know, my son goes to a weekly fencing class, and there are a couple lady instructors there who seem pretty handy with a blade.
There is a noticeable difference between fencing foils, épées, and sabers, and actual swords used in combat. Not that women are incapable of wielding them, sword techniques rarely rely on strength of muscles; the disadvantages for women would be height and weight more than raw upper body strength.
I made my pirate heroine pretty tall and strong. She is “thicc,” but as UCS notes below, she had been training since childhood since she grew up on a pirate ship.
My suspension of disbelief easily would easily accommodate that.
There is really only one rule for writing and suspension of belief. If you entertain enough of the audience enough that they don’t care about the plot hole, there is no plot hole.
But the more cohesive the tale you weave, the fewer times you’ll have to suspend over a hole.
Realism aside, you had me at thicc pirate heroin.
You’re going to have to take that in small doses.
I don’t know, it might give his fantasies a real shot in the arm.
Also, she goes into battle topless. Not smart, but it is a show of dominance.
Also, it gives her an edge in fighting British and Hessians in those stiff uniforms. Never underestimate the vulnerability of an opponent in tight coats.
http://moriahjovan.com/talesofdunham/thebooks/dunham/#sample
Stop making work awkward, Mojeaux.
Legit LOL. More like guffaw.
First bit of genuine laughter I’ve had in a while, so thank you.
SCHWING!!
Just so you two know, that pirate book is probably the kinkiest.
Épées are basically rapiers, which were used in combat (mostly duels), but only after the gift of the gun had made heavy armor obsolete. The differences between men and women fencing are probably much smaller than for broadsword fighting, but it was Sam Colt who made men and women equal.
Anecdotally, I have beat guys in both foil and épée who were bigger and stronger than me but not as skilled, but I was competing at a very low level.
In HS I was regularly thrashed in epee by one of the female students. She had a significantly longer reach than i did. Part of the reason I much preferred foil and saber.
Plus I hated the bruises from epee. Welts from saber were much more preferable…
I actually found lack of reach more of a hindrance in foil because the wrist isn’t target.
I’m trying to remember if the foil was shorter than my arm or not. (It’s been a few years)
The reduced target area in foil seemed to work better for me as a small guy.
Blades are 35 inches for both foil and épée. Not sure about saber, I never did that. Kids up to 12 (I think, it’s been a while) can use smaller sizes, the smallest being 30 inches.
I could’ve sworn the foil was shorter of the two.
Maybe a trick of the memory.
Epees are much thinner and lighter than rapiers. I’ve fenced foil and epee, prefer epee for the added heft and reach, but it’s still not comparable to a real rapier.
As with everything, it’s an overlapping distribution with skill driving much of the differentiation. I’m 6’1″ 290 and you could kick my ass because I’ve never picked up one of those little sword things in my life.
Épées are a third of the weight of a rapier, sometimes less, and due to the way scoring works emphasize thrust attacks while rapiers were very capable of cutting and slashes were not uncommon. If you look through period fencing manuals they have very different techniques compared to modern fencing. You could also watch HEMA competitions to see the differences in action.
None of that invalidates your point that women can be very competent with rapiers, just a caution against using modern fencing as an analogue for historical sword fighting.
My fencing commentary: The South Korean chick got screwed in the London Olympics. I watched that live and it was infuriating.
My HS had a very good fencing team, but I did not participate. It is a small regret of mine.
Gotcha, I had been told the épée evolved from the rapier, I didn’t realize the weight had gone down so much. Going from foil to épée in high school I was not thrilled about the 50% weight increase, a 200% increase would really suck.
Another point to add in reference to the difference between historic sword fighting and modern fencing, nothing was off limits, the target area was whatever you could reach. Wrists, faces, necks, crotches, everything was fair game, so reach mattered a lot.
Another point to add in reference to the difference between historic sword fighting and modern fencing, . . .
You mean I can go left and right too!?!?
You mean I can go left and right too!?!?
Modern fencing rules were written by the creator of the Atari 2600.
Dug’s instructors called that the “Fencing Lane Mentality”. The first on-page swordfight he gets into references it.
Duelling? Women probably wouldn’t be at too much of a disadvantage.
Battle? Insurmountable disadvantage. The weapons are heavier, armor, extended fighting – hell, men who did nothing but train for battle would wear out in fairly short order in a full-on melee.
While speed and technique count for a lot in sword fighting (based on my brief aikido training), being taller, having longer reach, and being stronger also count. And when margins are razor-thin, every advantage can make the difference.
Didn’t we already have this discussion? Strength is speed. The idea that the little guy is somehow faster than the bigger stronger guy is an optical illusion based on humans interpreting speed in proportion to the thing moving.
I agree. That’s why plyometrics are so important when training for martial applications. Bruce Lee proved time and time again that explosive power = speed.
It’s simple physics, f=ma. The faster you can accelerate the most mass, the more force you deliver. Both the ‘m’ and the ‘a’ are important.
and the Russian plyo protocols (they invented it) was
Step 1: do back squats until you are strong as fuck
Step 2: Jump up onto things
Step 3: Jump across
Step 4: Jump down onto things
Step 5: Jump down then up
Did you see step 1?
Battle axes, swords, pistols, cannons, swivels, flaming arrows, whatever.
it’s been a year since I could make a pretty link to twitter
I don’t have a dog in the fight: just thinking about swinging a claymore more than a couple of times makes me ache and go short of breath
Traditionally, people who fought with swords trained from childhood, so they had the physical conditioning to keep at it.
Ok. It is also true that no woman can fight with magical powers. Zero women can fight with magical powers.
What’s Klavan’s point?
Outrage and clickbait?
Oh, you were asking rhetorically. Sorry, my bad.
Proving the old Twain/Lincoln/Switzer quote.
“the internet was cool before Hitler invaded”?
I believe he was referring to “Grass, gas, or ass – no one rides for free.”
That was what I was thinking as I was reading that.
It’s “fantasy”. Does the story and setting let you suspend your disbelief? It’s part of the reason I generally don’t like “mecha” – I can’t suspend my disbelief.
SHUT THE FUCK UP, NICHIJOU-TARD!
Was waiting for that!
To be fair, I can’t stand how easily that argument is applied in defense of crap writing.
Like when Magneto lifts and moves an entire stadium, I’m asking myself “what are the rules exactly”? I think there should be rules so that the writers just can’t pull shitty deus ex machina events out of their ass constantly.
Like, maybe every time Magneto moves a car with his mind, he gets thirsty and has to chug a gatorade. Those are the rules. So then when he moves a stadium I’m like “Holy shit. He’s really thirsty now. Needs to chug an entire keg of gatorade”. Or whatever. Makes some rules so it doesn’t feel arbitrary.
Like in the Witcher episode 6 Yennifer makes those dudes go really slow. It’s essentially a completely an unbeatable move that could win in any situation against any one and there is no cost presented at all. Why does she not do the same in ever perilous situation? See. I don’t know. It’s not clear to me. That bugged me more than most things.
There was a short lived comic book who’s name I forget. It had a telekinetic who could move whatever he wanted, but he had to spend the energy out of his fat stores. He spent every mission looking like Jaba the Hutt, and finished every mission looking like a Bernie Sanders voter.
See I love that. He’s constantly trying to get fat in between so he can be a hero. That’s my kinda story.
Re fat heroes, I love the Fat Vampire series. Johnny B. Truant.
? at author’s name.
Yeah, he always had a hoagie or pop tart in his hand when he was between missions. Something something hero we needed.
Sovereign Seven. Guys name was Cruiser.
You’d think it’d be second nature for fantasy writers to come up with an internally consistant set of rules.
But a lot of people go with “It’s magic, we don’t have to explain it” instead of “Magic has its own set of rules that it abides by”. The first attitude sucks, and ruins stories a lot.
Sometime it drives the story. I’m thinking of Full Metal Alchemist.
That actually worked for me. I’ve watched both series.
The anime and the manga diverged as the first anime got ahead of the manga. So they did the series again and followed the manga. Midway through there are large changes.
They did have a very simple and internally consistant ruleset. I appreciated that.
BTW – the author of the shounen manga Full Metal Alchemist is woman – rather rare thing.
Her next series was quite the departure, but enjoyable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Spoon_(manga)
I like Sanderson’s Laws of Magic. Magic can be mysterious, but not if the heroes are using it to solve plot conflicts.
I have mentioned it before, but Niven and Pournelle apparently did pages of differential equations to figure out how FTL worked in the Motie universe.
Just to make sure the story worked. The math never was published, as far as I know.
OK, unpopular opinion time
If magic has knowable consistent rules, then a) it isn’t magic and b) results in contradictions/plot holes. The problem with using reliable magic is that stories are always set in universes where thing like math, chemistry and physics continue to exist and magic always always always lets some weasely rules lawyer break everything. See Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality or even just consider how magic would interact with reality and how the author has to misrepresent something else about the world to keep everything from going kablooie. Just a trivial example — the the Potterverse, children are allowed most of their day unsupervised, and have an entire mostly empty building full of secret rooms to explore, and yet there is not a single pregnancy among the students.
Children running around unsupervised and solving mysteries and problems and getting themselves into and out of trouble is a children’s lit staple.
Also, main characters having no family, no friends, no support sysyem is also a staple.
See almost every fairy tale ever.
You get too many people in your main characters’ support system or nosy parents, you’re gonna have long books and lots of parent issues.
Have you read the Dresden files stories? The magic in it has rules which work in the modern society (going off memory here):
1) Not everyone can use magic, being able to at the wizard level is rare. Low level magic is more common, and that’s the psychics and the like.
2) People can only channel so much power, try to channel too much, and you burn parts of yourself out.
3) Wizards can heal a bit faster then normal people, but a gunshot will still kill them dead.
4) Magic is really useful when you can prepare it ahead of time (rituals, talismans, potions, etc.).
4) Magic causes technology to break down around it (the main character uses a revolver, because even a semiautomatic gun will jam after a couple of shots).
6) Wizards are also busy defending normal people from supernatural threats (at least five different courts of supernatural creatures, demons, angels, and things from beyond).
I’m still setting up the rules for my witch story, but it requires long training in the hard sciences and then grad school for the chosen specialty. My witch is a meteorologist and her day job is on the Weather Channel.
Fiction, even the most elaborately crafted world building fantasy, is not about illuminating physical reality, society as a whole, detailed rules of law or governance, or any other macro level interaction or entity. It is about illustrating human reactions to these things and each other. If the characters are believable and their interactions ring true the author has done their work well, even if the love affair or vendetta plays out on board a ship that violates every rule of physics and is made of magic asspullium by fairy unicorns that are born on February 30th.
If the plot holes and physics break it for you one of three things is likely happening:
1. The author has not made the characters and their interactions ring true. This is on the author not you.
2. The story is boring. Also on the author.
3. You are an aspie
@Jarflax
I <3 U
Right, but this is a universe in which desire jealousy an puberty all happen. But no sex.
Ditto perpetual motion machines.
Ditto post-scarcity.. and yet somehow there are still rich and poor people
All of these deviations from reality (which is what magic is) require some sort of arbitrary action (either by the author or the reader) in order for the world to make the slightest bit of sense.
But no sex.
Maybe the magic condom spell is taught before puberty.
I don’t question the no-sex. They started out pre-puberty and thus remains a kids’ book and parents don’t like thinking that their children might be engaging in sex and if you’re an adult reading kid sex, you’re gross.
I don’t read YA, but I think the rules are different and there may be some fade-to-black going on. I would expect that anyway.
Re: the Dresden Files
First of all, while it claims there are rules, there really aren’t. Even in the narrative, Harry knows that his incantations are just pseudo-Latin that he makes up as he goes along. The extent that such things as “too much” are “too” varies from book to book and from chapter to chapter within the books. It’s all goverened by the rule of cool and or plot necessity.
And that’s my point. “Magic” requires that your world disregard other things (like chemistry or mechanics) on a basis that is as arbitrary as the rules of your particular magic system.
And of course, in the Dresden Files, in which literally every type of fairy-tale is true you wind up with spiraling structures to explain the things that are already there (the Seelie protect humans from the Unseelie, the Unseelie are there to protect everyone from Cthulu, etc) And then of course God and Satan are real, but only interfere juuuust enough to make the plot advance.
I did/do enjoy them, except for the m’ladying and the Holy Christian Katana.
@Moj,
I’m not saying magic is “bad” or criticizing the no sex or whatever. What I’m saying is you can’t have a story that is both a) set in the real world and b) has self-consistent, knowable magic in it.
To the extent that you have b) you have to deform the “real” world into a theatrical representation either by authorial fiat, or genre conventions or something.
I was just giving examples of how those world weren’t actually “real.” It’s fine to have a no-sex world, but in our world a group of 14-17 years olds living together with plenty of free time and privacy would behave differently than presented in the books.
I don’t think I understand what you’re saying, and I think our sticking point is the definition of “real world.” In Potterworld, the world is NOT our real world by virtue of the fact that it DOES have magic. Therefore, I can accept a whole lot, including inconsistency.
In Diskworld, telekinetic move stuff with their brain. As in, invisible scaffolding connects the item to their brain. Try to lift something to heavy, and it yanks your brain out through your eye socket.
I enjoy the witches magic. All working on belief and making things fit into narratives.
Niven again: In the Gil Hamilton stories, his telekinesis had a limitation of arm length, as he moved stuff with his imaginary 3rd arm. So if it wasn’t in reach, he couldnt do it. And the weight limit was about a full shot glass.
In the TV show Once Upon a Time, Rumplestiltskin makes it very clear that magic comes with a price.
When I write magic (unpublished so far), I always structure it on science.
I don’t have a name for the setting “Beyond the Edge of the Map” is in, but the fundimental nature of magic in the setting is the manipulation of a type of energy to make changes to the physical world. There are a few more rules on top of that in how it works, and what the limits are, but it always requires effort from the magician (and can even put them into a coma/kill them if too far past capacity)
Also it’s important for me to feel when someone is in actual danger. If the writing it arbitrary, the feeling goes away.
Yes! That comes in two aspects. First, they cant pull random stuff out of their ass to save the day. Second, sometimes protagonists actually have to die/be injured.
I think that’s my single favorite part of UCS’s writing. Sacrifice lingers and becomes a part of the character.
So much this.
Seems more prevalent on the screen. I’m not sure if I need to blame the screenwriters or the format. You can pick apart the the “first” Star Wars plenty, but it worked for 10 year old Sensei.
Maybe the cost cant be seen? That lady you mention might have gotten a nasty yeast infection every time she used the power, and thus, using the power was not worth it?
Yes. But now I’m doing the job of rationalizing it without explanation and wondering when they will do this again. And the show had done a good job of explaining that magic did incur cost before this.
Klavan’s going to be really torn up when Ciri starts training to become… well..,. spoiler alert.
Be sure to include chick armor.
The Witcher did avoid boob plate.
That reminds me, “On Unknown Shores” is stopped in the middle of a conversation with the Venatrix Drea Wulff. Dug needs to find out he already lost his bet, and I need to mention that the Frost Wyvern fight is slated for the Emperor’s Birthday/Accession day celebrations. (Yes, either he was crowned on his birthday, or for reasons of tradition, the birthday is celebrated on accession day)
Strength, speed, talent, training — pick three.
Renaissance era street fighting — rapier against unarmored foe — women can hold their own.
Medieval armored combat — not so much.
both the beat and the press are fucktons more successful when you’re stronger than your opponent.
I hate to be *that guy* – but I akshually co-own and fight in Armored Combat Worldwide (ACW). I’ve been doing this for 6 years now: real fighting, real armor, real weapons. Must be historically accurate armor and weapons – and documented – to within +- 50 years. We use a rule set that comes from tournament medieval combat circa 1400s.
Anyway, I was invited to fight in China recently at this event and the team from Japan had a woman on it, Kimiko-san. She was bad ass and could use a longsword. She fought a dude in what we call “pro-fights” and more than held her own. It was pretty impressive.
OTOH – I generally fight in the team melees and women just… don’t hold up. Can’t. The mass matters. I’m short, but I’ve carried 60-80 lb rucks and I don’t care what the social engineers say, we all know men and women are different and the weight fucking matters. A LOT. That doesn’t even address the ability to survive multiple blows from two-handed weapons. It would be criminal to let women and men fight against one another under those conditions. We occasionally will let some of the women fight in mixed-team events, but all of my brother (and sister) knights know ahead of time to go easy on the women. Again, if I hit a woman with a 2-handed axe, even blunted, it would break bones. They just don’t have the “meat” to absorb those kinds of shots.
So, there. Let me end the debate on this subject with actual experience fighting in armor. (And we would love to have any of you come out and join us! But armor isn’t cheap, however, there is nothing quite like the moment you close the visor and they yell “lay on!” or “fight!”)
I did not make the mistake of having my medieval heroine don armor on the regular.
She uses poison, as a good female assassin should.
She fought a dude in what we call “pro-fights” and more than held her own. It was pretty impressive.
There is an exception for every rule.
I’ve done this.
I have not done this.
There are ten times a many women doing that latter than the former.
I agree completely, which is what I was trying to say. In one on ones – duels – the differences in strength and size can be partially diminished because women are not technically inferior to men. (See, e.g. gymnastics, including beam and bars.) It’s the raw strength and beef, generally. Stamina, they’re just as capable – again, with a caveat: the armor really does start to weigh on you – a LOT over several days (like a weekend tournament or international tourney). And the dudes who do this sport are, in several cases, college football lineman – in armor – punching people in the face with a piece of reinforced wood strapped to their arm. And same sized dudes are also swinging a 6.5′ piece of rattan with a 4lb blunted axe-head on the end at each other. There is no place for women in that mass of beef and violence. Period. Anyone who thinks so is welcome to come try that theory out – any time. We’ll put them in armor and stick them in a 16 v 16- . Actually, no we won’t. Our insurer would kill us. And that really is where the proof is.
So you liked MOPP gear so much you decided you want to be uncomfortable with your hobbies too?
I used to fence in high school and college and found fencing gear ridiculously warm. I can’t imagine plate mail with the requisite padding underneath to be cool and comfortable!
The breathing is the hardest part. You don’t fully clear the exhaled CO2 in your helm because you’re wearing a piece of steel in front of your face so you don’t get fucking killed. And we have regs on every aspect of what you can wear, especially helms. Mine was 22-24 pounds with a camaille. Anyway, you slowly are suffocating by rebreathing your own CO2, unless there’s a really stiff breeze. Fighting in armor also has a lot to do with managing that. Heat management is a big deal, too. Especially when it’s really sunny. Nothing like cooking in your armor.
Taking a deep breath in armor is also quite difficult, so you’re breathing shallowly.
That is what my research tells me, anyway.
I don’t recall that being a problem. Not if the armor is fitted properly.
Yep. It’s why we always want to sit between fights. The armor makes breathing a bit of a chore. One of our guys is a fire captain in CA and he says new guys have that same complaint about firefighting gear. Same kind of misery. Most of my friends who were infantryman describe similar pains – it’s been the nature of warfare for eternity. But it is why knights rode horses.
Well, it’s not the first piece of research I’ve done that turned out to be wrong. ?
Don’t feel bad, Mo. There was a long span of time where academics would claim an unhorsed knight was akin to a turtle on its back due to 55 pounds of armor. I’ve seen video of people in the same kit hopping to their feet. So it all depends on the source used.
I came back from fighting in a 2 day tournament a month ago and I told my wife, it felt like I was bouncing off the ground to be walking around without armor on. It’s a funny feeling that wears off after a day.
Moving in Armor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzTwBQniLSc
I had some pretty solid neck muscles when I was doing it.
Not to trivialize your hobby, but I can’t stop hearing lightning bolt !
Uh, the guys/gals that do full contact steel scare me just a bit.
I’m in Episode 5. (Already doxxed myself before, so there ya go.)
Knight Fight!
This is really interesting Mojo, thanks for the insight. I was surprised to learn this year that an author who I’d been reading for fifteen years was next to quitting the writing game, He was putting out a book a year and usually ended up on the shortlist for various genre awards (crime/noir) and yet he was substitute teaching and driving Uber and was losing his house. I would have figured with a dozen published books and various awards and such that while not making a ton he would be doing okay.
Nope. Very few authors can make a living at it and the only ones I knew personally back in the day mostly wrote 6 a year for Harlequin and Silhouette. Very dependable, hit the target, etc etc etc. I did know Julie Garwood who made a fortune. She lives in the metro.
Royalties are a pattern of diminishing returns, as fewer units move year over year.
The only publishing house for which I know numbers pays an advance of about $5k for a novel. After that $5k, the author doesn’t see another dime until royalties pass that amount. For this company, that’s often more than a year. By then, it will be a slow trickle.
Unless you land a blockbuster, even as a traditionally published author, it’s hard to live on royalties alone.
Yeah, I should have figured that, Explains why some authors I like will write five or six books and then just quit. I always found that odd, but I guess one has to make a living.
“I had cut my transcription teeth on transcribing my PI dad’s telephone interviews when I was 16, and had developed various punctuation protocols to replicate on paper how people really talk.”
This is a good way to learn how to write dialogue I hadn’t thought of. I thought the usual method for writers is to be so awkward socially your spend all your time at parties listening to other people. That’s how I did it, anyway.
Actually, the thing about writing “realistic” dialogue is that while you do have to make it more informal than your regular prose, if you actually try to write how people talk, it becomes unreadable. People basically talk like drunk monkeys all the time and it’s so common nobody notices. “…Umm, uh, like, what happened then was, umm, she says, like how come…”
Dear god, trying to capture how I speak in text would be a nightmare.
Also, the adage about people not telling other people things they already know is full of shit. That’s half my work day.
Related: http://moriahjovan.com/talesofdunham/blog/people-watching/
I had to put in all those ums and uhs and suchlike when I was transcribing. It adds a great deal of twangy vibrato to the rhythm.
This is why I hate teaching conversation analysis.
What’s this Some kinda Hittite Hieroglyphs?
That’s pretty much a non-detailed slice. There are conventional markings for every single thing (you have to mark pauses by tenths of a second, in-breaths, out-breaths, interruptions, etc.).
How much of that can be done automagically with machine learning these days?
If you know of any particular grants, I’ll go and find out. 🙂
I am not quite sure I understand what I’m looking at.
Transcription for conversation analysis has its own long standing conventions for marking what CA researchers find of use in analysis.
“…Please. We just don’t read various flavors of mid-40s men detailing their midlife crises and sexual fantasies masquerading as “literature.””
So much this!
*fist bump*
Somewhat related, what’s the current state of medical transcribing? My SiL is going to go down that road(*)
(*theres a bunch of backstory, but I think this is really just a placeholder until she can go on disability)
It sucks donkey balls. When I could no longer afford to do medical transcription, which is to say I was making a lot more money formatting ebooks for people and I was losing money on the time I spent MTing, I was making a good rate, but the work was moving overseas and rates were falling. That ship has sailed. If she can work out of the house, tell her to learn to code.
Billing, that is. If she can do that and go work in a hospital, she’ll make a decent living.
Most places don’t have transcriptionists anymore. They have laptops with point-and-click and places to type billable notes.
RCDean might have some insights here.
One of my local clinics has real-life scribes that follow doctors around so the doctors can look the patient in the eyes when they are treating them. I don’t know how they make it work, but its fantastic.
I hate that my drug dealer (psychologist ARNP) has to sit there and type and look at the screen the whole time I’m talking to her.
Its not like a psychologist needs to be noticing a patient’s subtle non-verbal communications for any reason…
I guess as long as I’m getting my drugs it shouldn’t matter. ?
My doctor alternates between talking directly me and doing hunt-and-peck on the tablet computer he now carries around. He is not naturally adept at technology.
That’s what I suspected. Not my place to jump in uninvited, so I’ll just silently judge from afar and shrug sympathetically if it doesn’t work out. There are so many red flags around her that a bull would get disoriented.
Once upon a time, it was good. Before my MT time, it was VERY good. But it’s a buggy whip now.
Between electronic medical records, the improvements in speech-to-text, and offshoring transcriptionists (a terrible idea if you care at all about privacy and security), I don’t think there’s much future in medical transcription. I’m not even sure we still have any, and we’re not a small organization.
Moje is right: coding, there’s a future in that.
Scribes (the person who follows the doc around with a tablet) are interesting. I see more of them, but the business case for the extra FTE can be hard to justify (“OK, doc, tell me how having a scribe is going to enable you to collect $40 – 50K more a year than you do now”). No question whatsoever that everyone (docs, nurses, patients) hates the interposition of a computer screen in the clinical environment, but the solution ain’t free.
Oh, but! There are a lot of general transcription jobs out there if she can just pass a test.
Try Allegis or Rev. Pinterest is chock full of ideas for work-at-home and not scams, either. Have her look on Craigslist.
There will be a learning curve anywhere so she should not expect to make much for the first few weeks.
This Pinterest account. https://pin.it/wibyfzytlnrcfo
You weren’t allowed to submit to different publishers and agents simultaneously back then, so it was a long process and you might never hear back.
This is still how it works for medical journals. I had one journal take 2 years (no exaggeration) to make a final decision on a manuscript, but the proliferation of online, open-access journals have disrupted the traditional model, much like self-publishing for books.
I just finished my 15th manuscript two days ago, which I hope to submit soon and subsequently publish as first author in a respected journal. I have a bunch more published articles from my early days that I ghost-authored, but I don’t count those or ghost write for the industry anymore.
If you’ve seen Knives Out, think of Daniel Craig’s character – not the over-the-top accent but the dramatic affectations – I have a friend whose speaking mannerisms are exactly like that. It’s like he’s trying to give a dramatic, passionate rendition of a theatrical role every time he talks about anything. Bizarre. But I chuckled about it all the way through the movie.
Dragging over the debate from the last thread:
http://freemanbeyondthewall.libsyn.com/bonus-scott-horton-on-the-82nd-airborne-being-deployed-to-iraq
Interesting analysis on the situation in Iraq a day before the drone strike retaliation. I’m really curious to hear what he has to say since we retailiated.
Nice. Still listening, but it sounds like my take on the situation.
Same. I’m still astounded by the short memories I’m seeing in this whole thing. I’m really anticipating the next interview.
It was a battalion (700-800 Soldiers) from the Ready Unit that went over (so far?). From the TV coverage there is a couple of Companies (~300 Soldiers) down the road from the Embassy at FOB Union III. As evidenced yesterday we have somethings that can fire Hellfire missiles nearby. (UAV’s, Apaches, somethings) We aren’t going to invade with that force package. We demonstrated yesterday that can defend the Embassy and reach out and touch fuck faces.
One can argue that the Congressional authorization to kill him was in place- and used by Obama. On multiple levels the MSM and Dems are playing nothing more than “orange man bad”, yet again. (On a personal level I have no issues with killing those fuck faces. They spent a lot of energy and money trying to kill me. )
Iran has considered itself at war with the US since the fall of the shah. So killing a military member from a country that considers itself at war with us is not “assassination”, it is just another part of warfare.
What comes next? This is not Sarajevo 1914. Russia will not mobilize to save the Iranians, France will not mobilize in response. Germany can mobilize if it wants, but with the current state of the Bundeswehr who would even notice? Hopefully people are buttonholing Iranians at various embassies and telling them- boast and chant but don’t try shit on our soil. I am surprised that Iran hadn’t noticed that Trump loves to counterpunch and put to him in a place where he is compared to Carter ensures there will be a counter punch. It was a proportional response that sent a message to both the Arab and Persian worlds.
The question is will the DoS permanent Foreign Service Officers do their jobs to advocate the message of the USG, with no hemming and hawing, or will they undermine Trump’s message to their foreign counterparts? This would create a danger that those foreign contacts will not press the message on Iran the seriousness of the USG and the Iranians will try to hit a soft out of Theater target to try and create a rift. While Iran has been busted in the past for attempting to arrange killings on US soil, it has always been against a third nation. I don’t think they are willing to try and kill prominent Americans on US soil.
I pointed out last night, that in addition to the big fish, one of the others killed was the guy who did the 1983 US embassy bombing in Kuwait. Getting overlooked, but perhaps a further message of fuck with our embassies and end up in the ground.
How many terrorists were with him?
And what was the collateral damage?
I dunno about terrorists but the others were half Iranian and half Iraqi militia (the dead protocol officers seems to have disappeared from the wiki version of events).
For further schizzles, the Israelis were going to cap Soleimani five years ago but the Obama admin tipped off the Iranians.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/u-s-gives-israel-green-light-to-assassinate-iran-s-general-soleimani-1.5630156
The swordplay discussion reminded me of this: I was recently reading about the Fosbury flop. I always knew the story but didnt realize the mechanics. What Fosbury figured out ( he was an engineering student) was that if you arced enough, the path of your center of mass could travel under the bar while your body went over.
The older techniques required elevating your CoM above the bar.
Right. I remember seeing Fosbury doing the flop at the very beginning. It was so comical, and yet it changed everything.
A lot of non-writers fantasize about writing books. I’ve been one of them, but I figured out long ago that I wasn’t a writer – because I wasn’t writing.
When somebody tells me they want to be a writer, I ask them what they are writing right now. Most people seem surprised by the question. The answer is almost always “nothing.”
I have a vague memory of some famous writer showing up at a symposium. He stood at the lectern facing a full auditorium. He was supposed to provide guidance on how to write.
He told everyone to go home and write. Then he left the stage.
“Go that way, really fast. If something gets in your way, turn.”
I don’t ask them what they’re writing. I ask them what they want to write. The answer is usually pretty interesting and I encourage them sincerely.
Unlike with drawing which also requires a pen and paper, you already have the base requirement: the ability to communicate.
I worked at four different bookstores on the westside of LA back in 90’s. I encountered thousands of “writers”. I always asked the same question, “What are you writing, right now?” Maybe 5% could give a specific answer.
Speaking of writing, I’ve got to start that report this weekend. ☹️
What am I writing right now?
“On Unknown Shores”
“Prince of the North Tower”
“Junior Redemptioners”
“Shadowfire*”
“Sellstaff*”
Twenty Zombi Man
Rite of Passage*
Stranger Prince*
“Mechbay Murder”
“Red Card”
“Liberator”
“Redemption*”
And a few more I can’t recall off the top of my head.
*working title
Wow, you have a lot of fires going at once there. I’m only writing two things not related to my professional life,
another episode of the Lizzie Warren origin story; and
The article I owe y’all on the modern church
It has to do with my strategy for writer’s block.
If I run into trouble with one active work, I switch to another just to keep getting words on the page, and come back to the first when I figure out what needs to be there. If I end up writing garbage, well, I rip it out and throw it in a scrap file.
Yes. You are indeed a writer. I even bought a copy of “Shadowboy”. I really need to finish it/start over/re-read it.
In LA, I encountered alot of waiters, accountants, hairdressers, book store employees, cheesesteak makers, who claimed to be writers. But no product. Produce written work, and you are indeed a writer; regardless of your day job/occupation.
Yay! *hops up and down clapping*
Insert mental italics
Black as Knight (Cods and Cuntes)
A Babe in Winter (sequel to above)
Rook Takes Queen (Dunham universe)
A ghost story (romance with a twist ending)
A magic story (a “witch” imprisoned for homicide after failing to heal someone)
A vampire story (yes, the middle-aged frumpy housewife who works the graveyard shift at QuikTrip)
A ghost story (romance with a twist ending)
Whoopi Goldberg was screwing a dead guy the whole time?
Demi Moore’s career identifies as a man?
Spoiler: Dude dies and the romance is between the ghosts.
What would arousal even mean if the male is incorporeal?
I have no idea. I’m still working out her corporeality with rules and such.
You’ve never heard of sextoplasm?
Ummmmmmm no.
“What would arousal even mean if the male is incorporeal?”
Please refer to straff’s (or was it chafed’s?) Halloween avatar.
disincarnal relations?
Oh, in reorganizing my files I ran across an idea I had 20 years ago in college. I wrote the prospectus for a class. It’s fucking brilliant. I couldn’t write it then. I didn’t have the chops.
I don’t know if I have the chops now.
Give it a shot.
At worst, put it in a drawer for a few more years.
I ought to post that prospectus. I only need to change a name because I’ve used it before.
Writers in LA are working on scripts, no?
I formatted a book for a producer of a soap opera. For payment, I asked him to read my book and tell me if I would be wasting my time writing a pilot and series bible and he loved the book and encouraged me to do it. Then he would get me a script doctor and help me.
Script writing is not my strong point, but I can do it.
I just didn’t. Because I didn’t want to. (Harsh truth, not a statement of defiance.)
Scripts, novels, “Legends of the NFL” short stories, poetry, whatever. No product; not a writer.
The exceptions being Karl L. and Sam T., both of who have written, produced and directed movies from their scripts. Nice dudes, too.
Good article, Mojeaux. Thanks for playing he insight.
“I ask them what they are writing right now”
Heinlein’s first rule (with apologies to UCS): https://www.sfwriter.com/ow05.htm
Aargh! All these mid-day posts of special interest to me are hitting on some of my busiest day-job days of the year!
The thread will be long dead by the time I can respond as well as this post deserves, but I’ll put in my $0.02 after I’m done earning it. Thanks again for writing this, Moje. Couldn’t be coming at a better time for me.
You’re welcome! I look forward to your 2c. ?
“We just don’t read various flavors of mid-40s men detailing their midlife crises and sexual fantasies masquerading as “literature.””
Funny. At this point, I generally rule-out anything written by an American female from 2000-present.
Thanks for writing these Mojeaux, it’s been interesting. Writing has a low material start-up cost, but what scares a lot of people is that there’s no training wheels, you just have to start writing, and the first attempts might not be good, which is discouraging. With other hobbies, you can follow someone else’s instructions and make something pretty good on your first try (for example, coming from a recipe).
Tjat is a really good point I have never once considered. I started “writing” when I was a little girl, telling myself stories to put myself to sleep.
My Gma From Hell #1 was a natural storyteller and my dad’s side of the family has quite a bit of natural artistic talent. My stories pleased me and I was my only audience, so I considered no one else.
I wonder how many other writers started to entertain themselves.
I started because the school curriculum was stacked with books designed to drive people away from reading, and I’d already scoured the library of stuff that caught my eye (it was tiny).
Treat all economic questions from the viewpoint of the consumer for the interests of the consumer are the interests of the human race. — Frederic Bastiat
I am claiming victory on the oil price question from the Morning thread. Bastiat agrees with me.
“I want free shit. Always and forever.”
“It aint free if the state is paying for it.” — robc, and probably Bastiat too, although it probably isnt a direct quote in that case.
how did this not get posted yet?
https://youtu.be/2BmhHyyzh9o
A better question: How the fuck did this not get posted yet?
Viper – Dose Iranian Pussys Gone Get Smashed By Tha Marines (Im Inlisting)
This post:
Clorox Bleach
as an Iranian
if vipers inlisting i surrender
Thread’s about dead, so thanks for participating, all. I really appreciate the interest.
Aww… I can talk about storytelling generalities and specifics all day.
Yep, #metoo
I’m fascinated by all of this. You have an iron will to stay the course. How much is their a culture of bad writers trying to sabotage each other and better writers via bad reviews and backbiting? I notice that the YA version of this involves putting the competition on blast for not being woke enough.
It’s not iron will. It’s compulsion. I can’t NOT write. I tried. It lay dormant for many years but then resurfaced.
The blasting each other for not being woke enough is not an attempt to sabotage the competition. There really is no way to do that if your readership is there.
The blasting is because they truly believe this bullshit and someone got offended. Then thebwoke brigade piles on.
I was traveling home and trying to work at the same time, so just got to this. “Real heroines don’t mutiny their captains by beheading them with battle axes while half-naked—and they certainly don’t do it on the first page. She’s totally unlikeable. I’m not going to read this and nobody else will, either.” What?? You just got a sale, right there. I’ll buy the rest if I like this one, too. Thanks, I had almost run out of books in my backlog!
Have read. Highly recommend. (Moje’s blog lists in chrono order of setting, & this is earliest of the completed works.)
Thank you!
Also highly recommend. What exactly did the reviewer expect from a book about pirates?
You got me.
Most negative comments were aling the lines of Is this historical fiction or historical romance?
One guy just trashed the shit out of it but I thougjt thay was hilarious since he trashed O’Brian too.
Dude put me on the same shelf as Master & Commander. I felt privileged AF.
Nice!
Sadly I bailed on M&C after the third or fourth book.
It’s a very interesting series. Thanks for sharing it!
You’re welcome! I have more brain vomit coming along.
For everyone parroting neocons talking points because ‘fuck Iran’ you are positioning yourself on the opposite side of the table from Ron Paul:
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/ron-paul-liberty-report/e/66328480?autoplay=true
Tucker Carlson Slams Trump’s Strike on Top Iranian General: ‘Lumbering Toward’ War with Iran
Meh. Killing a really bad guy with a long history of killing Americans and causing chaos is not another endless war and doesn’t unite Iraq against us. That’s just stupid. It will always be Sunni vs. Shiite.
In the podcast they make the case that there are no direct examples tying this guy to operations that lead to American deaths. We’ll see but the “thousands if American deaths” narrative seems more like a trumped up justification rather than a fact.
And when you have Isis on the Sunni Side and now we’ve thoroughly pissed of the Shia side, they may no be unified but I fail to see how we’ve not put ourselves in an even worse position.
I guess I’m a hipster when it comes to this stuff. If you weren’t an OG disgusted by Obama ordering assassinations of both citizens and non-citizens alike via drone with no oversight, then I don’t want to hear your belly-aching about Trump vaporizing a top Iranian military officer.
I hope aren’t accusing me of carrying water for the media. I, like Dr Paul, thought BHO’s foreign policy was a nightmare, just like I think Trump’s is turning out to be.
No. No accusations. Just thought it bared repeating.
Ooh, naked repeating! :-p
I’ve always said I always read and post on this website in the nude.
He ran the Quds. The Quds have been heavily involved/engaged in Iraq since we invaded. There can be no question at all that he is responsible (as the commander) for the deaths of many Americans and many, many more Iraqis.
And so I guess we’re bound to continue this cycle endlessly? Wouldn’t they use this exact justification if they had had Petreus (or insert any other DoD official) killed?
I would expect that our military commanders are being targeted. That’s why their PSDs are there for.
Tit-for-tat leads to an endless cycle.
Disproportionate response does not.
Media cheering the attack? What alternate reality is this from?
Fox News would be my guess.
It’s still an appeal to authority when you use a libertarian authority. Add in the ad Hominem and the straw man and you are one fallacy away from the cycle.
That’s fine but I’m a lot more comfortable using Ron Paul as my appeal to authority than I am some of the people who are carrying water for Trump.
I don’t think knee jerk reactions in either direction are a good idea. The world does in fact contain threats and the fact that the Government lies about them doesn’t mean every war should be fought, but it also does not mean no war should be fought.
I spent the entire 2nd Iraq war mocking Bush for being so stupid that he couldn’t tell a Q from an N. Iran has been engaged in asymmetric war with us for 40 years now. We started everything with Iraq, We created the Taliban to foil Russia. Iran not so much.
I don’t think killing this guy is the magic bullet it is pitched as because as I said this morning I don’t think it takes a special genius to send suicidal teens into markets with bombs, but I’m glad we killed the piece of crap who attacked our embassy and firmly believe that if someone attacks your embassy that is an act of war and should be answered.
I respect the position of skepticism about CIA claims. However, I think in this case they most likely answer is that they are correct.
40 years
woah woah: 30 years, big fella! I tried that general sensibilities thing this morning, and you see what it got me!
1979, was 40 years ago Don, we got old.
worse than that: brain fart
1979 ~ 1980, so ten years until 2000 . . . so broken, so careless!
that’s the part that ain’t working so well any more
Thank you for that even handed answer. I agree with everything except your conclusion. I guess time will tell.
Speaking of bad writing, is there anyone with access to WaPo that can dump the text of this article, entitled ‘Libertarianism is Losing It’s Grip on Conservative Thought. Good.’?
On my phone, so apologies for format issues, but here it goes:
Conservatism and libertarianism have long been locked in a symbiotic embrace. A new essay by libertarian-leaning economist Tyler Cowen suggests that embrace will soon end.
Cowen’s provocative argument is that libertarianism is “hollowed out.” He notes that whether they call it “libertarianism” or “classical liberalism,” people who believe the government generally ought to do little to nothing have little useful to say about modern problems. As a result, “smart people” are developing “synthetic and eclectic views” and abandoning a “just say no” approach to government power. He notes this is especially the case among educated women.
He doesn’t come out and say it baldly, but the essential political problem with this type of libertarianism is that people do think public entities should address public problems. Old-style, “big L” libertarianism rejects this view, contending that any form of government action is inherently unjust and creates more problems than it solves. Few libertarians or classical liberals acknowledge the full import of this position, preferring to take a deus ex machina approach to public policy whereby their preferred solutions (school vouchers, for example) are just and can work while their non-preferred ones (like subsidized health insurance) aren’t and won’t. But the underlying metaphysical assumption — government always bad, private action always good — pervades the thinking of most libertarians and libertarian-influenced people. And this means they are congenitally unable to present plausible answers to challenges that people want addressed.
Cowen’s approach is liberty-friendly but abandons the doctrinaire belief that the exercise of government power is inherently illegitimate, unconstitutional or unproductive. He calls for “State Capacity Libertarianism,” a philosophy that acknowledges government is necessary for the securing of basic rights (something even most big-L libertarians concede) and for the provision of a host of beneficial services. Thus, Cowen is for a big military to combat China, for government public-health programs, for government action to combat climate change (including subsidizing nuclear energy) and for big government infrastructure programs.
I applaud Cowen’s general approach even as I might disagree with him on particulars. But it is not libertarianism in any sense in which the word is used by the movement’s adherents. It has more in common with traditional conservative approaches to public power and is essentially similar to the “One Nation” conservatism advocated by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the “common good capitalism” advanced by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).
These approaches take the essential insight of economic liberalism — free exchange between individuals, democratic self-governance and the rule of law are moral and produce enormous material wealth — and temper it with a sense of the public good. Their specific policies can differ depending upon the specific challenges a nation has. For Johnson, it is the massive gap between Britain’s depressed north and its economically vibrant south. For Rubio, it is the way that global trade with China has hollowed out large sections of U.S. manufacturing, leading to the popular anger that contributed to President Trump’s rise and risking our future national security. The challenges are different, but both leaders start with the premise that democratic governments can legitimately define a problem and then use tax, spending and regulatory policy to try to accomplish a specific, publicly defined goal.
This premise is common sense to most readers but remains anathema to libertarians and their Republican fellow travelers. Encumbered by the belief that these people must be kowtowed to, most Republican officeholders remain unable to voice any significant alternative to progressive visions for health-care policy, climate change or the modern economy’s impulse to value formal education and devalue common labor. That requires saying that government can do some good, and in the GOP, that is the love that dare not speak its name. Those such as Rubio who do speak are uniformly — and often stupidly — castigated as “statists” or even “fascists.”
Cowen’s essay could thus be the thing that moves the GOP’s Overton window. Cowen has impeccable libertarian credentials: He teaches at George Mason University, a bastion of libertarian thinking, and is known as one of the libertarian world’s deepest thinkers. If even he thinks government can and should act to solve problems, then advocates of that view have to stand up and pay attention. That, in turn, lends intellectual respectability to conservatives such as Rubio who are slowly breaking the ice that has frozen conservative thinking for too long.
The holiday season marks the time in the Northern Hemisphere when the sun is farthest from the Earth and daylight is at a premium. Cowen’s essay is thus aptly timed, bringing a ray of sunshine into a long-darkened movement and raising the prospect of more light to come. The hard core will try keep the rest of us in the shadows, but the days will lengthen as more and more conservatives break free from their frozen slumber. Summer is coming, and it’s about time.
I’m unfamiliar with Cowen, but will look into his work. Thank you for the the synopsis!
He writes at Marginal Revolution. Or did. I haven’t followed it in years.
Cowen is wrong.
That was simple.
I, too, want to see fusionism die a horrible death, but I don’t want it replaced by Reason Mag-style ‘liberaltarianism’.
Since the Trumpening, conservatives have been the ones to move away from libertarianism because the Tucker Carlsons of the world don’t like the presumption of free market principles when they get in the way of populist nationalism and Great Nation projects. Very few commentators have made the observation that a significant part of what we are seeing is a wholesale repudiation of Reaganism in the GOP. The free market was where our Venn diagram met. If it’s not that way any longer, I don’t see any reason to maintain the conservatarian pretense.
Yup. I’ll put forward that the Iran issue is an example of this today. Fusionism and cosmo/liberaltarianism are both equally retarded. Neither side cares about hardline libertarian issues like War, they just use it as a political crudel.
I get trying to form alliances on common ground, but there are some people (cough: Pelosi :cough) that allying with on that issue would do more to discredit a principled stand than just saying “You all fucking suck”.
Yeah. Tear up principles, concede to the statists and try to gather some crumbs.
Republican fellow travelers
you are free: free to pray to my sky daddy
pay no attention to that balanced budget malarkey: rules are for little people
* slaps dust from hands *
I now pronounce ye philosopher and pragmatist: you may now kiss the Party’s ass
Pragmatism is the gender-fluid of political philosophy.
I loathe the parties. As long as you note it on my tombstone, I’d be glad to be hung for refusing to join either.
That makes you principled, not pragmatic.
surely
I’m super pragmatic until I’m forced to break bread with suburban Baptists; then it’s turbocharged jerkdom, my worst me.
Speaking of insane things, my son just got tickets to the LP convention.
Keep your gender fluid to yourself!
/GOP
Tl;dr:
1. Identify a respected institution.
2. kill it.
3. gut it.
4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.
and is known as one of the libertarian world’s deepest thinkers
Cause you choose to ignore the actual hard line libertarians?
Cowen is usually pretty good. This kind of surprised me.
Cowen always struck me as a utilitarian libertarian, rather than a principled one.
See my take below. I’m not familiar enough with him to have had this view, but that is exactly what this sounds like. Only it overlooks that you the government has to actually improve things to support what it does from a utilitarian standpoint.
actually improve things
the budget, right? we’re talking about the budget?!?
* small furious happy claps *
To further explain:
Saying “Tyler Cowan is a paragon of libertarian thought, and so if even he says we need government, then you know the libertarians have lost the plot when it comes to government power”, is akin to saying: “Obama is a paragon of Progressive thought, and if even he says the market is better at many things, just goes to show that AOC is wrong about needing to nationalize the economy”.
He calls for “State Capacity Libertarianism,” a philosophy that acknowledges government is necessary for the securing of basic rights (something even most big-L libertarians concede) and for the provision of a host of beneficial services. Thus, Cowen is for a big military to combat China, for government public-health programs, for government action to combat climate change (including subsidizing nuclear energy) and for big government infrastructure programs.
Perhaps the prior question to be answered before we discuss “state capacity” is “state capability”. As in, is the state capable of providing solutions to these problems. Libertarianism, to me, has always had two foundations – moral and practical. He seems to be jettisoning the moral foundation, but that doesn’t do anything to solve the practical problem, namely, that government isn’t very good at solving societal problems.
“smart people” are developing “synthetic and eclectic views”
They sure sound a lot like what lefties, progressive, non-classical liberals, etc. have been proposing for years, with perhaps a few variations (nuclear power). IOW, how smart are these people, and synthetic and eclectic are their views, really? Obviously, I haven’t read his piece, but I puzzle over how what sounds like support for al arge expansion of government is “liberty-friendly”.
Mojeaux, I had a chance to read this. I like it.
I think my sister had the same desk.
Thanks!
My personal aesthetic is not that frilly, but it was what I had and it did the job. My personal offkce aesthetic is vintage Steelcase. Mine was this color before I painted it black (did a damned good job too because you can’t tell it was ever not black).
Anyway, that’s my sewing desk. The one I use to work is actually a massive triangle of plywood I mounted on the wall in a corner with carriage bolts and heavy-duty braces, then covered with wood-look Contac paper. When we move into a rental, I’m going to mount it on galvanized pipes. I love it.
My personal offkce aesthetic is vintage Steelcase
We used one of those for a computer desk at my parents’ old place. They’re solid.
Here I am – finally! – after the rest of my work day, a trip to the grocery, and a late dinner. The thread is long dead, but if nothing else, I want to “think out loud” about what you’ve said.
I’m trying to “deprogram” myself from the dogma of the cult you’ve described, and what you’ve written so far is helping tremendously. For me, the issue is not so much about making a living with my writing, since my boss has forbidden me from leaving or retiring from my day job before he does. (Something still seems not quite right about that…) I just want to create something unique and say something worth saying.
I bristle at the idea of writing to a “formula,” and I find it maddening that people still want to put stories – and styles of music and visual art – into boxes. “It seems more like historical fiction masquerading as romance, which is not my preference as a reader.” Why the hell do people limit themselves this way – and seek to limit others? When our band was active, people always asked, “What style of music do you play?” We took to describing what we did as “bad attitude folk and roll.” A good song is a good song whether it’s folk, rock, country, blues, polka or opera. A good story is a good story whether it’s romance, fantasy, science fiction (or “speculative fiction,”) Western, horror, or so-called “literary fiction.”
The hardest part for me about letting go of the traditional publishing dogma is the idea that acceptance by those “gatekeepers” is somehow validation of the quality of your writing. I’ve read enough dreadful commercially-published books that I should know better. I appreciate what you said above about the difficulty of finding helpful critiques of one’s work, which is why I’m so grateful for the feedback you and UCS have so generously offered to what little I’ve written so far. When it comes from people whose writing I admire and enjoy, it really means something. What I care most about is getting my ideas put into coherent words and figuring out how to keep getting better at it.
I was hoping I’d come to a brilliant conclusion or, failing that, at least make a salient point, but I’m pretty sure I’m just rambling. Maybe that’s a sign that it’s time to get to the current thread and resume my usual shitposting.
Thanks again, Moje! Can’t wait for the next installment!