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. . . This is weird. Very weird. I like it!
--S. Skelly
Always a day late & a dime short.
--(attrib) Sharon Skelly, 10 July 96
I'm practicing restraint here. Others will not be so kind. I'm looking forward to it. We haven't had a good twit-bashing in a long time.
--Sharon Skelly, 03 April 1996
I've been known to be stupid; I've been known to be a fool but I rarely do both simultaneously & certainly not in front of Ghod & everybody. Trust me when I tell you that she's as Avenir as ever. Says he loves me for my mind. I'd like to know where he found it; it's been missing for years. The problems in our schools started long before these kids ever walked into a classroom. It started at home when people decided that disciplining their children was too much trouble & that having rules, etc. was damaging to the little darlings' psyches. I did student teaching in a large high school here several years ago & I learned two things: 1) there isn't enough money to get me to teach school; 2) Johnny can't read because Johnny hasn't ever learned to sit down & shut up & *listen*.
You can't lea rn anything with your mouth open. While raising our children I was often amazed at other parents' attitudes toward child-rearing. Now that their children are grown, they're wondering what they did wrong. I'd tell them but they wouldn't understand & it's too late now. My family tree must have been used for firewood. Speaking from such in what seems like 100 years ago, keep that door open, mom!!!! Ptrouble & her bro were like that w/ me & they have turned out to be good, decent people which is a good thing. The world needs more of them, IMHO. OTOH, you may, a few years down the road, find yourself saying, "Y'know there really are some things your mom really doesn't want to know." When I returned to finish my BA in the 80s, after I'd been back in school a few weeks, I stopped by my advisor's office one day to chat & I asked, "Did college get easier while I was on my 18-year spring break or did I get smarter?" My advisor, an older prof & a very brilliant man indeed, answered: "It's a combination of both; you've obviously kept reading & learning despite not being in school unlike a lot of people & we've had to lower our standards because high schools haven't been
turning out the sa me caliber of graduates they did when you were there." I, of course, was appalled. This the upshot of our educational system going straight to hell. I only have a nodding acquaintance with normal. And I intend to keep it that way. I hate normal. It's boring. <G> I, too, have had that problem. I think it's part of being a woman of our era. Even now, I find myself bowing to others needs/wants. And it galls me to an extent that I'm expected to put up with certain garbage without saying a word or reacting, while the person who has caused the problems gets away with this crap with nary a word from anyone. That offends my sense of justice greatly. I'm not certain if I'm saying this right but honor for me is that I live my life in such a way that I remain true to my principles & values & can look at myself in the mirror & be glad to see the person there.
It's not always easy & I'm not always glad to see me but do I try & I pray very hard that I never quit trying. Does this make sense? Gotta run. The shrink needs some laughs. It's commonly said that the military lives hand-to-mouth. Well.... it's hard to live that way when your arm's too short to reach your plate. I like you. You have anarchy in your soul. First rule of being a child, if you did it.. destroy all evidence. Second rule of being a child, if you can't destroy the evidence blame it on the nearest availible sibling/pet/imaginary friend. The past is a bucket of ashes! Let it be known right here, right now that I am quite proud of my up-bringing in that I have been granted the unique view that everyone has the right to suffer the 'rights' of marriage. Be they man and woman saying 'I do' or matched sets of males or females. My Mom and Dad taught me to be tolerant of everyone no matter what race, creed, color, religion, or sexuality.
I went to a college with a small but loud gay minority that made it clear what they wanted out of life was simply to be accepted and in cases of commited partnerships given the same respect as a normal married couple by the law. Nothing more nothing less, the Vermont legislature and Supreme Court have made the first baby steps in assuring this respect. With hope and no doubt further legal action this infant that is assuring the eventual guarantee of rights for 'married' homosexuals will take
off like a t ypical toddler (Hell bent and aiming for the door to front yard freedom). Lotsa volunteers who want to rescue me as it were; none who are worth the gunpowder to blow 'em away. <sigh> My history teacher once told my mother that I was a brilliant homicidal maniac... too bad I hate people too much to be bothered with actually killing them. Don't get me wrong, I love kids... especially with a decent chardonnay. Anyone who properly characterizes the agony of a blankie in the wash is already a very wise man. :) Return to Quotations Files Index
A child asks his father, "What is ethics?" The father answers: "A man pays for something in my store with a $20. He thinks he's given me a $10. Ethics is should I or should I not tell my partner." Whenever there's an earthquake, I put on my shoes. By that time, it's over. Earthquakes are more fun than tornadoes. My kids would always get mad when I guessed the mystery, the whodunit, before the show was over. It's nice to have a talent. I never pay to enter contests, to buy publications where my name or stuff is included. If they charge a fee, forget it. [...] I'll wait until someone agrees to publish my work without my having to kick in. If you need to see your name in print badly enough, write yourself a letter. Confession stories used to be: Sin, Suffer and Repent, even if you didn't do anything wrong. I have a reputation of being a nice lady except according to some who don't think so. First you have to dream the dream, reality comes later. They say to write about people who are larger than life, and yet there are writers who write about ordinary people with all their details and do a marvelous job, Barbara Pym, for one. Maybe by the smallness of her characters, they become special. Maybe it's the middle of the road dullness you have to watch out for. There are no rules. Every time you come up with one, someone will defy it with a bestseller. I like my joke: There are three rules to great writing, but no one knows what they
are. Return to Quotations Files Index
I've never followed or look to the crowd to tell me what I want, I just spend a lot of time listening to the inner child and mourning the fact that, choice-wise, stores and manufacturers are SO boring! Unless we've somewhere bumped into each other and don't know it. Ever been to the Northwest Territories or Penticton, BC?
Either it's just my writing style that calls to you -- or we were puppies together at some life. Oh, great. Now I'm just lint on his sleeve of life. (Warning: The Surgeon General demands that this note be placed before the following passage. Use of these words and the fact that they brought to mind "the dickhead who will remain unnamed" are in no way a testament that he actually resembles a writer of genius -- although he may resemble the monkey.) I must confess I never look at to/from names at all but just the soul of the person scrolling on the page. One of my sisters lives in Edmonton and, a couple of years ago, saw that an all-women-run-all-women-author store was opening near her. Now these are women who should be thumped -- militant feminists without a clue. They were SO obsessed with their imperative of promoting women and their works but were SO ill-informed. They reminded her that it was a woman authors only shop when she asked about George Eliot, Andre Norton, AND James Tiptree, Jr.! (I always find the items nominated for
the SF Gender Bender award named for the award most intriguing.) In fact, when she asked about JTJ they were abusive! Return to Quotations Files Index
First rule of engagement: Never disagree with an armed spousal unit.
Second rule of engagement: If you're right, apologize immediately.
Third rule of engagement: If you're wrong, apologize immediately.
Fourth rule of engagement: Even if you're right, you're wrong.
Fifth rule of engagement: Flowers are an excellent aphrodisiac. Candy works almost as well.
Sixth rule of engagement: "We'll discuss it in the morning" means that the safest place to be in the morning is anywhere else. Even Phylthydelphia or New Jersey will do under these conditions. When I was on GEnie, someone asked me if I was a writing "wannabe". I replied that I wasn't; that I was a "gonnabe". I added that there's a big difference between being unpublished and being pre-published and I'm the latter. Has something to do with attitude, y'see ... But it's easy to hate. Anyone can do that. Hell, even I can hate and I do hate some things; bigotry is real high on the list, right up there with treason and studied ignorance. It takes effort to learn about other people, to see the samenesses with the same intensity as the differences. It takes effort to work toward that "More Perfect Union" through understanding and cooperation. It takes effort to overcome the fear of the unknown and accept that anything that is different isn't, by
necessity, bad or evil.
It takes effort, moral strength and intestinal fortitude to embrace the notion of One World, One Race - the Human Race, and to accept that, despite outward appearances, we are more alike than we are different. The members of those groups - the anti-government militants and the hate-mongers - have none of those characteristics. Instead they hide, cowering behind their fear and shaking their fist in desperate defiance against anything that might intrude on any comfort their terrified bravado
may bring the m.
I pity them ... but not so much as to find common cause with them. They are vermin and deserve no better end than to be treated as such. I like free. I can almost afford it. Coffee is never allowed to age like that here. Every drop is precious, especially for me now that I have a traumatic circulatory disorder; there's blood in there rather than the caffotine that's supposed to be wandering through all them little pipes and pumps and aerators and stuff. Ahhh, I love trying to discuss things intelligently through a medication-induced haze ... Heh, we had a guy at the college who had spent some time as a "guest" at one of the local psych hospitals. He got into a discussion with another person at work one day who, in the course of the disagreement, said, "You're crazy!".
The guys smiled and answered, "I've got a piece of paper that says I'm sane. Do you?" Y'know what I like about One Real Truths? They're like standards; there are so many to choose from. Um, these the same fear mongers who have declared just about everything unsafe to eat/drink/breath/drive/fly/do? I love them; they are so paranoid, they make me look good. <G> We were once a nation who dared. Heck, we were a *race* who dared. We sent ships into the unknown. We explored. We discovered. Now we can't even cross the sidewalk without someone throwing a fit. Or a bullet. Or a fire bomb. You're a writer. We learn by our mistakes so the next one is even more spectacular than the last. Words are the tools of our trade, but they are our toys as well ... only some can't see the fun element in them. Such a pity. One of the things that keeps me away from drinking again is remembering how much I *don't* remember ... *sigh* ... heck of a cure for alcoholism. I'm convinced that this universe is still in Beta test. Very early in the Beta stages. Very very early. And someday, some frustrated developer is going to hit RESET. Perish the thought! Perish it good and proper. Then go out and kill it 'til it's most thoroughly dead! Hmmm, there I go again, over-answering ... But I am a savage. I wear a thin and ill-fitting cloak we call 'civilization' but I am still a savage. I don't beat people to death with a club. I use my legal department. I don't have a tribal council, I have a board of directors. And I don't have warriors, I have a marketting division. But at the heart, I am still a savage. The only difference between you and me is that I at least admit it. Hmmm, spiritual placebos. I wonder if that could be used as a working definition of "religion"? Welllll, the options are somewhat limited. It's either the machine or total stark raving sanity. Someone once told me that "normal" was the peak of the bell curve. I asked him who defined the parameters for the curve. He said it was a statistical average. Again, I asked as defined by whom. He kinda thought then said I was out toward one edge of it. To which I replied, "Yea, and I bet I have more fun than you do too." There is no absolute, undeniable proof that any of us are who we say we are, or even exist. Birth records can be falsified, as can anything else committed to either paper or computer.
Who am I? I am an entity who appears in this and other echoes. An artifact, if you will. I claim that I may be identified as Michael Tauson, but that claim is based on hearsay and documents which may or may not be real. While there exists evidence that there is another entity who also claims to be identified as Michael Tauson (and, further claims to have been on the Danish Olympic Tennis Team), the likelihood of coming in contact with that entity is remote so this identification is
sufficient.
Who am I? Who knows? There is any number of ways that this exchange could be misinterpreted, and I think I managed all of them. I think I need to review my thinker-toy's operating parameters again. *sigh* He (Clinton) is a politician, therefore is guilty. Innocence and politics are mutually exclusive, which is a rather neat convenience since it provides mucho novel-fodder. This is an important one. Sadly, some pilots have absolutely no respect for the ground and have a go at bashing into it. Most of the time, they only get one chance. Their last. Three processors, two motherboards, three OSs (not including Betas), two hard drives, a case & power supply, a couple of squeaks with considering self-termination, no progress on Hornet, some progress on writing a heavily softened porn which I'm using as a vehicle to tell about my past, too much self-realization, too little self-belief . . . I guess that tells it all. No, on reflection, it barely marks the dust on the surface, but to say more would take more than the faithful and patient
Moderaptorial Entities would be willing to tolerate. I do not like cardboard. I do not like cutout characters and cutout settings and neat 40-minute solutions to life's pesky little problems. One of the problems I'm having in the restructure of the Hornet universe is that I know that there will be some problems that will never be satisfactorily resolved, but life's like that. Not everything has a solution much as we may try. In fact, if we step away from it a bit and look at it as a system, life is darned messy with unsolved problems laying
strewn over the landscape in total disregard to any system of order. There is something terribly wrong when the only viable solution to a problem involves the sustained use of high explosives. We as civilized races should be able to do better than to resolve our differences by blowing each other up. I am appaled by the fact that history will remember these wars, not by who waged peace and ended them, but by who started and waged them. The ones who brought peace are less significant for some reason than those on whose hands is the blood of millions. The emperor had a statue raised for me as the one who defeated the Empire's enemies. I ordered it destroyed. If I am to be remembered, I want it to be for stopping a war by refusing to wage it. In my mind, Haelud will be my greatest victory. The second most dangerous thing you can do in space is think. The most dangerous is not think. Life though ... that's a game of sorts where the rules change randomly and no one tells anyone what they are anyway. And the people who think they have figured it all out only had a clue at that point in time since when there have been any number of changes. It's generally unfair but at least it's uniformly unfair which sort of levels the playing ground some. History isn't a straight line. It's a tapestry in many dimensions with each individual thread seeming insignificant against the whole until one realizes that without that thread that whole would be changed forever. Nor is it dry dates and events. Behind each event are a lot of other ones that lead up to it and there are people making decisions based on those other events and so on back to first causes. I mean, the Normans weren't just sitting around one day in 1066 when one said, "Hey,
I'm bored. Let's go invade England," and everyone else thought it was a pretty nifty idea. (Good grief, what if that's how it really did happen?) In science fiction, we have the joy of creating those histories with all the little wiggles and threads we need to fulfill the story with some degree of believability. Non-fiction is slightly different. I have a history that is there to be ferreted out and the only place I can show some creativity is in presentation, so long as I stick to the facts. Bringing them to life is a valid way of being creativity (sic) and I think my time in science fiction may be of value there. Having a life as a writer and having a life are two separate and distinct things. Having a life as a writer means odd hours, copious amounts of caffotine and/or alcohol, the occasional partaking of recreational drugs if one so partakes, endless frustration and sometimes a good healthy primordial scream ... all for THE word that makes the rest somehow make sense. Not the rest of the words in a work or a chapter or a paragraph. Not even the words in a sentence bring such agony, unless it's a
rather short one. Instead it's the words in a simple phrase over which one's been agonizing for some measurable period of time. That period of time can be estimated by counting the circles under one's eyes (which, incidentally, aren't really circles after all), dividing by two to get the number of circles (which still aren't circles) under one eye then multiplying by ten to get an approximation of the age in which one last saw daylight. Early Carboniferous is usually about right. Life is odd at times. The rest of the time, it's totally inexplicable. I'm too busy trying to avoid reality to come up with anything quotable. Life is a risk from that first spark of conception until you’re well and truly dead and gone. Avoiding risk – that n+1 situation – is impossible anywhere during that time. My daughter is dying and I’ll lose her before she’s 40 so she understands the consequences of life’s risks one heck of a lot more than most others. She is also the most courageous person I know including every combat vet I have ever met, none of whom is even a pimple on her butt. This including a Marine Sgt Major with a CMH
who agrees with me. But it doesn’t take that level of courage to face the fact that life is uncertain and we have to pick and choose the risks we take voluntarily. Those who go into space or work around nuclear power plants or race cars or drive in LA, NYC or the middle of Montana accept the risks. The rest of us? Who are we to question them? Some of us created the toys the current generations are congratulating us for being able to use. I love telling the kids who think they're all "3|337" 'cuz they can plug boards into another board what it is to really build a computer - bare boards and components - then doing a seabag full of troubleshooting to get them to work. And repairing rather than replacing floppy drives (full-height, 5-1/4" & mostly Tandons). And fat fingering in via front panel switches machine code that one's
assembling on the fly. And living inside 4k RAM. Or less. (My first homebuilt had 256 bytes of RAM which was later upgraded to a whole 1k.) And writing one's own drivers & boot loaders. Etc.
And if you look deep inside Windoze, Mac OS, Linux et al, you'll find our fingerprints. :-) Seriously, life is a disordered string of ironies, paradoxes and contradictions all strung together. One of the architects of this mess was Murphy and he was roaring drunk at the time. (Schrodinger was there too but he was being all catty about it.) As I said before, it's unfair but it's equally unfair which levels the playing field. Return to Quotations Files Index
The best way is to read it out loud. If you like the sound of it, and I don't mean that one sentence in the middle, but the whole thing, then it's good. As for waiting for someone to publish it, there are so many variables involved in publishing something that it's not really a good measure of something's worth. They almost *never* do house-to-house searches for manuscripts, so get them into the mail! For reasons known but to Ctuhla (sic), we seem to be a particularly self-doubting group. It might be because of this that we choose this profession. After all, think of how you would feel as a neurosurgeon with that much self-doubt? Not a pretty sight. Plots are cheap, the ability to execute them isn't. Work on that ability. Social casting appears to be part of our genetic makeup, for reasons known but to God.... Hey, we're ALL struggling here, and it really doesn't help when you have someone walking beside you, kicking you in the shins every time you try to take a step. Being ignorant isn't your fault. Staying ignorant is. As for Mensa itself, there was some good conversation, but even more people who had managed to accomplish ZILCH in too many years of life and thought the organization was a last-ditch chance at being considered more worthwhile than your average grape pit. My feeling on this is that it starts from a flawed premise; i.e. that humans are rational beings. There is ample evidence that they are not, in HUGE numbers, so that any reference to "flight from reason" is invalid. You can't leave a place you never lived. Yup. Then again, I'm talking about normal people, not those who grow up to dream of knights and horses and space ships and write stories they make up out of their own heads and all.... I once knew a guy who would bait people, then when they rise to the bait he wailed about being attacked. He did this to put himself into what he thought was a superior moral position. It was really pretty childish, and most people grew tired of him pretty quickly. The saddest part was that he finally died, alone, in a little house with a makeshift fence he'd put together using whatever material he could find. I asked him once why he did that, and he told me, "I have to do it, to protect
myself from my enemies." The only enemies he had were those he created, and then NURTURED, but I guess that doesn't matter, huh? I remember almost selling a story like that. The editor said that he'd buy it if I cut a thousand words. That was ONE FOURTH of the story. I gnarled and gnashed, swore (repeatedly) and then cut the pages. As you say, 3k in print beats 4k in the filing cabinet.... I like to tell people that I write because I can think of no other possible career that offers so little money for so much pain and degradation. I did the usual rookie stuff like sending mss to Playboy and the Atlantic, although in retrospect I had as much chance of selling them as a fireplug in a dog kennel has of staying dry. I'm convinced that ANYONE who is impressed with computer technology has never spent any serious time with one, and certainly has never tried to work on one. Crimeny, if people had as much trouble with cars as they have with computers there would be rioting in the streets. As it is, most just accept the idea that if it's a computer, you're going to have problems with it. I think that was one of Gates' most startling accomplishments. He managed to convince people that it's okay if something
doesn't work just right, out of the box. Amazing. I heard that Xerox and Hammond were thinking of merging. They were planning to make reproductive organs.... When people ask me why I write, my standard answer is, "Lack of better sense." Fortunately, nobody ever said it HAD to make sense. Back when I was starting to try to get published, I asked an old writer about stuff like that. He told me, "If you come up with a new and interesting way to off someone, some whacko out there is probably going to try it, but don't let that bother you." I look at the teenagers around me and wonder if I was ever that completely confident in my own ignorance.... I don't remember ever doing that, but I'm sure it does. Things are SO much clearer when you don't have a clue what's really going on. I realize that part of the reason that I started writing was because I was so inept at expressing myself with the spoken word. Okay, okay, I could have just shut up and went away, but what fun would that be? ;-) Welcome to the wonderful world of publishing, where the apparent defies logic on a regular basis. A friend of mine sent in a story in which a hole opened in a farmer's field and demons crawled up out of hell and attacked the local town, and it was rejected because the editor, "Don't like stories about farmers." In other words, don't be surprised at ANYTHING that happens when you send in a story, because it probably will. I had a mentor way back who did that for me. I called it the "2x4" approach to critiquing. I'd do something stupid, and he'd whip out his trusty verbal 2x4 and whack me with it. He couldn't always tell me the literary term for what I'd done, but he made it amazingly clear that it was the wrong thing to do. I went to a local writers group that does critiquing, and they had a rule that you could only say nice things about the stuff other people read. I was amazed. How in the HELL do you get better by hearing what you're doing RIGHT???? I know people like that. No matter how much proof you shove up their nose, they won't see it either. That's a bit beyond scary for me. I have some pretty strong opinions, but none of them are set in concrete. It's too expensive to have to keep pouring, y'know? Yep. As the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay insane....;-) I think there will always be pockets of people out there who are willing to think. The problem is that they're going to be busy hiding from the rest of humanity.... We should make the effort to learn more than the basics. I have several books on the subject of the writing business alongside the books on writing technique. One of the biggest problems I have with writing is that I spent a LOT of years learning how to do it, to the exclusion of sales techniques, etc. Knowing how to write the best book in the world is great, but you also need to know how to sell it before it does you any good. Sigh. The illumination of hindsight, eh? Distribution has always been the bugaboo of the publishing industry. When people ask me why I became a writer, my usual response is, "Lack of better sense." Lately, I've changed that. I now tell them that I know of no other occupation where I can receive so much abuse and disrespect for so little money. Well, I guess I'm an optimist, then. I choose to see the cup as half full, thereby putting off the next trip to the coffee pot. . . . Some of the stuff I used to do would kill an intelligent person.... I've met the type. You get the real sense that you couldn't open their minds with a crow-bar, yet you still have the strong desire to try....<G>: Someone from Australia once looked at the situation in the U.S. and commented, "Thank God we got the criminals instead of the Puritans." I know what he was talking about.... As for hate, people seem to be able to find a reason for that no matter what their upbringing, it's just more directed when they're taught from day one. For a while in the 80's the adage was, "Write a Big Sexy Book, and make a million bux!" With everyone trying to copy Jackie Collins, et. al., and most doing a poor job of it. It's like the people who try to copy Tom Clancy because his books do so well. They don't realize that there already IS a Tom Clancy, and that the market for his books is being met. They need to write their own books, and let Tom worry about his. I think it's like riding a bicycle; if you do it long enough, eventually you're going to fall off. Remember the "bad old days" of FIDO when the curse used often was, "May you have to read and answer your mail on-line?" Well, guess what. I never did consider FIDO to be all that bad, I never got the smallest fraction of mail wanting to sell me something I had absolutely no use for, nor interest in, and even enjoyed watching the ocassional twit-roasting. Now, with this "new, improved" version, I'm finding it neither. I distinctly remember posting a note to someone in Australia and getting an
answer back in two days, which at the time was remarkable. Now, I can get that same respose in the same day, along with twenty-five offers to sell me prescription drugs with no prescription.... Like, HELLO? DEA? right. Sign me up. Oh well, progress marches on, right? (I never was really into recreational pharmaceuticals.)
Well, enough waxing nostalgic. We deal with what we have, rather than with what we wish, right? People ask why I don't watch much television, and I tell them that my t.v. isn't working right. They ask what's wrong with it. I shrug, say, "I don't know. I turn the brightness up all the way and it's still stupid."
Some of them get it. For a long time, I've seen you looking for outside validation. You send things across the globe looking for the magic critique that's going to make your stuff irresistable. Well, I hate the be the one to break it to you, but that's not going to happen. All the workshops, etc. are really of marginal use, at best. If you hear the same thing over and over, it's worth looking at, but other than that, it's useless. The reason for that is the nature of the beast. People go to a workshop full of
good intentions. They are there to "help" their fellow writers achieve what they're after themselves. That means finding something wrong that the other writer can fix. The problem is that they go in with a "we gotta fix this" attitude. They often feel they HAVE to find something wrong with the writing, or they're not contributing. In addition, there are those who actually go to workshops to judge where they are in relation to others writing in the field. You walk into one of those with something
that sparkles, you're going to get smacked. You are competition to those people. That's also the nature of the beast. Also, I've seen it where someone goes in with some piece of drek that they insist is the second coming of the great American Novel, and if you offer honest critique, they're going to hate you. They also remember you when you do that to them.
ANYway, the response from that editor, and the lack of response from agents, DOES help me. It tells me that we're from different worlds, and that I'm not going to find an ally in their world. They believe that it's their way or the highway. I can no longer charm readers the way I did readers in the past (I'm talking about readers of fifteen years ago and before, including various agents and editors who gave me "almost there" encouragement way back when, and I know I've improved in my view
since then.) I still have a FEW people who come back and say I have talent, but for the most part I don't. The Universe is obviously wondering just how many brickbats have to fall on me before I just plain shut up and stop sending stuff out. Maybe next time I'll get a baby grand piano like in the cartoons--and that would be nice, as mine is getting out of tune. . . .
I've got a better idea. First, take everything you've even heard at a workshop, con, whatever, and place them carefully in the circular file. Next, hand the nit-pickers a strip of fly-paper and sit them in a corner somewhere. Now, sit down, look deep inside your guts, and write the damned book. Once you write it, go through it ONCE to fix typo's etc., then LEAVE IT ALONE. Tell people to take their cudda, wudda, AND shudda and shove them into a dark place, and just send it out. Don't try to
make friends with the editors or agents or whoever, just send the damned thing out. When it's out there, start the next one. When it comes back, check it over for stains, etc. and then send it out again. Repeat until you've sent it to everyone who publishes anything close. By the time you're through all the available places, the second one should be ready to go. Start sending it, while you start the next one. If an editor sends a note saying, "well, I love it, except that we don't publish books
with a redhaired heroine" you make a note of that eidtor's name and send it to the next one on the list. Life is too short to spend it trying to satisfy that kind of idiot. You're going to get rejected. That's part of the process. That doesn't mean you're a worthless piece of human flesh, it means that you hit an editor who was in a snit for whatever reason. Accept that, and move on. The real bottom line here (and I HATE that term) is that you are a producer of something THEY need. If they
could write, they would be. You've got something they need. Don't ever let them convince you that you need them more than they need you.
You say there are thousands of writers out there, sending in two books a day each? You're probably right. Of those thousands, a miniscule percentage can actually start a sentence and get to the end of it without a major grammatical error or two. As for telling a story, they just flat can't do it.
Basically, what I'm telling you is to start believing in yourself. Forget the workshops, etc. and just put yourself out there. You KNOW you can write, you also know that not everyone is going to like your style or what you write about. So what? Nobody is going to like everyone. Write it, shove it out the door and move on. Budget your mail funds or whatever. Plan on getting rejected. If it's worthwhile, someone will buy it. If it's not, put that one in the drawer and keep sending the next one.
After a couple of years, take the first one out of the drawer and start sending it again. Editors have a life span at any current job of about eighteen months. When you send it in again, there's an excellent chance that the first reader who initially rejected it moved back into the cardboard box in the back of an alley they came from, and you'll get a new set of eyes on it. I wish it wasn't that way, but it is. The important thing here is that you HAVE to believe in yourself. When you do sell a
book, you're going to have people coming up to you to tell you what was wrong with it. Remember to smile politely and nod.
Also, have you ever seen someone walk into a party with a "please like me" attitude? What was your reaction to them? Think about it.
Sorry if this sounds snarky, but I think you need to hear it right now. You know how to write, you know how to structure a story, so just do it. Return to Quotations Files Index
It annoys me a great deal when "Indian" is applied to people who aren't from India. It's confusing. I'd prefer to use names like Seminole, Miccasukee, Nihtinat, etc. I also have no problem with natives of America calling themselves Native Americans.
What bugs me is people who would exclude me from that category. My parents went to a great deal of trouble to assure that I'd be a Native American, as they are Adopted Americans, which they became largely because they did not want to be French or Belgian. My brother Michel died for this country in 1944, and my parents were at home here when they died. Sure, there's a lot wrong with this country -- but there's a lot more right with it then anywhere else, and I'm proud of my birth.
When you get sick of rereading it, it's finished. I believe the custom was started by Marie Antoinette, who had a morbid fear of privy beasts. As a child, she'd misunderstood the prediction of a psychic aunt, and always believed she was destined to lose her end in the head. Which is why it's particularly incumbent on us, the literati -- as arbitors of correct usage -- to vociferate against this bastardization of language as stridently as possible, lest we become mired in the muck of ValleySpeak. If I like a dirty book, it's erotica. If I don't like it, it's smut.
In other words, erotica strives to be art. Intentional smut has no such pretension, and accidental smut is erotica that doesn't make it. However, since "art" is as difficult to define as "poetry," we're pretty much left with an "I'll know it when I see it" test, the verdict of which will vary with the individual.
Smut is in the eye of the beholder. I just recently realized that communications technology has caught up with 1912. :-)
When I was a teenager gabbing on the phone in the fifties, when the telephone-monopolizing kid was a sitcom staple, my mother used to "Tsk, tsk" at me and exclaim at how sad it was that modern youth were deprived of romance. Then she'd explain how, when she was young and there were two mail deliveries a day, she'd get up in the morning and write a billet doux to her boyfriend, which she mailed on her way to school. He'd be doing the same, and at noon she'd receive his letter and read it
dreamily all thro ugh lunch, and write an answer and mail it enroute to school. Then, when she got home from school, his reply to her morning's letter would be waiting. By the time she got married, she had a treasured suitcaseful of love letters.
I always mourned the degradation of mail service.
But now I wake up in the morning, dash off a message to my sweetie, and send it off on internet. At lunch, we both read and reply to each other's messages, and read those before dinner. It's wonderful. In general, writing is writing, and if excellence doesn't always shine, incompetance always stinks, which is the important thing. The hook needn't be a grapnel if a whiff of bait will suffice. [Then why do you let so many others send hate mail.]
Mostly because I see it as an honest response to your butt-headedness. If you come into a conference dedicated to a reverence for the written word singing the praises of illiteracy, you must expect some flak. I'm not crazy about it [what happened to her] myself, but you get used to hanging if you hang long enough. Personally, I think the unwritten tyranny of bigenderism will be the last frontier of civil rights. It's against the law to discriminate on the basis of gender -- provided everyone stays within the bounds of the gender society thinks zie [sic] should have. Although there's no longer an actual law against it, I'm still prohibited from functioning in today's world in a skirt, high heels, lipstick and a beard as effectively as if there was. I call that opression. Never accept an accusation like that without earning it. Truth may be stranger than fiction... but it's got lousy denouments. Instant electronic communications allows the media to keep our leaders under much closer scrutiny than was ever possible before, and accordingly we hold them to much higher standards. Big Brother is not just the gummint, he is the people too. I can't figure out how they manage it, but some of 'em seem to take advantage of flaws in Netscape's URL-parsing routines. You click on one site, and get connected to a similarly-named porn site -- or maybe they're actually screwing with ISP's nameservers; altering the IP of a popular search engine, say, to that of a sex site.
It's annoying, especially since the sleazemerchants who do this kind of thing never have the tasteful sort of pornography that I like; I hate anything with depictions of males, or females with breasts bigger than mine... Sure. But it's best to make a stand only when one is right. When the incorrectness of one's position is demonstrated to one, the wiser path is to change position. Nowadays I celebrate Halloween the same way I celebrate every day: by being still alive at the end of it. Fortunately, between MediCare, MedicAid, and Catholic Health Services, I'm getting hormones, and my brain is functioning properly for the first time since I was twelve -- I can't begin to tell you how wonderful that is; there's absolutely nothing in human experience to compare it to.
Mostly I'm just grateful to be diagnosed at last. The only reason I survived this long is that the last time I attempted suicide I paralyzed myself, which made me incapable of further attempts. Still, after my disaster with Jackie, I'd have either found some way of finishing the job or else I'd have spontaneously combusted if Dr. Simmonds hadn't caught me. Some writers don't think in terms of word play... they lack the pundamentals. The real earth's problems are insoluble because they comprise an infinite number of sub-problems. But in fiction, not only are the problems finite, but as author you can pick and choose which of them you want to deal with... so naturally you just focus on those problem areas you can put together neat solutions for. My dad often cried when he read my stories . . . because I was wasting my life. The Bible is writing. It's the quintessence of writing. It's the most successful and influential literary endeavor in history. Its stories, images, and lessons imbue every aspect of Western life, and influence Eastern thought as well in many ways. The English language was stabilized from an assembly of related dialects by the King James version of the Bible, and owes words as diverse as simony or samson, jezebel or jorum. We speak of Goliaths, and Samsons, and Doubting Thomases.
It's been the i nspiration for countless books, plays, movies, and poems. It's probably impossible to be a writer in our society without understanding the Bible, and it's certain that such an understanding makes anyone a better writer. There are right and wrong way to say things in English, but the distinctions between them are subtle and can not be learned in classrooms, but in the boundless horizons of endless reading. When I come across something a writer does that I don't understand, appreciate, or like, I'm arrogant enough to simply assume that they've done it wrong and let it go at that. But there's a handful of folks like Faulkner or Joyce whose stuff -- when I can understand what they're doing -- is so utterly and mind-bogglingly right that I can no longer make that assumption, and have no option but to flog myself with my own inadequacy until I can figure out what I'm missing.
Remember: allegory is in the eye of the alligator. But those are all MOVIES! I have no trouble with the most fantastic movies or teevee shows -- I just have trouble with excessive violence. But -- at least for me -- the experience of a movie and that of literature is quite different. I spectate at movies, but I participate in literature. When inspiration comes, it's like a cool breeze on a summer day. It's nice, but don't give yourself heat stroke waiting in the sun for it. Find some shade and get to work. Return to Quotations Files Index
Surf to: Writing Echo Quotation File Part VI: (Weems - Wrede)
--Sharon Skelly, 03 April 1996
--Sharon Skelly, 22 October 1996
--Sharon Skelley, 29 October 1996
--Sharon Skelly, 30 November 1996
--Sharon Skelly, 30 November 1996
--(attrib) Sharon Skelly
--Sharon Skelly, 30 Aug 2000
--Sharon Skelly, 08 Sep 2000
--Sharon Skelly, Sep 2000
--Sharon Skelly, 18 Sep 2000
--Sharon Skelly, 18 Sep 2000
--Sharon Skelly, 18 Oct 2000
--Kate (Moira) Skelly, 11 Nov 2000
--Sharon Skelly, 23 Nov 2000
--Kate (Moira) Skelly, 26 Nov 2000
--Sharon Skelly, 13 Dec 2000
--Kate (Moira) Skelly, 13 Dec 2000
--Sharon Skelly, 04 March 2001
--Kat Skelly, 19 Jul 2002
--Kat Skelly, 03 Feb 2003
--Kathleen Skelly, about Charles Schultz, 01 Oct 2003
Bryna Stevens:
--Bryna Stevens
--Bryna Stevens, 30 January 1997
--Bryna Stevens, 30 January 1997
--Bryna Stevens, 04 May 1997
--Bryna Stevens, 14 June 1997
--Bryna Stevens, 19 June 1997
--Bryna Stevens, 11 July 1997
--Bryna Stevens, 23 July 1997
Sue Squires:
--Sue Squires, 30 August 1997
--Sue Squires, 30 August 1997
--Sue Squires, 30 August 1997
--Sue Squire, 30 August 1997
--Sue Squires, 24 September 1997
--Sue Squires, 25 September 1997
Michael Tauson:
--Micheal Tauson
--Michael Tauson; 18 Jan 1994
--Michael Tauson, May 1995
--Michael Tauson; 29 Nov 1995
--Michael Tauson, 05 Dec 1995
--Michael Tauson, 27 Dec 1997
--Michael Tauson, 26 Dec 1997
--Michael Tauson, 26 Dec 1997
--Michael Tauson, 29 Dec 1997
--Michael Tauson, 29 Dec 1997
--Michael Tauson, 10 Jan 1998
--Michael Tauson, 14 Jan 1998
--Michael Tauson, 16 Jan 1998
--Michael Tauson, 27 Jan 1998
--Michael Tauson, 27 Jan 1998
--Michael Tauson, 27 Jan 1998
--Michael Tauson, for a short story
--Michael Tauson, 02 Feb 1998
--Michael Tauson, 02 Feb 1998
--Michael Tauson, 02 Feb 1998
--Michael Tauson 06 Feb 1998
--Michael Tauson, 06 Feb 1998
--Michael Tauson, 12 Feb 1998
--Michael Tauson
--Michael Tauson, 20 Sep 1998
--Michael Tauson, 19 October 1998
--Greg Healey, Hornet
--Greg Healey, Hornet
--Greg Healey, Hornet
--BMCS Anton Sennet (Creation of Michael Tauson)
--Michael Tauson, Jan 2004
--Michael Tauson, 14 Dec 2006
--Michael
Tauson, 14 Dec 2006
--Michael
Tauson, 26 Dec 2006
--Michael Tauson, 26 Dec 2006
--Michael Tauson, 1 Nov, 2007
--Michael Tauson, 03 Sep 2009
--Michael Tauson, 04 Sep 2009
--Michael Tauson, 10 Sep 2009
Carl Thames:
--Carl Thames
--Carl Thames
--Carl Thames, 04 February 1996
--Carl Thames
--Carl Thames
--Carl Thames, 30 September 1996
--Carl Thames
--Carl Thames, 04 November 1996
--Carl Thames, 15 June 1997
--Carl Thames, 20 June 1997
--Carl Thames, 09 July 1997
--Carl Thames, 03 August 1997
--Carl Thames, 10 August 1997
--Carl Thames, 14 August 1997
--Carl Thames, 14 August 1997
--Carl Thames, 22 Aug, 1997
--Carl Thames, 27 August 1997
--Carl Thames, 31 August 1997
--Carl Thames, 05 Oct 1997
--Carl Thames, 31 Oct 1997
--Carl Thames, 06 November 1997
--Carl Thames, 06 November 1997
--Carl Thames, 06 November 1997
--Carl Thames, 13 November 1997
--Carl Thames, 19 November 1997
--Carl Thames, 19 November 1997
--Carl Thames,
19 November 1 997
--Carl Thames, 19 November 1997
--Carl Thames, 31 January 1998
--Carl Thames, 28 February 1998
--Carl Thames, 31 March 1998
--Carl Thames, 12 June 1998
--Carl Thames, 12 Jan 2000
--Carl A. Thames, 10 Feb 2000
--Carl Thames, 02 Apr 2001
--Carl Thames, 08 Mar 2004
--Carl Thames, 14 Apr 2007
--Carl Thames, Feb 2008
Rachel Veraa:
--R. P. Veraa 25 Oct 93
--R. P. Veraa
[On the topic of book manuscripts. -MN]
--R. P. Veraa, Jun 93
--R. P. Veraa, On misusage of plural forms, July, '93
--R. P. Veraa
--R. P. Veraa, 10 Nov 94
--R. P. Veraa, 26 Apr 94
--R. P. Veraa
--R. P. Veraa
--R. P. Veraa
--R. P. Veraa, 13 Jun 1997
--R. P. Veraa, 01 Sep 1997
--R. P. Veraa, 10 Jan 1998
--R. P. Veraa. 22 Jan 98
--R. P. Veraa, 20 Mar 1998
--R. P. Veraa
--R. P. Veraa, 19 May 1998
--R. P. Veraa, 31 May 1998
[Concerning the diagnosis and treatment for GID (Gender Identity Disorder) which entails a sex
change oper ation. -MN]
--Rachel Veraa, 13 April 1999
--Rachel Veraa, 21 May 1999
--Rachel Veraa, 15 Dec 1999
--Rachel Veraa, 20 Mar 2000
--Rachel Veraa, 20 Apr 2000
--Rachel Veraa, 18 May 2000
--Rachel Veraa, 05 Jun 2000
--Rachel Veraa, 26 Nov 2000
--Rachel Veraa, 15 Apr 2001