A few thoughts about modern feminism

3 March, 2013 By

I approach this topic from the point of view of someone whose primary goal is unity about fairmindedness. My own feminism started when I was a teenager. It was popular then. We all did it. For me it was always about fairness. At the core of most of what I consider important is the concept of fairness.

The boys, and later the men, weren’t so much with us.I remember having a discussion with a man in an English Lit class. He was an older student. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but I know it was about women not having the same (something) as men. My response to him was, ‘I know you don’t mean that. You’re too smart to actually think that.’ He went quiet. I thought I was very clever, but I realize now that wasn’t the whole battle. Or perhaps ‘battle’ is exactly the wrong word.

Time passed and things got a bit better. We went through the time when women a few years younger than I was seemed to think it was no longer hip to be a feminist. Like maybe we’d achieved what we were trying to so we could shut up about it.

I remember having a huge argument with two male friends about whether women should change their names when they got married. I proclaimed that I never would. What should happen, but a few years later, one of them married a woman who didn’t change her last name. He laughed when I reminded him of the conversation. And then after I graduated from college, the next generation of women started to love the idea of changing their names to their husbands’. It was romantic. I was shocked. Wasn’t this a sign that all our progress had been lost?

This is the way history develops. This is the way opinions develop. We go back and forth. The tide of public opinion shifts like a pendulum until we find a place somewhere in the middle. Hegel would suggest that both the opinion and its opposite are synthesized into the ultimate conclusion, that it’s through a dialectical process of logically examining and reacting to both that we come to a final conclusion that’s greater than the sum of the two.

According to Wikipedia, “Feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights for women.” (You can read the entire article at the link.)

The internet is changing the way we’re having this discussion. It’s being had by more people now. Not just students and activists, but anyone with an opinion. It’s being had outside the context of education and active, educated involvement. In other words, people who know quite a bit about it and people who know very little about it. It’s anti-intellectualism at its finest.

What the internet is doing to discussions of feminism is the same thing it does to a lot of other discussions. It polarizes. It sets faceless, unaccountable people against thoughtful ones on a grand scale. It creates an instant mob mentality. This is not the way to have such a serious discussion, but have it here we will because it’s what we’re becoming — the people of the screens.

I’m going to talk a little about this for a few days. I’ll divide it into sections to prevent tldr.

N.B.: These are just my own, evolving thoughts on this subject. I claim no superiority on the topic. I’m interested in approaching it thoughtfully, because what I see happening in the internet trenches worries me.

 

Filed Under: Personal

Danger, Will Robinson: The Copyright Alert System

28 February, 2013 By

This article is from the Electronic Frontier Association explains the effects of a voluntary copyright violation policing agreement being applied by some American ISPs. Find out if your ISP is one of the offenders and switch if you can.

“The Copyright Alert System FAQ

It’s been a long time coming, but the copyright surveillance machine known as the Copyright Alert System (CAS) — aka “Six Strikes” — has finally launched. CAS is an agreement between major media corporations and large Internet Service Providers to monitor peer-to-peer networks for copyright infringement and target subscribers who are alleged to infringe — via everything from “educational” alerts to throttling Internet speeds. Unfortunately, the Center for Copyright Information, which is running this “educational” program, is hardly a neutral information source. So, as the participants finally begin to reveal some details, we’re here to provide an alternative.

More info..

Filed Under: Personal, Politics

What I wanted to be when I grew up

16 February, 2013 By

In my experience, there are two kinds of kids who want to be writers. Those who want to be famous and those who want to do something no one else has done before. There are, of course, people who overlap — those who want to be rich and famous because they’ve done something no one else has done before. But let’s say that even if you were one of those, that one of the sides was more important to you.

The ‘easiest’ way to be rich and famous as a writer is to write what people want. Now… calling it easy to become rich and famous as a writer is like calling it easy to win he lottery. It is easy, in that it requires no more effort to buy the winning ticket than it does to buy the losing one. And yet, it’s so difficult as to be impossible for all practical purposes. It’s more a way to contribute to the education fund and give yourself 30 seconds of hope while you check your results.

Me? I was the kid who wanted to write something no one’s ever written before. I wanted to be great on merit. Even at a  young age, what people thought of my future novels was more important to me than money. I suppose I did think some sort of relative fame would come with it. But not ‘movie star’ type fame. More like a kind of respected-for-accomplishment sort of fame. Other writers would know my name. My work might get taught to college students as an example of some novel aesthetic. One or more of my novels would become a classic movies, maybe even after I’d died.

What you learn with time and experience is that first of all, there’s no such thing in art as something no one’s ever done. Plots that will make successful stories have a number of basic variations. You can figure them out if you look hard enough.  The second thing is that hardly anyone actually wants to read something so radical that it hasn’t been done before. Most of the wildly experimental stuff is literary fiction. It has a tiny readership compared to other genre fiction. (Battle me about whether literary is a genre, but it meets the definition, has its own tropes, and so forth.)

The truly amazing and different stuff happens very close to and overlapping the edges of the mainstream. It’s accessible enough for many people to enjoy, but takes it on a new twist. It works on more than one level. Like Shakespeare’s plays which, in their day, entertained the masses on one level, and uplifted language and thought on another, capturing archetypal characters and human interactions.

If you want to strike out into unexplored territory and still be of your own time, you must tread carefully, but without fear. This is still my goal, to make something that will impress those whose opinions mean something to me. That’s what motivates me more than anything else. Luckily, the sort of experimentation required to discover this level of work is the kind I enjoy most.

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized, writing

Rite of Passage for the Twenty-first Century Creative

10 February, 2013 By

It’s been a long time since I’ve put myself out into the world in the way I just did. This goes beyond just writing a story and letting someone read it, which, I admit, is hard enough. I like to think I put on a good poker face. I’m unflusterable behind the scenes. I act natural and everyone thinks I have massive confidence. And I have some confidence. I’m a good writer. I’m a good editor.

But today I submitted a Kickstarter campaign for a project I’ve been working on with a lot of other people for almost two years. I spent weeks perfecting the page and stressing over the video and rewards. Then I popped it up there, pressed the send button.

I was so nervous I almost got the giggles several times during the making of the video which we did in one take. I didn’t notice until later that I actually called Tim my cohort and compatriot, both of which are either inaccurate or just plain weird. I said to him afterward, “Did I call you my cohort? As in platoon?” I guess that was it. My announcement that Tim is my platoon. Now you know. He is my army of god-like men. Together we kick the butts of books everywhere. Or something.

Anyway, when you watch me up there, I’d like you to know that this project is important to me. I’ve poured myself into these pages. I’ve begged and cajoled people into writing and drawing for it. I’ve reasoned and risked. I’m both excited and terrified now.

You all are my peers. I want you to like me. I want you to like it.

I join the ranks of those who know how this feels. Rite of passage, I think.

Filed Under: Announcements, Earning a living as a writer

While writing a novel

11 January, 2013 By

There are only so many things you can do at the same time. Right now I’m getting Flourish Editing started with my partner. I’m also working on a novel. You can see my progress here. I have a few other projects in the works as well. I haven’t been writing here much or doing much of anything else. Because I haven’t figured out how to clone myself. Yet.

My new deadline for finishing my book is April 5th, my birthday. All encouragement welcome.

Filed Under: Personal, writing

Marketing your own book: How to lose friends and make people think you’re a jerk

19 December, 2012 By

Indie publishing is here to stay. This is a good thing. The opportunity to get your writing to readers without having to go through a major publisher is important.

Now the bad news. A lot of people are doing it. So if you’re an indie writer or publisher you have a lot of competition. That’s not in itself a bad thing. For me, not as an editor but as a reader or just a person who enjoys using social media, the downside is that for some reason, new writers appear to think the way to get new readers is to spam the holy hell out of their Twitter timelines.

I’d like to be supportive of this, but the thing is, I only have so much time to read Twitter. So I personally made the decision to weed out the spammy writers from my timeline. Anyone who constantly sends out links to their books, links to reviews of their books, is not personable and never tweets about anything else of interest? Well, that to me is junk. I don’t have time to click on those links. I’m not interested in the twitterfeed. It’s spam.

This isn’t always true, of course. Someone I follow who’s interesting, tweets relevant information, is funny, who responds to tweets? That person tends to become a friend. So when that person sends out a link to a project, an occasional good review of their book, I tend to be happy for them. I tend to retweet it. There’s a difference, a vast chasm of difference between this and those writers who fill their timelines with a constant bunch of quotes (often bad quotes) from their books and so on. Sometimes they have thousands of followers. If you look at who those followers are, it tends to be similar sorts of people. And guess what? For the most part those sorts of people don’t buy your books. They probably don’t even read their feeds except in the most formulaic way.

Want a model of someone who’s built a fan base using social media (and good writing)? Warren Ellis. Or Warren Fucking Ellis as he’s called around here. He actually interacts with fans on his site. He writes brilliant things. He works behind the scenes to make friends with other excellent creative people. This is how it’s done, people. And he evolves his methods to include new media all the time, so he’s always at the forefront of what’s happening.

He even apologizes when he ‘overtweets.’ Because he knows that spamming people is annoying. Not that his tweets are ever annoying.

I was inspired to write about this because I’ve been working on a Twitter feed for Flourish Editing, Tim’s and my new editing company. Every time our account follows a writer, the feed seems to be deluged with this marketing spam. If you just think about it for a minute, you’ll realize that when you multiply this spam times however many people an account follows (ours right now is up to a few hundred) you’ll realize that it actually becomes impossible for someone to read all of that. It very quickly reaches the level of background noise.

How do you avoid just being part of that noise? Easy. Make friends in your timeline. Reply politely to questions about your work. Never DM people who’ve just followed you. Don’t use services that send people DMs to verify them. These are all forms of spam. Anyone with a life will block you or just unfollow you for this behavior. At least they will if they actually read their timelines.This is the door to door salesman approach in social media. It’s telemarketing. It’s junk mail in your mailbox or your inbox. Except it’s right in your face.

The existence of the ‘do not call’ list should tell you all you need to know about how well it works.

One of my friends reported to me that when she tried to tell one of the spammy writers that this behavior was annoying, that writer got really angry at her. In the words of Warren Ellis, ‘welcome to my block button.’

Filed Under: Marketing

I’ve joined a new editing company

15 December, 2012 By

After unofficially working together on a number of projects, Tim Dedopulos and I have made it official. We’ve set up shop as Flourish Editing. You can find our shiny, new website here: flourishediting.com. We’re offering the standard variety of editing services, plus we have the mentoring option. Workshops are in the planning stages.

The two of us make an excellent team and we’ve made big strides forward for some of our clients. Please check out our services. We’re very low key for the moment, but after the new year, we’ll be hosting Free Critique Mondays, where we’ll read the first three pages of your manuscript and give you feedback.

You can also follow us on Twitter (@FlourishEditing) and Facebook (FlourishEditing) to get notification of our blogposts and specials.

Thanks for reading. Let’s get some more writers published in 2013.

Filed Under: Editing, writing

Interview News

5 December, 2012 By

I did an interview with writer Kirsty Fox recently. Due to some technical difficulties, the recorded interview is pretty much indecipherable, so I’ll just tell you a bit about the book, which is available both as an ebook and a physical book from Amazon and elsewhere. It’s a near future, post-modern, apocalyptic and very British book. I highly recommend it. It’s called Dogtooth Chronicals. (Yes, it’s spelled that way on purpose.)

Here’s a teaser video for the book. This character is the one non-British character in the book. Very interesting, a bit mad.

Perhaps the most telling thing I can say about it is hat I read it four times, always finding some new nuance to the story or writing, or falling for one of the characters even harder than I did the first time. It’s a long book and I’m an impatient reader, so this is quite something. I feel very lucky to have stumbled onto this novel. I think anyone who wants to understand the mind of young Britain should read it. It’s also quite entertaining.

The book’s unique aspects are that it’s written in from the viewpoints of seven different characters and it includes their particular dialects — northern England, Scottish, and in one case, the English as a second language of a German character. She thought the apocalypse out pretty thoroughly. You might question the cause of the apocalypse, but if you remember that it’s being explained by lay people who are cut off from most ‘scientific’ explanations, it doesn’t need to be perfect, would, in fact, be unlikely to be perfect.

I recommended to Ms. Fox that she try to get it published traditionally, but she felt that due to it’s timely nature, it would languish in the publishing process past its moment. She may be right about that. Traditional publishing moves slowly.

Filed Under: Books, Writers

RPB KickStarter Update

5 December, 2012 By

A few weeks ago, I said we’d be starting the KickStarter soon. We have some potential cool as hell rewards that just can’t quite be pinned down yet and Christmas is coming. We decided that, all things considered, it would be best to wait till closer to the end of January. We’ll hopefully have a surprise or two for you before that with respect to Red Phone Box.

I’ll keep you apprised.

Filed Under: Announcements Tagged With:

Inexplicable Things Writing Teachers Say: That’s not the same I there as here.

5 December, 2012 By

I remember it vividly. I was standing behind a grad school classmate in front of the writing teacher’s table after class got out. Said classmate was one of my roommates. The particular teacher, already mysterious with his white hair and black eyebrows and his moody countenance, uttered the following words: “There are two Is.”

My roommate stared at him. I looked back and forth between them, squinting. “Wait. What? Did you just say there are two Is?”

“Yes,” he said. He had a smirk at the corners of his lips, a whimsical little gleam in his eyes. Kind of like Santa Claus when he tells you he knows when you’ve been naughty. “That’s not the same I there as here.” He pointed to the pages in front of him.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Those are two different Is.” He said this as if it was rife with meaning. Which I suppose it was. But it sure as hell explained nothing to me.

This is the approach of some literary writers to the conundrums of teaching certain aspects of theory. In hindsight, i see it as how they keep themselves in work. They could explain such mysteries clearly. The trouble is, they seem to find some value in not doing so.

There are probably hundreds of these little bits of knowledge. In a way, you don’t want them all to be revealed. It’s nice to have some zen, mysterious quality about writing that you can’t explain. After all, if you could walk down a length of rice paper and leave no trace, what would be the point of getting any better? You’d already by Kwai Chang Kane.

It was much later when I understood the mystery of the two Is. It wasn’t nearly as impenetrable as I would have thought from the way it was presented. I’ll tell you what it is in a second, but first I want to tell you what I really learned from this incident. Here it is: I don’t want to be that kind of writing teacher. I want to cut to the easiest, most readily grasped explanation of a concept.This may require reframing it several times and over a period of time. Not everyone understands things the same way. It may not immediately sink in. Learning one thing may be dependent on learning several other things first. But I refuse to be the kind of teacher who makes something more mysterious or academic than it actually is. My goal as an editor and writing teacher is to help people understand concepts and apply them.There you have it. The short version of my writing pedagogy.

Now on to the two Is.

In a first person narrative, two time periods are going on, though only one is immediately visible most of the time. The narrator is the person telling you the story. The story is set at some point in the past (with rare exception.) So let’s say we’re sitting here and I’m telling you a story about something that happened to me when I was twelve. My twelve year old self was much more naive than I am. So some of the things I could tell you would come from that point of view. Yet you’d know that I, the one sitting in front of you, found it funny, because I am not that twelve year old any more. So when I say, “I went to the window and looked out” there are two Is. The one telling you the story and the one the story was happening to.

You may ask why this matters. Now that’s a longer story. And I have to get to work.

 

Filed Under: Editing, writing
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