Monthly Archives: March 2014

Another Voice Against the Authorhood of All Readers

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CatherineOfSienaWritingI belong to a growing faction of writers (including my friends Les Edgerton and John Austin) who feel that publishing and literature are suffering an awful delusion: that anyone can be a writer. This myth is driven partly by an overly liberal, “everybody gets a gold star” desire to avoid negativity and offense (even when warranted) and partly by a cynical marketing strategy aimed at turning aspiring authors into an consumer base.

As usual, it’s the uneasy alliance between licentious Babylon and the exploitative Beast. And, it’s utterly unsustainable.*

Tori Telfer throws her hat in the ring with us at Bustle.com, explaining that “Creative Writing Isn’t for Everyone, And That’s Just Fine.”

Help us spread the word, and save publishing and literature in the process.

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* For more on my take, see the Pyramid Dynamics in Publishing and Authorhood of All Readers sections of my Biz pages.

Odd Thought on Camouflage

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OddThoughtsThe shtick insect uses that same old gimmick to hide from predators.

Category: Odd Thoughts

A Minor Caveat on Serious Writing and Jonathan Franzen

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WritingRecently, I made a statement about editing, and someone asked if it contradicted a complaint I had earlier lodged against Jonathan Franzen. Specifically, I said that concern for nitpicky, sentence-by-sentence details is a cornerstone of “serious writing.”

The reader felt that I savaged John Franzen for a similar sentiment. Continue reading

Game of Abbeys – Kindred Spirits

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Also check out episodes 1, 2, and 3!

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Category: Uncategorized

Just a minor gripe for a Friday morning – Do people understand what they sound like?

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JNL-OrangeScanning around my favorite lit blogs this morning, something occurred to me.

The reason I usually skip the comments on the blogs I regularly read is not the usual internet comment peeve about anonymous nastiness, unfounded political assertions, and the like. It’s the scrambling self-promotion.

Typically, the aspiring author barely bothers to segue from the topic of the blog entry to dropping the name of his/her latest writing project. On the websites of many published writers, lit agents, and other publishing types, far too many comments read something like this:

“That’s a really important thing you just pointed out. I’m so glad that in my own book, Dark Mystic Desire, I avoided this by having the main character blah blah blah… “

What also occurred to me is that I am not entirely sure if the reason I rarely comment on these sites is (a) I don’t want to be associated by proximity with this sort of last-call-flirtation desperation, or (b) why bother when anything I have to say about the actual topic of the post will be drowned in a deluge of amateur plugs?

Or, it may be a reflection of the human instinct to avoid malady, because the commenters I’m reacting to rarely seem genuinely happy about being involved in literature. The optimism seems manic and forced. And, often, a little creepy.

A little self-promotion is necessary, but at a certain point it becomes off-putting.

 

Category: About Me

Game of Abbeys – In the Family Way

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See episodes 1 and 2.

One Way Bards Aren’t Useless in Combat

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JNL-bardguitarIn fantasy role-playing games like Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, bards are notorious for being soft in combat. They can fluff the fighters, but otherwise function as second-rate thieves and third-rate mages.

However, Melville House reports on a Brit who has turned not a bard, but The Bard, into a weapon of mass destruction.

Apparently, Edd Joseph bought a PlayStation 3 online, but it never arrived. In retaliation, he cut-and-pasted the collected works of William Shakespeare to the scam artist’s cell phone, as text messages. Broken up into 160 characters at a time, that adds up to nearly 30 thousand texts.

Check out the full story at Melville House for a good literary chuckle.

Category: Background

We are drowning in wrong ideas of creativity, intelligence, and leadership

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In his blockbuster research work Good to Great, researcher Jim Collins revealed that facing the “brutal facts” is a key part of reversing decline and transforming a good organization into a great one.

Unfortunately, America no longer has a culture that easily absorbs brutal facts.

Continue reading

Category: Uncategorized

Let’s Take the Randum out of Memorandum

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New Gov Office understands that the way we communicate affects the way we think, and the way we think defines how human organizations work. For example, “idea persons” are better suited for leadership positions than “people persons,” despite the pop culture mythology surrounding people skills and the natural inclination for the socially gifted to rise in the pecking order.

Key to communication are communication standards, agreed-upon rules that foster precision and efficiency. This is why we discuss not only management theory, but organizational communications.

One of the key items of our communications standards is the avoidance of non-English plurals, like fora for forums. These archaism sound clumsy, needlessly complicate the language, and achieve very little outside a vague pretense of education.

The common term memorandum provides a unique opportunity to avoid clumsy, non-English plurals and save space. The short-form memo is already commonplace, and should be substituted for memorandum throughout official communication, with the plural being memos.

– David Case, standards editor

Category: Communication

Odd Thought on Cognitive Biases

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OddThoughtsThe “Ambiguity Effect” is a cognitive bias for which I don’t know the definition … so it’s probably not very common.

Category: Odd Thoughts