Categories
Writing

On writing

I know I said this once before, but it’s worth repeating:

 

Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be writers.

 

Once you step over the line from being a writer who lives to write to being a writer who writes to live, you’ve entered Dante’s Eleventh Circle. The bad one. The one for writers that was too horrible even for Dante to describe.

(Remind me to tell you about seeing the exhibition of Botticelli’s Dante when I was in London a couple of years back. Extraordinary. Great trip. Even ate beef in spite of the fears. The Londoners make a lousy hamburger. )

In line with this philosophy that I’m imparting to you from long and painful experience, I thought I would re-publish one of my favorite old posts; one that somehow got lost when I re-arranged my sites and weblogs. Thanks to Larry in comments in Monica’s terrific “Editing my Brain” post, for reminding me of it.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you On Writing Professionally:

———————————————————————————–

There’s some form of mystic associated with writing professionally that, in some ways, I don’t understand.

It doesn’t exist with, say, web development — there are scores of web page designers and developers who would be appalled at having to do what they do as a hobby, as a job, day in and day out. In addition, there are those who garden, cook, drive, sew, and care for children who wouldn’t even consider doing the same for a buck.

But writing, well, writing professionally somehow imbues the written word with a higher degree of importance than the word that’s given freely. Even if the written word is included in the biggest jumble of disorganized crap that ever existed on any planet in the universe, and the freely given word is the epitomy of elegance, grace, and clarity.

Perhaps the reason for this mystic is that if one is paid for the word, one is somehow supposed to be more proficient with the use of the word. I write this word — apple — and I am not paid for it. Therefore, the value of –apple — is worth less then the word — Apple — as long as it is followed by OS X and I’ve convinced some editor somewhere that it is worthy of inclusion within their magazine, eZine, book, or other form of publication.

It is true that when one is paid for an act, one improves over time. Based on this we can conclude that when we pay for an action, we should be able to expect more from that action. This works for sex — why not writing?

The act of writing professionally. The publication process.

As an example of the publication process, take a look at the following sentence:

 

My recommendation would be that you flibit the gidbet and then flummer the dummer.

 

One publication prefers that writers not use the familiar, so can the professional writer remove all familiar references?

Okay, how’s this:

 

It is accepted practice to flibit the gidget and then flummer the dummer.

 

Another publication prefers the familiar form, and also prefers witty repartee with the reader. Can the professional writer please adjust accordingly?

Okay, how’s this:

 

My recommendation would be that you flibit the gidbet and then flummer the dummer, and you’ll be kicking ass at that point.

 

A third publication hastens to add that words such as “ass” might be offensive to some readers. Please edit this remark.

Okay. Is the following acceptable:

 

My recommendation would be that you flibit the gidbet and then flummer the dummer, and you’ll be much happier with the results.

 

There’s another publication. This one likes to have notes, sidebars, and annotations.

Okay. Then how the hell is this:

 

My recommendation (being aware that I have enormous experience with this) would be that you flibit the gidbet (see www.gidbet.com for more info) and then flummer the dummer, (see sidebar A1), and you’ll be happier with the results (happier: increased sense of well being).

 

Are these examples of writing somehow worth more than the unpaid version of the same, such as one could find at a weblog?

Weblog version:

 

To hell with the gidbet, who cares about the flummer, go get a beer, and screw it all until tomorrow.

I think not.

(Legal Disclaimer: The publications referred to in this document are entirely fictional. Any similarity to an existing publication is purely coincidental.)


Image from show at http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/reviews/karlins/karlins5-17-01.asp

Categories
Diversity

Amazons raise your shields on high

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Dave quotes a posting from Tara Sue, who writes:

 

My friend Ross and I have a lot in common. We both come from military families–his cousin and uncle serve and my brothers are soldiers. We were both raised by our father. And we share many ideas in business and politics. But there is plenty of room to disagree. Today we argued about war. I spoke with his wife and said, “If we replaced every man in power with a woman, there would be less war.” I don’t care for any speculation on the matter. We’ve never experienced mass matriarchy on this planet. There is no room for discussion–only proof. We will make peace in this world only after peace has been brought to our home. There are too many females pushing the testosterone bandwagon. I read an article today by a “chick” who thinks war is the “grown-up” thing to do. She went so far as too chide the protestors as though they are just simple minded youngsters, left-overs from the sixities who are just not “grown up” enough to make a choice for peace, but those who are grown up should know to support the war. Well, sister, even morons grow up.

Jonathon picks up on the premise and writes about the changing roles of women in combat. He writes:

 

I have no idea what Tara Sue Grubb might think of women in the military—whether she sees female soldiers as part of that group of women she criticizes for wanting “to have what [men] have.” Yet, given that one of the key goals of feminism has been to dismantle the political and cultural barriers to women’s participation in every field of human activity, it’s inevitable that women—or, at least, some women—would wish to participate in John Keegan’s “entirely masculine activity”: combat.

When we consider the major psychological transformations precipitated by weapons and tactics that allowed man to kill at a distance in an emotionally detached manner, it is hardly coincidental that women are integrated into combat units in the US Navy and Air Force—where they would not be expected to engage directly with an enemy—but are excluded from combat in the US Army where the chance of face-to-face contact is significantly higher.

 

The argument about women in combat and whether women being in charge would prevent war is somewhat mute because several times in the past, societies have been matriarchal, and many times, women have been the primary ruler. And we still have war. There is no sex-related war gene. There is only cultural indoctrination.

Think of the lion. It is the female who hunts, and it is the female who protects her young, and therefore the species. All the male does is sleep, have sex with the females, and fight other males for possession of the females.

(Well, okay, from this example I guess we could say that we females lack the gene that makes us want to fight other females over a man.)

For every woman simpering in a kitchen saying she’s too frail to lift a gun because she’ll break a nail; and for every woman claiming woman as goddess who states that if only women were in charge, our nurturing natures would prevent war, I repeat what I said in Jonathon’s comments:

This “woman as nurturing mother figure” is absolute bullshit.

The primary reason women have been adverse to warfare in the past is because women have usually been left at home, unprotected, while the men went off with all the weapons, leaving them vulnerable.

Tara Sue needs to consider a little history lesson about women and fighting. Most of the early Celtic war leaders were women. Women were gladiators in Rome. Most of the native american tribes in this country were matriarchial and they did fight wars. Women have dressed as men to fight as soldiers, or have picked up the guns of fallen soldiers and taken their place — without training I might add.

There isn’t a ‘war gene’ that’s sex related. The only reason women aren’t allowed in fighting infantry is the stupid old men in this country who don’t want to face the political backlash of the first women killed in actual hand to hand combat. Horrors! A potential mother killed!

And because of this, women also lose out on advancements, many of which are dependent on being in a combat unit.

If women have one thing that men don’t have it’s more of a willingness to see and acknowledge our mistakes, and our aggressiveness is usually vocal rather than physical. And these are more from cultural upbringing than sex-related genetics. Perhaps because of these characteristics, there _might_ be less war.

Here we go again, another round of making women into these delicate flowers of sensitivity and feminity, fragile, manipulative little blossoms whose sensibilities are too refined to do something such as ‘fight in a war’. Horrors!

Girlism redux.

 

Categories
Weblogging

Skeletons in the closet

I had not looked at the negative consequences of Talkback, and appreciate those who have taken the time to point them out.

Geodog wrote:

 

But I think of comments as ephemeral, and strongly contextual. Plus, as Gibbon might say, some things are meant to remain veiled in the decent obscurity of a obscure format. The last thing I want when someone puts my name in Google is to have the first thing come up be some stupid late night comment I put on a popular (dare I say A-list?) weblog. So will this cut down on stupid late night comments? Or just increase the number of anonymous cowards?

 

(<quote> Burningbird is NOT A-List</quote>)

In Geodog’s comments, the question of identify was also raised: if there’s no sign on process, anyone can come in and write as anyone else.

Good points. Ones that John also discussed:

 

In order for this approach to be more fully developed we would need to implement a security model like PGP, which would allow me to “prove” who I am when posting a comment. While I applaud Shelley’s effort to expose a history of comments, it won’t take long before people start spoofing them. Which is a shame because I’m not sure that level of complex security model will be implemented for some time, and with a network of webloggers like Shelley providing scripts like this for their individual weblogs it wouldn’t take much to build a consolidating engine like Technorati to group them together and give me a global view of my comments across all participating blogs.

If people are uncomfortable about having their comments archived on Burningbird, how about for all sites, forever? Scary.

 

Dorothea also followed through on concerns about Talkback, but from a different perspective. She wrote:

 

Irrelevance, impermanence, mortality—these are my feeble defenses against a potentially crippling sense of worthlessness, futility. I cling to a false nihilism to save myself from the genuine article. Illogical, probably stupid, but that’s how I function.

Which brings me back to Shell (who, I feel compelled to say, is of course utterly innocent of any intent to harm, and who has not really harmed me at all in any case). Now my comments, even more ephemeral in intent and execution than my own blog, are becoming solid, persistent, potentially permanent records. I guess I can live with it; I have to. But I’ll still whimper.

 

About the last thing I want to do is make people uncomfortable with commenting here at Burningbird. Comments are an integral part of this weblog, and I’ve taken care to nurture an environment where everyone is comfortable speaking out. I am extremely hesitant about implementing any technology that impacts this in any way.

But then Monica wrote, in response to Talkback and the posting about spell-checking and writing formally:

 

To me, both the idea of anyone being able to read all the comments we posted on a site and the idea of spell-checking our writings and even elaborating them, in a way have to do with how we want – or don’t want – to be seen. Half-assed comments written in the heat of the moment are the ones on which we can be seen between the lines.

 

And Stavros writes:

 

This latest innovation from her is a really cool idea, and one that might help to combat that feeling of impermanence and evancescence of weblog comments.

Dorothea was right, and I intended no harm to come from Talkback. Another instance typical of so many applications of technology: the social impacts far of a new innovation far outweight the effort to actually create the innovation. However, my intent was to keep the comments — many of which are thoughtful, compelling, and more interesting than the posts themselves –from fading into obscurity.

More than that, though, I wanted a way to introduce people who might be new to this weblog to those others who have been kind enough to come around for some time. You can get a good idea of who I am from my archives, but who are all these strangers leaving all these comments, and what are all these obscure references about? I considered Talkback the digital equivalent of a block party to introduce a new neighbor to those who have lived on the block for a while.

But then, a block party isn’t the same as pulling a new neighbor into each house in the block and shoving their face into the closets to look at all the skeletons hanging there, either. Perhaps some things are best left to accidental discovery over time.