Reading: Redemption of Althalus by David Eddings
Music: The Kingston Trio - various CDs
Link o' the Day:The Reagan years

I came across this in the SFWA lounge at sff.net:

Adam-Troy wrote: "I was surveying various online mags, in search of one that might be a good market for a story that's been a tough sell, when I found one that justified nonpayment with a line to this effect: "If you're doing this for money, you're in it for the wrong reasons."

Wiiiiild doggies! Boy didn't this cause a number of responses!

Of course it involving a discussion among SFWAns meant it broke off into a dozen diverging topics, one response to this original topic which caught my eye was this from Allen Steele:

"All this sounds like a manifestation of the Starving Artist in the Garret Theory: that true artists should live in poverty, never compromising their tireless efforts to produce great work by accepting filthy lucre.

You frequently hear that line from undergraduates enrolled in creative-writing programs. Indeed, I espoused it myself when I was in my early 20s, My teacher, Russell Banks -- who later became a highly successful novelist in his own right..."

This sounds somewhat familiar, doesn't it? I went through that same phase when I was taking all those Creative Writing seminars in college where I learned not a single blessed thing. All the classes were set up like writers group meetings, that is we each took turns presenting a story for others to critique. There was very little discussion on the Craft of storytelling. There was _no_ discussion about the mechanics of writing. And Great Ghu help you if you tried to write anything that smacked of commercialism or wose---genre!

A good story was autobiographical, full of personal perceptions and emotions, and very little plot. I didn't think much of many of the stories, but I was a kid and I thought this was The Way Things Should Be. hahaha!

The professors were exactly widely published. One was a poet whose work I didn't care much for. The other had written one novel which wasn't bad, but didn't really make much of a splash. I've not been able to find much in the way of other publications by either professor. At one point the novelist sold a short story to a local fiction journal and was fairly colorful, but that's about all he had going for him.

In any case, writing as a profession was fine so long as you wrote Literature and didn't plan on making a living from it. The only way to make a living as a writer or a poet, it seemed, was to land a cushy university gig.

By my third such seminar, I had gotten so frustrated at the snobbery towards anything that didn't meet the local standards for Literature that I wrote a story that was crammed full of the sort of nonsense I was told to write. it was my best-received story that semester and was chosen to be included in the college's literary journal. I recently came across the story and still can't get over the shudders.

And for years I didn't write another blessed thing.

Finally I got over it and met some folks who wrote the sort of stuff I enjoyed reading. I found some _practical_ resources for learning the craft, and have been much happier with being a writer. I write the sort of stories I enjoy reading. If that's science fiction, fantasy, horror, slipstream, pulp, or mainstream, it's what I want to write and like to write. Not what I feel I'm obliged to write by others.

Ray Feist often points out how often he's confronted by snobs who brush his work off as fluff to which he gently points out that while it may be fluff, he's been on the New York Times bestsellers list a number of times and is very comfortable and happy. Granted, I'm not a huge fan of his books, but the man sells a _lot_ of books. You have to respect that.

And there is nothing wrong with writing professionally if you can pull it off. More power to you!

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Today's link takes us back in time to The Reagan years. Hold on to your boots! If you think our current president is evil and incompetent--well... I shuld avoid my anti-Reagan rant. It's a fun site though. It's based on the book "The Clothes Have No Emporer" which cataloged the eight years of Reagan on a near-daily basis and the oddities that occured in both the nation and the White House. Here's a sample:
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November 4, 1980: Ronald Reagan is elected. Before voting, he is asked if he expects to win. "You know me," he says, "I'm too superstitious to answer anything like that." Nancy nudges him and mutters, "Cautiously optimistic." Reagan smiles and says, "Yes, I'm cautiously optimistic." Before answering questions, he says "I can't answer till I get on my mark," meaning a tape X on the ground showing where he's supposed to stand.

November 4, 1984: Reagan asserts that he has been accessible to the media, despite the fact that he has held no press conferences since July, because the number of questions he answered while getting on and off Air Force One in the last few months would add up to six news conferences.

November 4, 1986: Iranian Parliament speaker Hashemi Rafsanjani reveals that National Security Adviser "Bud" McFarlane recently visited Iran to cut a deal trading military equipment for help in reducing terrorism. McFarlane brought along a bible signed by Reagan, and a cake in the shape of a key. He will later deny any responsibility for the cake, saying it was Oliver North's idea.

November 4, 1988: Brett Kimberlin, a prison inmate in Oklahoma, is placed in solitary confinement after attempting to call a press conference to claim that he used to sell marijuana to Dan Quayle
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You could try making this stuff up, but oh no--the reality is warped enough.

g'nite y'all!