Just a quickie.

Barbara Bauer vs. Wikipedia

The Work Speaks for itself.

Too often over the past couple of years, I have seen an increase in newbies complaining when someone points out the flaws in their work, especially (but not limited to) grammar, spelling, and poor or stereotyped characterization.

The typical outcry has been “It’s the story that counts,” or “I’m a story-teller, my sentences don’t have to be perfect.” There are a thousand variations on that.

It starts out as defensiveness and escalates into rage.

Bad writers are a dime a dozen. And these days a dime is worth less than what a penny was ten years ago. Frequently these people either self-publish or they sell to little 4thluv ezines that have no quality control and low standards.

Some of them, especially the loudest voices of the Legionaries, take it another step forward and employ tactics of lies, false allegations, and attacks on established pros. They claim that their work is revolutionary. They claim that a conspiracy is holding them back. They claim that industry elitism is holding them back, and they claim to be the voice of the masses.

They also seem to think that playing a game of up-roar is going to get them the PR to make their writing popular. They look at all the views they get when they are hassling someone with far better credentials and say, “See, by complaining about our tactics, you’re making us famous and more successful.”

When the phrase, “There is no such thing as bad publicity” originated, it was referring to people who had skills and talent. Not people who fail to have the skills to write their way out of a used condom.

In the end, the work speaks for itself.

Even if they got a million views a day from the pros and their fans, whom they have outraged with their antics, it will not translate into sales. The rule of thumb will always be sales. Sales are the voice of the masses stating their approval of the works the writers have produced.

The quality of the work always speaks for itself.

And bad work will not sell.

Some of them will point to the antics of Harlan Ellison and imply that his antics made him famous.

What they fail to understand is that long before Harlan acquired his bad boy image, he had established his talent, learned his craft, and proved his brilliance.

The work always speaks for itself.

If a writer has to explain what makes their work so brilliant, then the work has already failed.

Outrageous antics will not sell failed fiction. It might get you a million views, but if the material viewed is poor, then those views will not result in sales.

The bottom line is ‘don’t make excuses,’ learn your craft and do your work.

There are some fine books on writing techniques out there; but they only help if you’re willing to learn. It is not that difficult to whip out the Strunk and White to double check things.

Here’s my recommendations for each member of the Legion:

Dagstine: Orson Scott Card’s Characters & Viewpoint; Marc McCutcheon’s Building Believable Characters.

Kristy Tallman: Eats Shoots and leaves; Strunk and White; Rebecca McClanahan’s Word Painting.

Mike Philbin: The same books I suggested for Dagstine, but also, Napoleon Hill’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Nickolaus Pacione: All of the above.

The Legion has it too easy.

William McGonnagall

The Legion has it too easy. Scottish poet, William McGonnagall, had food thrown at him during public readings. He was heckled and harassed and chased off the stage.

The Legion only has to deal with words thrown at them. Although in the case of Dagstine, I would welcome a return to the old ways. He would look great with a couple of rotten tomatoes oozing down his face. Maybe some ten-day old rotted pasta dribbling off his chin?

All this over sensitivity on the part of writers who can’t write, or when they can only manage to achieve poor results, belongs with the entitlement generation. Spoiled brats who have no notion how lucky they are to be writing in the 21st century.

The audience has never treated failures kindly. Those who fail to entertain are summarily driven from the stage. It has been this way since the days of Homer; and probably longer than that.

It becomes tiresome when someone who refuses to improve their craft insists upon their intrinsic genius, and screams about conspiracies. While some historical conspiracies have existed, private conspiracies are rare. And a conspiracy of critics even rarer.

Messageboards are the equivalent of town squares. Blogs are the equivalent of broadsheets.

The broadsheets of the periods dating from the Reign of Elizabeth the 1st to the American Revolution, contain enough savagery and vitriol to make even Pacione look mild and harmless.

That is precursor to what we have today with the internet. The styles have changed a bit, but the nature and expression has changed little.

No doubt had Dagstine and I had this battle of words in the 17th century, swords would have been drawn and one or both of us would have died. Or go forward a bit and the flintlock pistols made dueling substantially more dangerous. Twenty paces, turn, and fire, gentlemen.

But the course of history brings changes. The spirit remains the same, but the expression of that spirit is altered by the rules placed upon society in an attempt to buckle a checkrein onto patterns of behavior.

While it is true that actions speak louder than words, today words are often the only weapon we have at our disposals in these drawn-word quarrels. As destructive as words can be, especially lies and false allegations, they are still not the swords and pistols of the past.

Yes, words can injure our feelings; however, they cannot wound our bodies.

So let’s go back to actions speak louder than words and take a look at what actions those might be in these days of drawn-word quarrels.

To viciously attack one’s critics is an empty gesture. Nothing is altered by it.

The only action that can alter matters is an effort to improve.

When H was a young would-be writer, he showed Harlan Ellison his novel. Harlen told him that he should learn to fry eggs because he would never achieve anything as a writer.

Instead of jumping all over Harlan, H went back and continued to improve his work.

Three years later, H’s publisher showed his book to Harlan. Harlan was so impressed that he took back those words about frying eggs in his introduction to H’s novel, Season of the Witch.

Had H resorted to the type of vitriol practiced by the Legion, that introduction would never have been written. Harlan would never have taken back his words and produced it.

The only thing that changed Harlan’s perception of H from that of a talentless wannabe to a talented newcomer was hard work.

As crazy as H was, he remained a brilliant writer and became an early collaborator with Larry Niven.

The legion would do well to find it in themselves to take the same route that H did with Harlan.

So Sue Me! Daggy Poops Again.

All over the net, at one blog or another, a writer is catching hell from the critics. There is a community at Livejournal devoted to slamming the works of Laurel K. Hamilton. Snark reigns supreme on the internet, especially when it is deserved.

Dagstine attempts to turn a tragic event into PR for the Legion.

Everyone knows about the Megan Meiers tragedy. Furthermore, I doubt that anyone with a teenager in their family has failed to witness the effects that encounters like these have upon their children. I went through it with Sovay. She was lonely at the time. We had just moved to Massachusetts from California, leaving all of her friends behind. The emotional games played by teenagers upon each other on the net can become extremely savage. Eventually, Sovay and I decided to pull the modem out of her computer. By then she had become nearly catatonic with emotional pain and spent most of her days curled up on her bed. She lost a year of high school. Her therapist was begging me to allow him to hospitalize her, and I was refusing because I felt that it would put her over the edge to be caged up like that.

Instead, we overcame it together.

There is one major difference between what happened to Megan (and Sovay) and people like Dagstine and the members of the Legion.

Megan was a young girl, a private person.

Writers are forced to put up with people poking fun at them for one basic reason. Writers are public figures. Even the least and most insignificant of them.

Dagstine would like to see everyone cease to point and laugh at his drama queen bullshit. He trots out the infamous Nickolaus Pacione, who is more famous for abusing and stalking people than he is for his writing. And claims that Pacione is innocent and undeserving of the heckling.

We have come a long way from the days when it was socially acceptable to throw rotten vegetables and fruit at people like Dagstine and the Legion. Instead, we throw words.

Heckling, as I have said before, is an American tradition.

We are not going out there and entrapping an innocent and inexperienced young girl when we heckle writers. We are simply giving our opinion of their version of the peacock’s mating ritual.

Dagstine spreads his tail feathers, struts about, and indicates that he wishes to hump the readers and his peers.

I am morally and ethically appalled that Dagstine could equate the natural phenomena of readers heckling writers (the pea hen’s rejection of a lame peacock) with the deliberate entrapment of a young girl. It is so self-serving and opportunistic as to be disgusting.

We aren’t dealing with a bunch of internet virgins.

Dagstine and the Legion will never be able to shut down the voices of their detractors so long as he and his cronies are out in public, demanding that the public notice them.

We noticed you already, Dagstine.

We have given you our opinion of your antics.

It’s called editorializing and opinion pieces. DEAL WITH IT.

It’s not stalking if all we are doing is noticing you and reacting. You are a public figure. Not a virgin girl surrounded by cocks and singing to the sound of fornicating clocks.

Don’t worry, Dagstine. I have a cell phone and I’ll call the Waahmbulence for you.

Current addictions

I smoke cigars and a pipe.  My favorite pipe tobacco is Black Cavendish.

Collards and Bowser’s toffee

G&B chocolate

Linder’s truffles.

And must have lots and lots of coffee

My Biggest Gripe

I am sitting here staring again at the accumulation of evidence that there is some kind of conspiracy of ignorance in the ranks of the speculative fiction genre. At one time, I thought it was just horror that had this problem. I have come to realize that fantasy and science fiction also have it.

A couple of years ago, when I had my first Whispering in the Darkzone messageboard, we had a policy of no shameless promotion by self-published authors. Then lo and behold, a self-published author did it right and landed on the USAToday best-seller list. His chances of even breaking out to the slightest degree, according to Publisher’s Weekly, were roughly 1 in 300,000. To make it to that best-seller list, the odds were probably closer to 1 in 1 million.

Bad odds.  Yet, he beat them.

The book is The Shack.

It was accomplished by word of mouth and a $300.  advertising budget.

The difference between that book and all the other self-published wannabes was quality.

It’s a very well written novel.

Ghettos are not judged by the exceptions. They are judged by the rank and file who exist within it.

The rank and file are poorly written, largely un-proofed, with little or no editing.

However, it is not just the self-published who suffer from that. There are dozens and dozens of ezines out there that have the same low quality. The ‘editors’ don’t know how to edit. The fiction that appears on their pages is frequently poorly written, poorly characterized, and poorly thought out.

Take the writing of Mike Philbin, for instance.   His work is thinly disguised pornography.

I have edited porn. It does not pay well, but it puts groceries on the table. I used to laugh at the sentences and word choices — once I stopped wincing.

I have edited erotica. Some of it is very well written and it always has more plot than straight porn.

There is a level of language choice that separates one from the other. I remember a phrase from a porn novel that will always be with me, because it made me wince at the utter dreadfulness of the writing and language choice. “He penetrated my virgin poop-chute.”

It happened to be a male author writing under a female pseudonym and the book was written in first person.

The cringe factor just went up a level there.

I don’t think I need to explain why that sentence was so stupid.

Mike Philbin writes fiction that is very close in language choice and structure to that momumental piece of stupidity I got stuck editing because I needed grocery money.

Remember the old saying, “you can take a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink’?

Mike Philbin, and the other members of the Legion of Nitwits think that you can force that horse’s head into the water and hold him there until he drinks.

That’s just plain stupid. The horse, or in this case the reader, will just haul off and kick you in the nards.

If readers wants to read porn, then they will buy porn.

If  readers wants to read speculative fiction in all of its various permutations, then the readers will buy it.

However, the reader who is looking for porn has no interest in reading spec fic. The reader looking for spec fic has no interest in reading about underage girls surrounded by cocks or a man awakened by a fornicating clock.

Insulting the reader is not the way to get readers.

Poor language choice, poor or non-existent research, flat one -dimensional characterization, and bad grammar will not win the majority or even a substantial minority of the readers out there.

Deep in the hearts of the nitwits, they crave that readership. But they want to force their poor work down the reader’s throat with a glass tube. “Come on, horsie drink.”

But it will never happen.

Horror Ghetto, Dagstine? You’re in the Cesspool.

“However, Dagstine humor aside… There’s always been a streak of envy coming out of this place. Philbin noticed it. It took me a while longer to see the crud and decay. Like a dying world. So many people shouting from the surface of the planet, this ghetto. But the inhabitants of this ghetto never bothered to invest in their surroundings…. maybe add a few floors to a building, even plant a flower, think about the long-term. “

Dagstine posted the above quote on Odark.

Like so many people, he has no idea of what is meant by “ghetto” in the literary sense. A literary ghetto has both a positive and a negative side. ALL genre fiction is in a literary ghetto of one sort or another. Ideally, a literary ghetto is defined by low to no advances, and little to no promotion outside the genre, and is held in low esteem by the larger industry.

However, ghettos are created by people gathering together because they share something in common.

I have already given you the negative side. Now let’s look at the positive side of the ghetto. Being outside the view of the larger industry means that this ‘ghetto’ is safe from their moral impositions. Originality has a chance to flourish in the sheltered aspect of ghetto existence. Experimentation can be tolerated and encouraged. No prying eyes to tell that what we are doing is morally or ethically bad as we examine aspects of life and possibility where the larger literary establishment is afraid to go.

Flowers bloom in the ghettos and rise up, metamorphosing into trees of unknown delight.

Being a denizen of a literary ghetto is not a bad thing creatively. In fact, it is a very good thing.

Dagstine, however, is not part of the ghetto. He’s part of the cesspool that tries to spread through the literary streets and spread malignancies and maliciousness. I refuse to tolerate it.

The anti-anti grammar site

Since Dickstain is being such a dickstain, I have decided to activate a domain of mine that has lain dormant for a year, but has been hosted the entire time.

You, Mr. Dickstain had kept demanding that I notice you. Therefore, notice you I shall on my newly activated domain. My team and I are looking forward to ripping you apart.

Your grammar stinks, your stories are flawed, your characters are flat. You write like a worn out queen who has no concept of what real women — and real people think like.

You really should have left me alone. You really should have left my friends alone. You really should not have lied about us.

The pen is mightier than the sword. Or should I say my words and wits are mightier than your mouth.

See, you there, Mr. Dickstain.

House of Spiders 3

I am having to re-create this one from memory as it must have been written on my previous xanga blog and I’m feeling too lazy to go through my achived files.

First off, the dialog was typical Mary Sue and “You know, Bob.”

It was poorly written and badly thought out. He had his spiders shown both as small one and some the size of dogs. And that defies reason. As I pointed out before, humans have a tendency to destroy creatures wholesale that are considered to be threats. Anything that got to be the size of dogs would have been destroyed thousands of years ago.

Then Nicky has someone say that the spiders could live for thousands of years. That simply is not credible. Although science has come a long way, they could not prove that scientifically without some kind of observation being made over the years.

The reality show aspect was further stupidity. No reality show would ever do that. To wantonly endanger people by making them spend the night in a hospital filled with deadly spiders would be considered reckless endangerment and no one would ever do it.

Considering that the story claims all this knowledge of the spiders has been around for a time, the first thing that would have happened, would not be continued use by a reality show.

Various federal teams would have thrown a tent or something over the building and fumigated it. Then, if that had failed, gone in with haz mat suits, and flame throwers, and such. The hospital and the spiders would not have survived more than a day after the first discovery of their existence.

The grammar errors are extreme. The dialog pisses poop. And it falls flat.

We now interrupt our regularly scheduled program

Fuckbeater

First off, a good journalist never betrays her sources.  So I must take the fourth amendment here and add “Nolo Contendre.”

Fuckbeater is the single stupidest story I have ever read.  The main character, Deeds, is the most unlikeable character I have ever read about.

Secondly, the gaps in logic in this story are glaring.  Ben Fulbright is depicted as a man who has done terrible things, but we are informed of this through dialog and narrative  without it being demonstrated.

I have worked for newspapers and magazines during the years that I was in journalism.  No one acts the way his characters do in the office.  No one talks that way.  At one point, Fulbright punches out his boss.  In real life if that had happened, security would have been called and Fulbright would have been arrested.

Furthermore, Deeds would have been arrested also and both men would have been removed from the office by security and turned over to the local police at the very first violent incident.

If Fulbright had been guilty of setting fire to the school, he would have been sent to Juvie instantly, not given a job on a magazine.

No acquisitions editor talks like Deeds or acts like him.  They would not only have been fired, they would probably have gotten the magazine sued by the writers or ended up with a class action suit directed at them as has recently happened with Judith Regan.

At one point, we have the hoary old cliche of the bad guy putting the phones out of order.  That might have worked twenty years ago.  But today everyone in the office would have had a cellphone.

Deeds is a foul mouthed bastard that should have had his throat slit.  I was rooting for Fulbright.