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Since it has become the Legion’s favorite thing to slap me around with online, much like Pacione does with The Fandom Writer, I’m going tell the public how it came about and what resulted from it.
Let’s lay the ground work for it to put it all in perspective. I have full blown post-polio syndrome. I have always had problems with my energy level, chronic fatigue and such as a result of it. It showed up early in my life. I was in an abusive relationship that I could not figure out how to escape from at the time. Someone without my physical difficulties would have been able to get out of the relationship far easier than I did.
My drug use took years to build up. The first time I used meth, it was to keep me awake. My ex needed help with a manuscript he was editing. His handwriting was illegible and I was one of the few who could read it. He had penciled in his corrections on the manuscript and it had to be fed-ex’d the next day to the author.
He told me that if it did not get out on time he might lose his job. We needed his income because my income from freelancing was not enough to cover everything. I had a year old child to consider and the prospect of him losing his editorial job frightened me. His comments, corrections and such were enormous. The book was non-fiction by a Ph.D. I corrected and fixed his handwritting, putting the comments in legibly in ink and erasing his pencil until my hand hurt. I was already exhausted when I started and it would mean going without sleep for 24 hours to get it done.
He had anticipated my lack of energy and acquired some meth. “Here, this will make a normal woman of you.”
Every time he wanted me to get more done, and his demands increased over the years, I did whatever form of speed/meth/cocaine he acquired for me so that I could meet his needs.
Toward the end, I was working fulltime, doing all of the housework, chores, errand running, and yardwork, despite the fact that I was disabled. In addition to this, I did a large portion of his writing and editing.
I needed more and more drugs to keep my failing body from collapsing. If I got sick or too tired to function, I had a choice of having him stand screaming at me for hours while I tried to sleep or taking drugs and meeting his needs and demands.
I would go days and days without sleep, using and using, and still he would scream that I had not done enough. That I was not providing for our child by sleeping. I became desperate for sleep.
Eventually I became desperate for death. On August 19th, our wedding anniversary, in 1988, I had gone five days without sleep to get everything done that he wanted me to. He started screaming at me because he was late on a writing deadline and claimed I had not done enough and that I was expendable.
An hour later, I filled a bunch of empty capsules with two grams of cocaine and swallowed them. That numbed out my insides nicely and I followed it with a bottle of Lemon-scented Mr. Clean.
After all, as he kept saying that day, I was expendable and my daughter’s life would be better without me.
Expendable.
I’ve been bad lately. For the past week, I have been pushing too hard to make up for the two weeks I lost to a cold and of course the Nitwittery did not help at all. When I don’t pace myself, I get too tired to think straight. and pay the piper for it. Post-polio syndrome is a bitch. And I have always tried to bull my way through situations. I haven’t lost the tendency even though my body can’t support it any longer.
However, I did meet my deadline to get Blood Hope turned in and it’s now at the stage where it is being edited. The revisions are going on now with online editorial meetings. Royalties are supposed to go out around the 15th of May.
Blood Hope will be out on Monday the 12th of May.
I am going to slow back down to a realistic pace of work once all that is done. Actually, I already have. I finally got a good night’s sleep.
Now, how is this a meditation on Nitwittery?
First, let’s start the meditation.
*puts her propeller beanie on, sits cross-legged on the floor, sticks her arms out to her sides and chants ‘nitwits. nitwits’*
In professional writing, two of the main signs of success is sales and a readership.
The nitwits simultaneously reject the validity of the readers and crave sales.
They can’t have it both ways.
They ridicule the pros who worked hard at their craft and now get the sales they deserve.
Let’s take Brian Keene for instance, since he’s one of the nitwit’s favorite targets. I see his books on the supermarket shelves now, sitting right there next to Stephen King. He writes what he loves (which means that he’s not a sell-out). And he honed his craft (something the nitwits seem incapable of doing). his sales has risen to this degree of popularity because the readers read him.
The song of the nitwits is “I hate readers. Oooh, oooh, I’ve got a book coming out from Silverthought, buy my books.”
Nitwits, you can’t have it both ways.
Remember the old saying, the proof is in the pudding.
The next thing is that the nitwits claim to be leading a revolution in the genre.
Fidel Castro staged a revolution. But what would have happened if he had staged his revolution and no one bothered to come? He would have lasted about ten minutes.
The nitwits are staging a revolution, but no one is reading them.
They say that by writing these posts I am giving them great PR. I’m not. How do I know that i’m not?
Simple. The people who read my work do not want to read about guys that fuck clocks. The reaction of my readers would not be to pick up one of their books out of curiosity. No, my readership would take a look at one of Philbin’s samples over at authorsden and respond “Eww. Nasty.” and then they would not buy anything he wrote.
As for Dagstine. Well, fantasy and science fiction readers, the ones with the money to buy books, are an educated audience. As such, all of his lapses in logic would be seen for what they were immediately. He might get one sale, but he would never get a second.
Kristy Tallman claims to be a storyteller. Well, a storyteller who does not know how to tell a story isn’t a storyteller.
Judging from how long Silverthought has been around, I have to question why they have no books available at Barnes and Noble brick and mortar stores. I looked the day that Nat and I went to pick up office supplies. The Officemax we go to sits right next to a Barnes and Nobles.
Managers for the chain bookstores have only limited ability to decide what is on their shelves. The majors send reps to their corporate headquarters and the big guys make the decision about what to carry. Back when things were less centralized, jobbers would pick up books from the majors, shove the cartons of books into the back of their vehicles and supply the local stores. The jobbers were phased out back in the 90s. Authors with only local appeal swiftly vanished.
Publishing is not what it used to be.
In the previous samples of Nitwits saying that my writing was inferior, I want to point out a few flaws in their argument. I’m not really concerned with their opinions of my works, as I am in the style in which they do it.
Heckling.
Heckling is not a crit or a review. Nothing of substance is said in it. Heckling does not prove bad or invalidate the the piece of writing they are poking at.
So what is wrong with the sample you posted of my work? Are my commas in the wrong places? Is my description badly handled? A proper response from you would have been to state what was wrong with it.
When I have heckled Dickstain’s writing, I have pointed out the errors.
He would have benefited from that, but instead he jumps into a personal attack by discussing my drug use twenty years ago, implying that I am still using, and attempting (albeit unsuccessfully) to drag my name through the mud.
And yet, nothing is changed.
He does not bother to better himself, and he does not offer valid criticism of my work, which any freshman college student could have offered.
Dagstine took a correspondence course and then recieved an AA (two-year degree) in journalism.
AA degrees are generally held in contempt by those who have completed a full four year course of study.
Wake up and smell the grammar, Dickstain.
“both her and all these other writers often REVIEWED on The Rusty Nail are milking you, me, Nick, and everyone they hate for instant fame and hopefully a sale making the public think they are the superheroes.” Dagstine.
Okay, “those other writers REVIEWED” include Karen Koehler, Kim Paffenroth, Brian Keene, Brian Knight, Angeline Hawkes, Mark Orr, and Bob Freeman.
I think that Dagstine is bitter and full of shit. Or alternately he might be deluded. What has stagnated the genre is all those books, ezines, and stories from places like Silverthought, that rape dead trees to create literary toilet paper.
The largest genre readership is romance. Some of my characters are deliberately styled to appeal to that side of my readership.
I don’t care for spunk spitting clock and smashing children’s heads in because some delusional freak thinks they are pumpkins.
So he keeps jumping upon my romantic descriptions of Kynyr Maguire as examples of how I can’t write.
As I have said before, our readerships do not overlap in taste and never will.
i also have deliberately chosen to write in an ‘informal’ style and third omni. The narrative language is chosen to represent the word choices of the characters.
So, simply pointing and laughing and making vacuous insults fails. I don’t see him telling me in specific detail what it wrong with it. And since he does not write romantic fiction, I rather doubt he understands it.
But in the end, what counts is sale figures.
And that awful (not) romantic aspect to my work sells copies, puts me on fictionwise dark fantasy best seller list, and currently has kept my books on the highest rated in dark fantasy at fictionwise for close to a week this time.
And guess which books they are, Mikkake? The ones you are making fun of.
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Lawrence Dagstine – Speculative Fiction Author
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Lawrence Dagstine – Speculative Fiction Author
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This was posted to the myspace of Krusty Shortcakes.
Oh, how you do love to deceive and twist. My guess is that you are secretly afraid of me. You need to be battered severely with the chair leg of truth.
I have two accounts at wordpress, so sometimes I use Janrae Frank and sometimes Cussedness. Feel free to ask Rusty for verification that those comments were mine.
What you consider a threat is in actuality a fairly commonplace taunt. What is it about “twenty years clean” that you don’t understand? Saving kids? Well, yes, I did. Back in 04. Kyle Kuchek is one of them. He came to me after I posted my review of TP 1.
I will admit to sometimes being too tired to think straight. I have post polio syndrome. Maybe you should look that up.
A better writer than I am? Nowhere except in your wildest delusions will you ever be better than I am.
Drink much? You have posted drunken comments to Rusty so many times, that i suspect you are the pot calling the black. Alcoholism is an addiction.
Comprende?
That’s a lie that you can’t seem to respond on my blogs. It has comment moderation on IJ and WordPress, but no where else.
If you are talking about my LJ, you have to be a member of LJ to reply.
I do not have moderation of any kind on myspace.
I say that you’re too chickenshit to try lying and abusing me on my own sites.
Nyah, nyah.
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=297993045&blogID=384720828
So she claims that she has sent my threat to her lawyer. Whoopdedo.
I said: “I intend to shove her arse up so high that she shits through her nose.”
I fully intend to.
Bad writing and bad attitude call for it.
She says that she delivered me a smackdown without reading my work. She says she does not need to.
No comparison is true without the comparison being made. A comparison cannot be made by allegations alone.
Are you afraid to look at what I write, Kristy?
Oh, and I never forget my commas; no matter how tired I am. They are second nature to me, because i actually learned how to do it in school. What did you major in? Underwater basket weaving? Just because you act like a goat-roper, I should not call you one?
Not knowing the rules is no excuse. You can’t be a good storyteller without knowing the rules. Pick up a copy of Strunk and White. Use it. It is a slender volume.
Stop using your whiny excuses about having a hard life. We have all had hard lives.
