If you ever needed a good reason to stay away from a lot of modern-day highly-political writing organizations, this is it. Mercedes Lackey, on the exact same day that she received the SFWA Grand Master award for lifetime achievement, they decided to kick her out of an online Nebula conference because she said a “bad word”.
Cephus' Corner
A Place for my Geeky Side
Posts by author Cephus
Stop Congratulating Everyone!
Here’s another thing that is really starting to wear thin. Whenever an author does something, anything at all, everyone huddles around them and congratulates them for a job well done.
Guys, enough! It’s like saying “I managed to get out of bed this morning”, followed by a round of applause. Writers write. It’s what we do. Stop acting like managing to do something that you’re supposed to be doing anyhow is somehow magical!
Hate to Say it, MST3K Sucks
I’ve been a fan of MST3K for 30 years. Unfortunately, that has recently changed. It isn’t that I didn’t try to like it but what they’re putting out now, it just doesn’t gel with me at all. In fact, it’s been going downhill for a long time now, this is just where I’m going to cut ties. This just isn’t the show that it used to be.
Is All Writing Political?
George Orwell, who write 1984 and Animal Farm, among others, once said:
“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon… And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.”
Therefore, the question was asked, are all good stories inherently political? I don’t think that’s remotely true.
You Have to Acknowledge the Problem!
This is a sad state of affairs, when people can’t even come to grips with the problem at hand. It came up earlier today when, in a discussion, I brought up the fact that it is virtually impossible to get modern worldwide stamps from dealers anymore. Nearly the past 30 years of stamps are a gigantic black hole with very few exceptions. If we can’t count on stamp dealers to keep supplying collectors, this hobby is going nowhere but down.
And I was surprised how many people got upset at the idea!
It’s Hard to Have an Intelligent Conversation These Days!
This is an ongoing problem that I’ve noticed before but today, I saw it in action once again. Over on a forum, we’ve been discussing the upcoming Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, now that the trailer has been released and a lot of us are very skeptical. The trailer looks okay, not amazing but very reminiscent of the older shows, for a reason. The Star Trek series are all hemorrhaging money and viewers. So we have good reason to doubt that this will be any different.
So then this happens…
You Just Can’t Win Part… Whatever
I was having a talk with a moderator of one of the writing forums I’m on and part of this was a laugh but mostly, it was just sad. This is just more evidence that these people are really, really pathetic. Not the mod, we’re friends, but the rank amateurs who care more about their feelings than they do about reality.
So let’s talk about it.
Hard Truths for Lazy People
So, someone posted this on a writing forum and while I did respond there about some of the aspects brought up, some of it I thought would be best served responding here because a lot of these places get mad when you start to talk about reality unfiltered.
I hope it helps because it’s really sad how many people can’t comprehend the real world.
Couldn’t Ask for a Better Example
I have complained on numerous occasions about the ridiculous things that I see constantly on writing forums. It’s just not that often that I see a perfect example of why I have a problem with it.
Until now. Read on to see just how absurd some people can be and why I desperately want to get away from it.
You Shouldn’t Have a Pet When…
This is something I unfortunately see a lot of late, people who want pets but they are quibbling over the most insignificant things as a means to save money.
Sorry, pets, like children, are potentially very expensive propositions and if you can’t afford the most simple things, you absolutely cannot afford the potential high costs that come with responsible pet ownership.
