I just ran into this, so let me know what you think. Someone just got on a Facebook group, specifically for publishing, and got pissed off because someone else dared to suggest that people who can’t write a coherent book, they need help in the form of an editor.
And this crazy person started yelling that it was somehow an attack on the disabled. The amount of stupidity in this is just ridiculous, but what else is new?
This is going to be a quick one, I’m dealing with a lot of real-life problems at the moment and have very little time for blogging, but here we go anyhow because this comes up a lot. I’m talking about it in reference to writing, but it comes up in other things as well. Apply what I say as you will.
I’m really upset right now, not at anyone else but at myself. I screwed up. Now I have to try to fix it. It happens to the best of us but this is the first time that I remember doing it this badly when I should have known better, at least not in a very long time.
It’s all my fault. I just want to vent.
I’m really starting to ask that question a lot lately. This isn’t just a matter of writing forums but a lot of things. We will focus on writing forums this time out and I could venture into other things later though. So what is the point of having any of these forums at all?
I don’t know, you tell me!
Now this isn’t just writers, I want to make it clear up front, but they’re the people I’m talking to and therefore, they’re going to get called out for it.
Recently, there was a thread on a writing forum about sex scenes. One person was asserting that there were no sex scenes in sci-fi and fantasy and others were telling them that they were wrong.
I threw my hat in the ring and said that, in my very subjective, personal opinion, graphic sex scenes in sci-fi and fantasy were largely unnecessary and done for titillation, not telling a good story.
Then everyone shit themselves.
This kind of thing happens far more often than you might expect, but this was a perfect example. Over on a writing forum, someone asked a question about the really tired, obnoxious trope, the fact that a lot of conflicts, especially relationship drama, wouldn’t exist if the two characters would just carry on a decent, adult conversation. This goes on in TV dramas all the time, where the writers are seeking a 45-minute plot that could, and should, go away in 5 minutes if the characters involved would just open their mouths.
And this is when someone I’m well acquainted with opened his mouth.
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”.
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!
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.
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.
