reviews

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Self-love, my blog, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting.

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday again, despite all misgivings, and I’m writing my official Thursday-style blog post because I cannot think of anything better to do.  Okay, well, I can think of better things to do—surely there is a functionally limitless number of possible better things—but I am not up to or capable of doing anything better, so here I am.

It would be great if I were writing fiction instead, here in the morning before/on the way to* work.  Then I could feel as if I’m accomplishing something.  Even if nearly no one reads my fiction during my lifetime, there’s always at least a chance that someone will pick it up and it will become beloved after I’m gone.

Heck, Moby Dick didn’t do well in Melville’s lifetime, but it’s now considered one of the great American classics of literature.  Even Khan quoted and paraphrased it in Star Trek II:  The Wrath of Khan.  Not that he’s maybe the best role model (and he is a fictional character) but nevertheless, the book is a classic great enough to have been imagined to live on into the 23rd century.

I guess this conundrum is part of why authors use agents to try to sell their works to publishers and use publishers to try to sell their works to the general public.  It’s a sensible division of labor, of course, and specialization often improves efficiency.  But who is available to help sell authors to agents at that level?

The way things are set up in our culture—and no, there’s no indication that this was planned by anyone, it just sort of happened emergently—we reward those not necessarily who are the best at doing something, but who are the best at self-promotion.  In other words, we reward those with a tendency toward narcissism, and the results show themselves all too well in our entertainment, in our businesses, and perhaps most horrifically and pathetically, in our politics.

Then, of course, you get gifted artists like Kurt Cobain, who was never really narcissistic as far as I can tell—he said he had wanted just to be in a band in the background, maybe playing rhythm guitar, but was instead the front man of a huge band and almost the face of a genre of music in the nineties.  Having him there made all the other people (and him as well) lots of money, and it brought joy to many fans.  This latter bit is good, of course—more joy, ceteris paribus, is better than less—but it can put a lot of pressure on someone who has negative self-esteem issues.

How many of the premature deaths—by clear suicide as in Cobain’s case or by effective suicide among people like Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, etc.—of successful artists are due to some form of rock star imposter syndrome?

This is not to say that sometimes narcissism, in moderate doses, cannot pay off, for the person and for everyone else.  Mick Jagger probably has a bit of narcissism in him, for instance; I remember him once describing himself as “just another girl on the runway” with a smirk on his face.  He clearly liked/likes attention.  But you don’t get the impression that it’s too pathological in his case, and the world got some great songs out of it.

Then there’s Freddy Mercury, who was certainly a bit of a diva, but popular music was all the better for that fact.  He did, of course, end up cutting his life short, but in a very different way from the Joplins** and Cobains.

Then there is someone like David Bowie, who changed rather constantly across his career and who always seemed just to be who he was, even when he was assuming other identities.  He was just an artist, I think (though he had his own issues with drugs, etc.).  Though, he had a competitive nature, too (his Life on Mars was his “revenge” on the song My Way, for which his proposed lyrics had been rejected).

I think it’s a bit more complicated but similar in the case of Radiohead, though all the attention and touring surrounding OKComputer did apparently nearly drive Thom Yorke to a “nervous breakdown”.  I have my own theories about why this was so hard for him, but I won’t get into them now, because they are very self-referential and, well…narcissistic in a sense.  In other words, I suspect Thom Yorke is in some ways like me and had troubles similar to ones I would have in his exact situation.

Anyway, that’s probably enough BS for today.  My pain is not quite as severe as it was, but my various joints still feel like they are not fully connected, and moving is painful—but sitting still gets painful after a while, too, so it’s not an easy way out.

Hey, you know what?  I thought of an idea.  If anyone out there has the resources and the desire to take in and support an author so he can work full-time writing fiction (and even some nonfiction and possibly some music, since I would have more time), please get in touch.  I can’t honestly say that I’m the tidiest person in the world, but I do my best to keep my untidiness to my own areas.  I am also a decent cook; that’s practically genetic in my case.

I would put you in the dedication to any books and other stories I finish, and of course, if I make it big, you’ll get your share.  If you have promotional skills (or connections), they would be a definite plus.  I am neither spayed nor neutered, of course, but I am woefully, painfully shy and self-effacing, so you don’t have to worry too much about “unwanted litters” and related issues.

Okay, enough silly pseudo-personal-column nonsense.  I am trying to be upbeat and silly**** to distract myself from pain and avoid despair, at least to the degree possible.  It may be true that “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”*****, but despair is still not very much fun.  It can be weirdly freeing—thus the lyric—but it’s not fun.

TTFN

*If you simplify that expression, discounting the spaces, you’re left with bfre/nt2hwayo.  I think I did that correctly.  If anyone catches something I’ve missed, please let me know.

**I remember when I was quite young and first heard of Janis Joplin; I wondered if maybe she was a descendant of Scott Joplin, the great ragtime pianist and composer who gave us such works as The Entertainer and The Maple Leaf Rag.  Yes, that’s the sort of background I had—I knew about ragtime musicians long before I knew about someone like Janice Joplin.  To be honest, I still prefer Scott’s music, and I like the version of Me and Bobby McGee*** sung by Roger Miller way more than I like the one Janis did.

***Of course, the song was written by Chris Christopherson.  He’s one of those songwriters who wrote a lot of songs that other people ended up playing and making famous, rather like Carole King.

****By the way, just because it’s silly doesn’t mean I wouldn’t necessarily jump at an offer in response to my proposal.  I’m silly but not stupid, or at least I’m not stupid in that way.

*****Now that was some good lyric-writing, Mr. Christopherson.  It’s one of the best lines ever in any song.

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My native English, now I must forgo; and now my blog’s use is to me no more than an unstringed viol…

babel

Guten morgen, buenos días, ohaiyou gozaimasu, and good morning!  It’s another Thursday (or Donnerstag, Jueves, or Mokuyoubi, if you prefer), and time for my weekly blog post.  There’s not much new going on, really…which is partly why I decided to write my greeting in four languages instead of the customary one.  You’ve gotta pad these things out sometimes.

I received an interesting and amusing email from Amazon yesterday, telling me that certain authors whom I follow have released “new” books.  I use scare quotes because the second of that brace of notices was just about the release of a new version of a work by that great writer of graphic novels, Alan Moore, whose numerous works include Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and my favorite, Batman: The Killing Joke.

The first notice, though, was of a new story released by that obscure (but also great?) author, Robert Elessar.  Apparently, at some point in the past, I decided to follow myself as an author on Amazon.  This is unsurprising; I suppose all authors are narcissistic to some degree.  The very notion of writing a story and offering it to other people to read must entail a certain (benign) kind of hubris.  But it is amusing that Amazon doesn’t recognize—or doesn’t bother trying to recognize, more likely—that the person to whom they sent this notice is the author himself.

I suppose names like Alan Moore and Stephen King might be relatively common, when you think about it, and it certainly seems plausible that a person who shared a name with such a noted author might enjoy following their new works.  But there are plain few Robert Elessars out there.  I know.  I’ve checked.  Furthermore, Amazon could easily recognize that the email to which they sent the notice is also associated with my account as an author who publishes through their platform.

Again, I suspect that they don’t bother worrying about such trivialities.  Why should they?  They have a great many, very big fish to fry, after all.

On other matters:  I’ve been pleased with the feedback I received (on Facebook, mainly) for my song, Catechism.  Of course, that’s only made me itch to fix my earlier musical experiments to make them more presentable, as well as to continue working on the new song I have,* but I continue not to want such work to interfere too much with my writing and, more specifically, with my editing.  It would be soooooo lovely if I could release Unanimity before the end of the year, perhaps in time for the Yuletide holiday season.  Halloween would be better, of course—this is hardly a Christmassy story—but that’s almost certainly a pipe dream, unless some benefactor out there is so excited to read it that she or he decides to sponsor my full-time work on the project.

Alas, I have yet to hear from such a person.

I’ve received no feedback, one way or the other, on Free Range Meat.  That’s not unusual, of course.  Even among people who read a particular story and enjoy (or hate) it, very few will write a review, and even fewer will post comments on social media or on blogs.  It’s hard for me to feel justified in grumbling too much about this.  Even I, a firm believer in the value of rating and reviewing products, and especially books, only do it a relative minority of the time.  Modern life is just too busy.

It was easier when we were all hunter-gatherers, wasn’t it?  Sometimes I regret giving up that lifestyle.  Then I remember that no hunter-gatherer culture invented or used written language—and also that none of them invented cardio-thoracic surgery, without which I’d have been unlikely to survive past my early thirties—and I’m more conflicted.  The loss of written language, and all the stories and nonfiction books I’d thus have to give up, would be intolerable.  As for living past my thirties…well, that’s more debatable.  From a certain point of view, once my children were born—and certainly by the time I was forty—I was pretty much dispensable, even to myself.

Oh, well.  John Mellencamp was right about life, wasn’t he?

And on that cheery note, I’ll call it quits for this week.  I hope you’re all well, and that all manner of things are well for you in this most possible of all possible worlds.

TTFN

*The words, melody, and chord structure are basically done—that’s the easy part

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So is my blog, Octavius, and for that I do appoint it store of provender.

Guten tag!  Today is the last Thursday of August in 2018, a day that will never come again (unless it turns out that time is recurrent and the universe is closed in the fourth dimension, which I suppose is possible).

I hope you’re all well.  I myself am in a better mental state than I have been for the past few weeks, something for which I’m intensely grateful.  I imagine that anyone reading my blogs with the hope of enjoyment is probably also at least mildly grateful.  Reading something written by a person in a gloomy mood can occasionally be powerful, but it’s rarely much fun.

Speaking of fun, I got an amusing email from Amazon this week.  It’s something that’s happened to me once or twice before, and I might even have written about it here; apologies if I’m being redundant.  Anyway, the message came because, a month or two ago, I ordered a copy of my book Welcome to Paradox City to give to a friend of mine at work.  Of course, Amazon has the very nice feature that, if you buy a product from them, especially a book, they encourage you to rate it and, if you’re so inclined, to review it.  I thus received a request to give feedback about a book that I had written. Continue reading →

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O Lord, that lends me life, lend me a blog replete with thankfulness!

Welcome, welcome, to August of 2018, the second of those two months which push back September, October, November, and December, changing them from the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth months—which they should be, based on their names—to the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth months.  It’s a shame.  It might have been preferable to have July and August at the end of the year, rather than the middle.  Then Christmas would be on the twenty-fifth of August, which sounds strange, of course, but only because we’re used to it being the other way.

Next week being the second Thursday of the month, I will write a new entry in “My heroes have always been villains.”  As usual, I haven’t yet decided what villain I’ll discuss, nor even from which media form I’m going to take it.  Hitherto, I’ve done one from movies and two from books, but many other sources are available.  Excellent villains can be found in comic books and manga (especially comic books), and those media have become more and more respectable over time. Continue reading →

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My mistress’ blog posts are nothing like the sun

Hello, good morning, and Happy Thursday!  It’s May 31st, 2018.  Within the next 24 hours or so, this month will disappear over the temporal horizon, never to be encountered again.

さようなら。

As those of you who follow this blog will know, the audio of the first chapter of The Chasm and the Collision is now available, both on my blog (here) and via YouTube (here).  I think it’s turning out well, and the relative speed with which I can come out with the chapter-length audios, compared with my far-from-very-short short stories, appeals to my sense of immediate gratification.  It’s also fun to go back into and engage with my novel in a deep, intimate way.  I certainly recommend to all authors out there that you take the time, at some point, to read your works aloud.  At the very least, this will call your attention to awkward phrasing and word choice; you will learn from the experience.

Many people say of good writing that it comes across as if the writer were speaking.  What I think we usually mean when we say this is that the work comes across as we wish people would when speaking, or when speaking at an idealized best—that it combines, you might say, the best aspects of the written and the spoken.  As a lover of the written language, and of language in general, I think that’s tremendous praise.

Of course, as always—sometimes it feels as though it’s literally always—Unanimity is coming along steadily.  I’ve felt weary on many a recent morning, having problems as I do with chronic insomnia, and have often needed to trick myself into writing my daily quota.  You know that trick, if you’ve been following this blog:  telling myself that I’m going to write at least one page, good or bad, something I can usually do in short order.  I almost always end up writing about three pages instead.

I shudder to think of the volume I’d be able to write if I were to do so full time, given how much I’m able to do in my spare time.  Of course, I’m sure there would be diminishing marginal returns if I wrote too much on any given day, and there might even be a tendency to procrastination, but I think I could work around those issues.  It would, at the very least, be worth doing the experiment.  For that to happen, I need enough of you to buy my stories and spread the word about them for me to be able to quite my day job.  Hint, hint.

This provides a rather brutal segue into a preaching topic, and that is the subject of reviews, ratings, and likes.  I encourage all of you—most of whom, I assume, are writers and/or readers—to take the time to give feedback on works that you read and otherwise consume.  This is particularly valuable for those who are struggling to make a name or have an impact, but even at higher levels it’s useful.  It’s useful for the creator, and it’s also useful for those who are considering exploring the creator’s work.  If you read a book that you bought from Amazon, for instance—or even if you’re perusing a book that you’ve already read elsewhere—take a moment to rate it.  I’m not saying you have to write a review, if you’re not so inclined, though those are certainly useful.  But at least give a star rating.  It takes about a second, maybe, and gives feedback for established works and valuable credibility to newcomers.  Similarly, if you see a video on YouTube that you like, “like” it.  Or if you see something shared on social media—Facebook, Twitter, whatever—please take a moment to give it some feedback.  It costs mere instants of your time, but it is of tremendous use and value to those who create and to your fellow consumers.

Also, if you feel so inclined, take a moment to “like” someone’s blog post.

This all can’t help but come across as self-serving…and I won’t lie, it is self-serving as far as that goes.  But it’s not merely self-serving.  If everyone who reads this post were to commit to giving at least brief feedback to other blogs, to videos, to books, etc., but in order to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, they were to decide never to rate any of my work…well, I’d be disappointed, but I’d still feel that I’d achieved something of value.

Silence is worse than derogation.  The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.  Or, to put it another way, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

That last sentence is clearly an exaggeration, but it makes a valid point.  I know that Thumper’s mom counseled him that, if you can’t say nothin’ nice, you shouldn’t say nothin’ at all, but in many cases, even a “thumbs-down” can be better than no reaction.  Of course, I do beseech you, in general, to keep feedback civil even when not complimentary, for like Hannibal Lecter, I find discourtesy unspeakably ugly.  But, given that minor caveat, I sincerely ask you all, please, to give feedback and/or reviews on those media of which you partake.

Especially mine.

Well, as Forrest Gump might say, that’s all I have to say about that.  I wish you all well.  In two weeks, I shall post my second installment in the “My heroes have always been villains” series, and before that time I shall no doubt release the audio for chapter 2 of CatC.  In the meantime, I will also continue to write on random subjects on my other blog, Iterations of Zero, so feel free to check that out.

I bid you well, and hope for the best for you all.

TTFN