More Notes on YouTube

In today’s Journal

* Quote of the Day
* More Notes on YouTube
* Disillusionment
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Quote of the Day

“A champion is someone who gets up when he can’t.” Jack Dempsey

More Notes on YouTube

I came to write this right after I closed my livestream yesterday. I think it ran for about 15 minutes, and I know I rambled a bit. Mea culpa, of course. Who else?

Not a big deal. All part of the learning curve.

Re the rambling, for my next livestream, I’ll probaby make a few notes so I have an idea up front what I want to talk about.

A little later, I might also start making vids in advance and scheduling them. But that won’t be live and I’d really like to be able to respond to questions and comments as they come in. So we’ll see.

There won’t be anymore awkward carrying the camera (laptop) around. Even with the image not reversed, it’s difficult to frame what I’d like viewers to see. I’m not sure why I hadn’t realized that, but I know now.

As I believe I alluded to in the livestream, I’m also thinking about talking to readers about characters, settings, locations and-or storylines once or twice a week, and then talking about the actual process of writing once a week or so.

Originally I planned to talk about characters, settings, locations and-or storylines and also allow talk about writing and creation to seep in here and there.

I learned from today’s episode that doesn’t work, at least for me. It doesn’t feel right. I can talk about the writing process or genres or cycling etc. and use my fiction as an example, but I can’t go the other way with it, if that makes sense.

Oh, and my wife suggested I set my laptop up on one of my old humidors to level the camera a bit. I did that, elevating the laptop about 4.5″ and it seemed to work better, at least when the computer and I weren’t waltzing across the floor like a couple’a drunks. (grin) But I’ve already said I won’t do that again. I promise. Probably.

Anyway, I wanted to ask—If you had your druthers, what day(s) and time(s) would it be more convenient for you to tune into a livestream? Please don’t be shy about letting me know. Yesterday afternoon I asked those who are subscribed to my Stanbrough Writes substack the same question. (As of this writing, nobody has bothered to respond.)

By the way, I’m no longer posting the stories to my HarveyStanbroughWrites.com website. I’m posting them only to the substack now.

If you’d like to see the most recent (yesterday’s) story, visit https://stanbroughwrites.substack[dot]com/. “Theorum” is the latest story. And if you’d like to subscribe and haven’t yet, scroll to the bottom of the story and click Subscribe. It’s free.

Disillusionment

I’m no virgin to human foibles. I am aware we all have our likes and dislikes, prejudices and even hatreds. What keeps the exchange of ideas flowing is that we don’t announce or divulge those prejudices and hatreds unnecessarily while discussing matters on which the prejudices and hatreds have absolutely no bearing.

For example, Kristine Kathryn Rusch does this a lot in her Business Musings blog, often bringing her personal view of politics into play even though it has no bearing on the topic at hand.

She sets so many hatred-driven political ambushes in her posts that a year or so ago I emailed her privately to complain. She wrote back to say that “going forward” her Business Musings blog would be a “safe space for everyone.” Within a few posts she was back to her old ways, and I unsubscribed.

Truly, tigers can’t change their stripes, but actual tigers in the wild don’t go about openly displaying those stripes and yelling, “Hey, pay attention to me. C’mon, pet me. Never mind that you might lose a hand or arm.”

Dean Wesley Smith has most often avoided mentioning his own personal political stance, dislikes and hatreds. But in a post that was ostensibly to review guitarist Keith Urban’s performance at a casino in Las Vegas, he vividly displayed some unsavory traits, again completely unnecessarily.

The actual review of Urban’s performance was three short paragraphs, beginning with “Keith is flat amazing” and ending with “…amazingly good.” Everything else seemed to me to comprise the bellowing of an angry child. I was sorely disappointed.

Most prejudices and hatreds are based on willful disrespect and ignorance, and neither is an excuse. Dean’s post was no exception. If you feel disdain for a particular group or type of people, you would be wise to keep your mouth shut, especially when those people pay a good part of your salary.

So here’s some advice that has nothing to do with writing but everything to do with marketing: You don’t have to change your self-sanctified beliefs, whatever they are. We all have them.

But you might take care not to broadcast them openly and with visceral hatred. If you do, people who have long admired you and looked at you as a kind of mentor might shy away.

Now understand, I don’t care personally about your politics. I don’t even want to know what they are. I don’t care whether you’re a staunch conservative or a libertarian or a liberal or a full-on socialist or whatever.

With regard to Dean’s post in particular, I don’t care if you hate “cowboys” or view them with disdain (though I seriously doubt there was even one actual cowboy at the concert). I also don’t care if you hate “rednecks,” the term I suspect Dean was avoiding with his use of “cowboys,” and I don’t care if you use that term.

I don’t care if you hate or view with snobbish disdain fat or obese people or white people or human beings of any skin tone or ethnic or religious background, or enthusiastic people in general. And (trust me on this) I especially don’t care if you are unable to bring yourself to believe fully in your “vaccine” or believe it won’t work after all unless everyone around you is also vaccinated.

Maybe if everyone along the emperor’s parade route had also stripped naked, the emperor in “The Emperor’s New Clothes” might not have felt so foolish. Just sayin’.

But I don’t care about any of that. All of that is your business. None of it matters in the slightest to me unless you shove it in my face, especially while we’re ostensibly talking about something that has nothing to do with any of that.

This is specifically why I don’t discuss politics or any of that crap in this Journal. I have very strong personal beliefs, but I don’t want to run off those who are serious about learning the craft and joy of writing by divulging those beliefs here.

Besides, it really doesn’t take a genius to understand that blanket assumptions made about types or groups of people are always, in every case, false.

If you don’t want to drive possible readers and students away, I suggest you keep your politics and insensitivities and prejudices and hatreds to yourself. And I am very, very sorry Dean chose not to.

Talk with you later.

Of Interest

See “21 Road Trip Writing Prompts” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/21-road-trip-writing-prompts/.

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………………… 1150

Writing of Rose Padilla (WCG10SF5)

Day 1…… 4283 words. Total words to date…… 4283
Day 2…… 3963 words. Total words to date…… 8246
Day 3…… 1463 words. Total words to date…… 9709
Day 4…… 2445 words. Total words to date……12154

Total fiction words for June……… 12154
Total fiction words for 2023………… 110022
Total nonfiction words for June… 17250
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 126670
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 236692

Calendar Year 2023 Novels to Date…………………… 2
Calendar Year 2023 Novellas to Date……………… 0
Calendar Year 2023 Short Stories to Date………… 4
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 73
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……………………… 221
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31

Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark, adherence to Heinlein’s Rules, and that following the myths of fiction writing will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.