Roald Dahl and Blatant Censorship

In today’s Journal

* Quotes of the Day
* You Can’t Make This Shup
* Dean’s Post on AI
* Roald Dahl
* Of Interest

Quotes of the Day

“You can’t script the unexpected. Life is full of unexpected events. Scripted novels are not.” Dan Baldwin

“Today, I only listen to what my characters tell me. … This approach to writing keeps me always in suspense. The same can be said for my readers.” Dan Baldwin

“Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters.” Jake Barnes to Robert Cohn in The Sun Also Rises

“Genre is a bookstore problem, not a literary problem.” Rick Moody

You Can’t Make This Shup

“Human player beats AI platform in 14 out of 15 matches of the Chinese game Go after using a separate AI to identify weaknesses in the algorithmic competitor (More)

So why bother? Why not just let the two AI’s play it out? Will this human player actually have the gall to celebrate his or her “win”?

Dean’s Post on AI

If you haven’t been following it, there are even more comments on Dean’s post about AI. See https://deanwesleysmith.com/some-ai-opinions/#comments. I won’t mention it again, but it’s generally a good idea to check back for comments.

Roald Dahl

I woke up late to a gentle rain on the roof. My back was stretched-out and not hurting, I’d slept well, and I was eager to get my coffee, check emails, construct the Journal and begin my day.

Then I encountered the article that is the subject of this segment of the Journal. I was left frowning and wondering what the hell is wrong with some people. Do they lie awake at night just trying to think up ways to bug the snot out of everyone else in the country? Do they really believe they have the right to tell others what to write and how to write it?

It doesn’t work that way. Not in the real world.

1. The writer has the right to write whatever s/he wants and use whatever words and sentiments s/he wants in that writing.

2. Everyone else has the right to choose whether to read that work, or not. But they don’t have the right to change what the writer wrote, and they don’t have the right to keep everyone else from reading it just because they don’t like it.

Now that Roald Dahl himself, who died in 1990, is unable to defend his own work, “Puffin [the publisher] and the Roald Dahl Story Company hired sensitivity readers” (emphasis mine) to butcher it on his  behalf. See the link in “Of Interest.”

Sigh. What the [expletive deleted] Ever. Puffin and the Company must be terribly (and smugly) proud of themselves, trampling the work of a dead writer, and one for whom they ostensibly care.

You realize of course that these writers (and in this case, a writer’s representatives) are folding themselves into greatly diminished little blots to satisfy a small group of political-correctness control-freaks (PC Police) who are easily identifiable as a particular body part.

The PCPs are annoying and difficult to shed, like flies. And if you agree with them, that’s fine. To each his or her own. But you should understand that when they’ve exhausted their list of current targets, they will turn their focus in other directions. Go ahead. Step out of line.

Talk with you again soon.

Of Interest

See “Top Ten Ways to Market Your Book in a Month” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/top-ten-ways-to-market-your-book-in-a-month/. See whether you can find anything here that you haven’t seen dozens of times before.

See “Words including ‘fat,’ ‘ugly’ and ‘crazy’ have been removed…” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/words-including-fat-ugly-and-crazy-have-been-removed-from-roald-dahls-books-but-the-publisher-said-the-sharp-edged-spirit-of-the-original-text-has-been-maintained/.

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………………… 600 words

Writing of Wes Crowley: Deputy US Marshal 2 (WCG9SF4)

Day 1…… 3231 words. Total words to date…… 3231
Day 2…… 2990 words. Total words to date…… 6221
Day 3…… 1805 words. Total words to date…… 8026
Day 4…… 2025 words. Total words to date…… 10051

Total fiction words for February……… 1089
Total fiction words for 2023………… 47962
Total nonfiction words for February… 17270
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 37620
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 85582

Calendar Year 2023 Novels to Date…………………… 1
Calendar Year 2023 Novellas to Date……………… 0
Calendar Year 2023 Short Stories to Date… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 72
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 217
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31

Disclaimer: Because It Makes Sense, I preach trusting your characters to tell the story that they, not you, are living. Duh. See My Best Advice for Fiction Writers at https://hestanbrough.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/My-Best-Advice-for-Fiction-Writers.pdf.