The Journal: Amberries

In today’s Journal

* Unlike Kristine Kathryn Rusch
* Neil Gaiman
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Unlike Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Dean Wesley Smith is usually pretty good about backing away from political hot topics.

Kris tends to alienate (with extreme prejudice) anyone who doesn’t agree with her. By doing so she ends up only preaching to the choir. She’s a masterful business person and should be a valuable resource in that arena, but I personally had to step back from both her free blog and my paid subscription to her Patreon account. It was actually adversely affecting my health.

I just couldn’t handle never knowing when I was going to walk into Abrasion Canyon and be ambushed with blatant politics. I don’t like ambushes. Amberries grow on them. (We used to call fragmentation grenades amberries ’cause they often seemed to come from ambushes.)

And my stepping back was AFTER I emailed her privately to complain about the overtly political posts, and she wrote in her response that I was right and that “going forward” her blog would be a safe place for people of all political beliefs.

It isn’t. That was it for me. I don’t deal well with people who lie to me. I mark ’em off my list and go on about my life.

By comparison and as noted by others, Dean Wesley Smith can be a little abrasive. (He uses the words “stupid” and “idiot” a lot.) I suspect that comes from 9 years of dealing with beginning writers who constantly make bad decisions and wonder why he doesn’t too. That has to be aggravating when by and large, he’s only trying to help them. Still, that’s no excuse.

On the other hand, he never overtly talks politics, at least that I’ve seen. All his posts are about writing, publishing, or to promote something he’s doing, like his current Kickstarter campaign. I usually don’t link to a lot of his promotion posts unless I personally find them of value as a writer.

Today he wrote a post titled “Copyright And Value and Estates.” Frankly, it’s nothing earth-shaking, but it contains two good examples, one negative and one positive, and therefore (in my opinion) has value.

But for some reason he felt the need to drop a “mask bomb” in one place and used both “stupid” and “idiots” there and in another place. I suspect he did so because Kris is his wife. She recently wrote an entire, very annoying and hateful post (I happened upon it over at The Passive Voice) on the topic of forcing others to do what she thinks is best. And the old saying applies: If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. Appeasement can be useful in marriage.

So if you can overlook or ignore the minor abrasiveness in his post (or if you agree with him), you can see the post at https://www.deanwesleysmith.com/copyright-and-value-and-estates/. If not, skip it. It isn’t worth getting your blood pressure up.

However, in the first spot in “Of Interest” I’ve posted a much calmer blog post about wills and estates for writers. Neil Gaiman wrote this back in 2006, but it’s still valid and displayed prominently in the sidebar of his website. Enjoy.

Tomorrow, I hope I can write a Journal entry that doesn’t make me feel so much like I need to go scrub my hands with disinfectant.

Talk with you again soon.

Of Interest

See “Important. And pass it on…” at https://journal.neilgaiman.com/2006/10/important-and-pass-it-on.html.

See “Pay the writer” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/pay-the-writer/. See PG’s take.

See “Harlan Ellison: Pay the Writer (short video)” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE. (From the film Dreams with Sharp Teeth. You can see the trailer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmfzKKM49uY).

See “Close Encounters of the Initial Kind – Tips for When Characters Meet” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/close-encounters-of-the-initial-kind-tips-for-when-characters-meet/.

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………………… 620 words

Writing of WCGN 4: William J. Pinchot (tentative title, novel)

Day 1…… 1965 words. Total words to date…… 1965
Day 2…… 2624 words. Total words to date…… 4589
Day 3…… 1824 words. Total words to date…… 6413
Day 4…… 3160 words. Total words to date…… 9573
Day 5…… 3504 words. Total words to date…… 13077

Total fiction words for July……… 59985
Total fiction words for the year………… 588664
Total nonfiction words for July… 15760
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 141550
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 730214

Calendar Year 2021 Novels to Date…………………… 12
Calendar Year 2021 Novellas to Date……………… 1
Calendar Year 2021 Short Stories to Date… 3
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 65
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 217
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31

Disclaimer: In this blog, I provide advice on writing fiction. I advocate a technique called Writing Into the Dark. To be crystal clear, WITD is not “the only way” to write, nor will I ever say it is. However, as I am the only writer who advocates WITD both publicly and regularly, I will continue to do so, among myriad other topics.