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There’s a new publishing-oriented weblog called The Pitch Bitch, which aims for the style of Miss Snark and Pub Rant but doesn’t hit the target. Supposedly it’s being written by An Editor on the Inside. That’s how the author styles herself, at any rate, when she spams sites like Absolute Write with advertisements for the blog. Two specimens of this activity:
Sledding Down The Slush(The above piece of spam moved ace scamhunter Victoria Strauss to heights of language one seldom sees from her.)Oh yeah, the slush exists—just like dive bars and VFW wedding receptions exist.
You want to know why we’re the Untouchables in the increasing boutique world of publishing? Same reason you didn’t go up to Nick the Jock at the cafeteria in 9th grade where he was holding court among his cheerleading courtiers. Listen kittens, there are ways to bypass the slush pile.
Take it from an Editor on the Inside
http://pitchbitch.wordpress.com/
Simultaneous Subs: “Should You Be Exclusive?”It’s a bad combination. This supposed Editor on the Inside is an expert on the fine points of magazine submissions, and on trade book publishers’ slushpiles? Name me an editor in the commercial end of the industry who handles both those things in any quantityHey Fun People,
Re: publishers and agents
“To be monogomous or not to be”—that is the question. How many publishers and agents have asked you to be exclusive to THEM, yet have not returned your call in months!
You want some advice on how to approach this sticky dilemma? Take it from An Editor on the Inside: http://pitchbitch.wordpress.com/
Reading through the blog entries convinced me that TPB is not a commercial editor. Look at this post. (Its subtitle, A No-Excuses Truth to Understanding The Publishing Industry, is almost enough on its own.) The piece links approvingly to a worthless article by Nina Diamond that’s a variation on the “an elite cabal runs publishing, and that’s why no one wants to buy or promote your book, even though it’s, like, a whole lot better than all those trashy bestsellers” theory so popular with unsuccessful authors. An editor ought not be agreeing with an article like that; and if for some reason they do, they ought to have more to say about the subject than “Me too.”
After poking around on the site for a while, I noticed the obvious, and clicked on the About link at the top of the main page. The About page says:
Listen. There are many Lit Blogs Out There written by authors, editors and agents.And then there’s TPB, whose author is none of those things.
Think of The Pitch Bitch (who has an M.A. in Writing and Publishing from Emerson CollegeMore and more schools are offering courses in publishing. They’re popular, they don’t require expensive equipment, and nobody can tell whether the lecturers know what they’re talking about.
& has been an arts and entertainment writer and guerrilla marketer since 1998“Guerrilla marketer” = “spammer”. In this context, “arts and entertainment writer” = “no publication credits worth mentioning.”
& is the Associate Editor for Del Sol ReviewThe Del Sol Review is an online literary magazine—what would have been called a little magazine, back in the offset days, though I prefer Mythago’s description of them as “literary fanzines.” Nowhere in DSR’s changeable masthead can I find a listing for an “Associate Editor”, but if you assume it’s one of the people with “Associate” in their title, it’s either Diane Adams, Aylin An, Jane Sandor, or Allyson Shaw. [Update: All wrong. It’s Kaley Noonan. See below.] The pertinent point is that this is a non-paying market for lit’rary short work and poetry. It’s got bugger-all to do with commercial publishing.
& teaches short fiction workshops online)None of the Associates are on Web Del Sol’s list of teachers for their online workshops.
as your Cyrano de Bergerac–and the Agent as your Roxanne. The Pitch Bitch is here to help you with your magic words to get into Roxanne’s pants.“Write a really good book” is the usual strategy. I find myself wondering whether TPB has an agent.
I don’t understand this person. If you’re going to fib about being a publishing expert, why put up a set of credentials that undercuts your claims? Perhaps, like Todd James Pierce, she thinks that getting a degree in writing and publishing guarantees that you know what you’re talking about. If I were they, I’d ask for my money back.
The moral, not for the first time, is that any random doofus can claim to be an authority on writing and publishing—and some days, I’m ready to believe that three-quarters of the random doofuses in the world are doing exactly that. Before you take anyone’s advice, check out their credentials—and if possible, get third-party confirmation of same.
Addendum:
The ears and the tail are hereby awarded to Mary Dell: see these three comments. Mary has identified TPB as Kaley Noonan, who does teach online workshops associated with Web Del Sol. Here’s her bio from their list of instructors:
Kaley Noonan is a professional arts and entertainment writer who holds an M.A. in Writing and Publishing from Emerson College. Several of her short stories have appeared in 3AM MAGAZINE and DUCTS MAGAZINE and her first novel, THE GHOST TRAP, is currently being reviewed by literary agents.* A veteran of several Algonkian workshops, she works closely with Michael Neff as an online editor for the e-workshops. She resides in Maine where she hosts “Fiction Nuggets,” zine-inspired mini-fiction slams.Have a look at Mary Dell’s comments. They’re interesting.
A further addendum:
Begad. It’s coming back to me. I’m remembering where I first heard of Web Del Sol and their Algonkian Workshops. It was when I was researching Todd James Pierce. Look at the first two links in this paragraph, and lo! There he is in the midst of them.
Here’s the instructor bio for Michael Neff, the God-Emperor of Del Sol:
Michael Neff is Editor-in-Chief of DEL SOL REVIEW, the founder and director of WEBDELSOL.COM (#10 in the Writer’s Digest Fiction Top 50 and the largest publisher of periodical contemporary literature in the U.S.) and the founder and chief editor of ALGONKIAN WORKSHOPS. He is publisher of several national literary magazines at WEBDELSOL including IN POSSE REVIEW, DIAGRAM, LA PETITE ZINE, 5_TROPE, and DEL SOL REVIEW. His own work has appeared in THE LITERARY REVIEW, NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, MUDLARK, QUARTERLY WEST, PITTSBURGH QUARTERLY, CONJUNCTIONS, AND AMERICAN WAY MAGAZINE. In 2001, he served as the Writer’s Digest Finalist Fiction Judge.That is, he’s only been published in venues where material is accepted for publication, rather than bought (as is the vulgar custom in our own circles). He’s also not the only Algonkian instructor of whom that can be said.
Finally, The Ghost Trap isn’t Kaley Noonan’s first novel. As explained in the author bio that accompanied this story (which was published in 3:AM in 2001):
Kaley Noonan lives in Maine and ekes out a miserable living as a waitress and a writer. Her last novel, Backwoods East Jesus—a story of twisted Christian values in a cornbelt town—was published online by Mighty Words last year. She is currently working on a new novel about a lobsterman and his retarded girlfriend. Kaley Noonan’s “Happy Corn Belt” and “The Someday Cafe” are in our fiction archive.MightyWords! That takes me back. I haven’t thought about them in years.
She reminds me of open mike night at the local comedy club. Failure and silence.
an elite cabal runs publishing
I was wondering about LAcon's Tor party and about the weird signs painted on the walls of the suite. It all comes clear.
an elite cabal runs publishing
Yep. Comprised of dead presidents in green.
More and more schools are offering courses in publishing. They’re popular, they don’t require expensive equipment, and nobody can tell whether the lecturers know what they’re talking about.To be fair, Emerson's MA program appears to focus a lot more on the writing than the publishing side of things. The department faculty appear to mostly be writers and studiers of literature, and they teach classes in writing and literature. Whether the few non-writing classes are taught by people who ought to have expertise, I mostly can't tell (the book design classes are taught by someone with experience in the field).
Not that it changes anything, but back issues of the Del Sol Review do list Associate Editor positions.
As for the greater issue:
I don’t understand this person. If you’re going to fib about being a publishing expert, why put up a set of credentials that undercuts your claims?
I think that the targets of this scam (and, although I don't see a direct moneymaking setup here -- not even Adwords or Amazon links -- there's clearly something fishy going on, if only setting up a false front to funnel folks to places like Del Sol, maybe) aren't people who can actually see through these credentials. Given the outlandishness of some of the stuff online that does work (Nigerian moneymaking scams, etc), I could easily see this fooling plenty of casual readers.
How many publishers and agents have asked you to be exclusive to THEM, yet have not returned your call in months!
...how many professional editors punctuate a question with an exclamation point?
ooo, EVIL!
In addition to more atrocious punctuation, her blog features a big pimpin' shout-out to a "pitch conference." Follow the link and...
"the registration fee for the conference is $495 until April 9. After April 9, it is $595.00"
*sputter*
We'll see how long she leaves up my comment on her "first novelists" thread:
All writers should begin their careers by learning Yog's Law:
http://www.sff.net/people/yog/
The site for the pitch conference that she promotes has a small group of links - to the two writing conferences that are run by the same people who run the pitch conference, and to "Kaley Noonan's 'Pitch Bitch Blog'" (listed under a heading saying "A Relevant and Interesting Blog," snarf)
Race y'all to Google!
Ding! I Win!
Kaley Noonan is associated with the Algonkian [sic] Writers Workshop, which handles the registration (FEES, that is) for the NY Pitch & Shop conference, which she pimps on her blog.
SCAM!
Questions of honesty and knowledge aside, she's no Dorothy Parker.
And she wants to be - oh how she wants to be.
...maybe TPB is actually Lori Prokop (of Book Millionaire Reality TV Show) who is also psychically linked to Martha Ivery and ALSO a board member of Airleaf Publishing and Bookselling. Oh there's a story in this and it should be sold to Publish America!
But seriously, a quote from TPBs most recent post: "I seriously don’t know why I keep making adolescent sex a metaphor of the publishing industry (and we all know that “people who speak in metaphors can shampoo my crotch”)–whoop–there I go again."
You know, I'll admit that I've approached the publishing industry with a (little more than a) tad of irreverence at times --- but even on my snarkiest day I would never send any of my material to this editor regardless of who she might really be. I hope in the hungry self-absorbed world of the unpublished writer wannabe there is at least a modicum of something left that maybe/kinda/sort of looks like standards (just a little bit like standards please?)---and I hope those standards are never lowered down far enough to allow this kind of tripe to be taken seriously.
*edit* ePubs are now hardprinting their crap with the same wonky DAZ/Poser3d covers. Nevermind. No standards. Let tripe reign.*
an elite cabal runs publishing
Well, okay --- sure. But at least they like to drink and party at cons ;)
-=Jeff=-
"I will personally work with authors who have promising ms and even represent them in 2007 to additional agents not attending the conference."
Whoa. You'll personally work with me? And, if my manuscript is "promising," then you'll even query agents on my behalf for me? And, how much are you expecting me to pay you for this marvelous service?
Do I get a free set of steak knives with that?
"...how many professional editors punctuate a question with an exclamation point?"
To be fair:
(1) "Professional editor" =/= "proofreader." Lots of excellent book editors can't spot typos.
(2) Editors and, for that matter, proofreaders are as entitled as anyone else to make little mistakes in informal prose. I personally have very little patience for the "I'm shocked that YOU as an EDITOR would make this AWFUL ERROR" routine. Yeah, me as an editor also sometimes leaves the butter dish out. Disappointed? Deal.
It's certainly true, though, that if my online presence entailed promising implausible shortcuts to publishing success, people would probably be justified in amusing themselves by nitpicking my basic language skills.
I hear you, Patrick. Early in my career, I subbed my resume to Brittanica Corp. without noticing that it contained the word "poofreading." Yes. This despite being a decent writer, by academic standards anyway. So I get that poofreading is not necessarily relevant, but I don't think the exclamation point in that sentence is a typo. I think it's a gaacky stylistic choice. It's like she's cracking her gum.
Any one of her mistakes is a mistake anyone could make. Taken all together, they're something else again.
(Someday, in the far future, a student who's set the translation of the preceding two sentences as an exercise in their Ancient Terrestrial English class is going to curse my name.)
Wow. I served three years as managing editor for an educational research journal, an actual paying job (even if it was grad student starvation wages). That's more experience than the Pitch Witch-with-a-B has. I could start my own "editor who knows it all" blog.
Or then again, not. All I learned from that and from writing professionally is that I know -->this muchthis muchthis much
Writerious, your text has perversely gone astray for reasons I doubt are your fault.
All I can think of is naïve folk, with unsold and unsellable bad novels they've written in their spare time, who are going to be hurt by this. A modern-day Dante would have to include a circle in Hell for people like this 'pitch bitch'. A circle of burning pitch sounds about right.
A "personal" scam blog. Is that a perscablog? Mmm, that has sort of a ring to it... like an ottoman falling downstairs.
And Mary Dell @ 16: "poofreading." I'm going to be saying that to myself all night. "Poofreading." Hee hee. (That my slightly lisping 5YO son would pronounce the word "poof-weeding" makes it all the more entertaining.) Thanks for lightening what has been otherwise an unmitigatedly horrible day.
From Kaley Noonan's Credentials--Websites page:
What do you get when you cross a beautiful girl with a mime?
Ah, the eternal question...
I don't know, but she asks him afterward what he was trying to represent.
Poofreading... isn't that when while you're reading something, the mistakes all disappear but reappear (*poof!*) when you show it to someone else?
JkRichard, #13, I can do my own wonky DAZ/Poser 3D covers.
(Background info: Poser is a 3D graphics program currently owned by e-frontier. Started out, way back, as a computer version of those jointed wooden figures used by artists. DAZ 3D are a company based in Utah which produces some of the most widely used figures for Poser, and it's own free posing and rendering program, Studio.
Note the word "free". But you have to spend money to get figures which can actually be adjusted to have different faces and bodies.}
I like poofreading in the British sense even more.
I once saw an ad on a local site where a gentleman was offering his professional services as an "experienced coypueditor".
http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&q=coypu&btnG=Search+Images
"Poofreading" is exactly how Feorag used to describe the job she did for Scotsgay magazine. (That, and "tripesetting".)
JKRichard@13: But seriously, a quote from TPBs most recent post: "I seriously don’t know why I keep making adolescent sex a metaphor of the publishing industry (and we all know that “people who speak in metaphors can shampoo my crotch”)–whoop–there I go again."
Sounds like one of those people who wants to believe the reason she's not getting the mainstream attention she so clearly deserves is because she's such a rebel.
Hey Teresa,
You might want to up your meds a hair. I never said I was a commercial editor--not one place on the blog does it even imply that. I'm a fiction editor of online Algonkian workshops (stated clearly in the "About") as well as the Associate Editor of Del Sol Review (again, read "About"--stated clearly).
And you are angry that I started a blog stating my opinions on the publishing industry? Holy Crapoly--there's about half a million of blogs out there--happy hunting!
BTW--I've got nothing to hide. I'll keep posting--you people can flame all you want. Have a fab day, kittens!
"[A]ngry that [she] started a blog stating [her] opinions on the publishing industry" indeed.
You're entitled to your own opinions. You're not entitled to your own facts. And you don't appear to know the difference.
A self-proclaimed editing maven
Blamed Teresa for all of our ravin'.
But her wisdom and wit,
Are of male bovine shit,
And her vowels are hardly worth savin'.
Xopher @ 32 You're entitled to your own opinions. You're not entitled to your own facts. And you don't appear to know the difference.
Brilliantly stated Xopher. I might have to steal that.
-=Jeff=-
"That is, he’s only been published in venues where material is accepted for publication, rather than bought (as is the vulgar custom in our own circles)."
I'm remembering the "artists" at art school (where I learned graphic design) pontificating about not being sullied by crass commercialism and payment.
Oh Lord, I would think (and still do), let me be so sullied. Let me appear to have wallowed in mud.
TPB, "you people can flame all you want." Oh darling, that wasn't a flame. Heck, I don't even see a lighter up there. You must be new to these interweebie tubular thingies. I see nothing but a critique and exposure.
I dunno, Eve, we've got coypu (better known as nutria) all over my home state of Oregon. I daresay they could have used some heavy editing, particularly when they ate all the ducks in the city parks.
Hey,
I went to Emerson.....and I resemble that! !!
Xopher @ 32 You're entitled to your own opinions. You're not entitled to your own facts. And you don't appear to know the difference.
Brilliant line, but it's kind of wasted on this small delusion. The line has so much more potential - politicians, for instance. After all, there is a State of the Union speech tonight.
Dave at 33, I wondered when we'd start poetry.
Is there such a thing as an insider in this case? Would anyone classify herself as an insider? Or is it something like 'adult' or 'professional' where no one thinks they're there, but they'll pretend because all the people around are clearly so? I wonder if I would count as inside for writing and publishing. I write, I know a lot of writers casually and more than so, I hear about PublishAmerica stings, I am not wholly unaware of how some aspects of the industry work.
I suppose the secret-cabal theory would match with the insider bit. But if there's a cabal, they're very unchoosy about who they let in.
"Up your meds"! That's good! I'll have to pass that on to my nephew.
On Poofreading and editing. I have a straight male friend who works in the gay pornography business (long story). Some time ago he wrote about it on his site.
Bah, apparently the "carrot S" for "strike" to show a word with a strike through it doesn't work here. I'll just put the crossed out word in italics.
Thedoubles wrote:
As you know, I work in gay pornography. One of my many duties for this company is to proofread their sites for typographical errors and bad links. Well today I was editing a movie's description that had been submitted for revision, and made this correction:
"Eduardo is packing a table leg that is 9.5 inches long and six inches in diameter circumference."
I can't wait to tell my old math teacher.
More and more schools are offering courses in publishing. They’re popular, they don’t require expensive equipment, and nobody can tell whether the lecturers know what they’re talking about.
I currently go to Pace for my MS in Publishing...and this is the first thing I checked out when I was even considering the degree. "Tell me about your professors' experience. Don't leave anything out."
I am trying to craft some joke about the "PitchBitch"'s painfully unfunny schtick and how it's related to her living in Maine, but I find I'm too recent of a refugee from the Pine Tree State and I'm still too bitter. Alas.
I'd also like to point out that Gawker often has funny, snarky gossip about publishing folks...thanks to them and Miss Snark, I have ruined quite a few keyboards.
Pb, love, sorry, but it's all over the web now. You're not an editor on the inside. You're not even an actual, you know, pro, as in someone who makes most of their living at it. It's just smoke and mirrors, paint and prevarication, and everybody knows it now.
You have a customer born every minute, but a few might look you up, and now there's a better chance that some of them might see you here. I hope they have the mother-wit to realise that if you knew anything like what you claim to know, you'd be making a living editing, not peddling workshops by spam. We can hope. 'Bye, now.
Kaley -- May I call you Kaley? I feel like we already know each other! -- I do appreciate you clearing up the little matter of not being a commercial editor and all. People should read more closely, shouldn't they!
I am still a little confused, though. I thought you were offering to help me with a pitch, and the slush pile, and agents and all that confusing stuff. I thought that was commercial publishing. Since you're an Insider and all -- I went back and read it again, just to make sure! -- well, don't take this the wrong way, but what sort of Insider are you? I know you must really have experience with this stuff -- I mean, you don't say you do, but you wouldn't imply it if it weren't true, and then say Well I Never Actually Said That!
Would you?
"I'm not an editor, but I've played one on TV."
You know, if someone wants to start up a blog and write about their experiences scraping at the windows of the publishing industry, hey, cool--could be a good read, and as the blogger learns things their readers could too.
There's an entire world of difference between "Hey, I'm a wannabe (or very junior) editor and novelist, doing my volunteer time, and shopping my ms around to agents, hoping for that big break, and, let me tell you, it ain't as easy as it sounds!" and "I Have No Industry Experience, and Paper Credentials, but I Will Share My Sekkrits, Because However Sad I Am At Not Being Published, You Lot Are Sadder, I Can Still Fool You into Believing I Know Stuff."
Even without the scammy workshops the latter is dishonest and self-aggrandizing. It's sad when people who don't know any better get sucked in by this sort of sham.
Longtime Making Light lurker here. How dispiriting to see Web del Sol linked to this sort of verbiform pollution.
Web del Sol was one of the first on-line venues for literary publishing; I worked for them as a volunteer years ago. Since then, on-line resources for writers in the literary market have leapfrogged past Web del Sol, which, like most portal sites, hasn't seemed to accomplish much to justify its independent existence. (The Algonkian Workshops were presumably such an attempt.)
Small correction: while the gulf between the micro-world of literary journal publishing and the much larger world of commercial publishing is huge, some of the journals listed by Michael Neff in his bio are in fact paying markets. (Whether they could be classed as commercial markets is another question, since most literary journals derive significant proportions of their income from grants, institutional subvention, etc., rather than from sales.)
There once was a self-proclaimed Bitch
Whose career was nine-tenths bait-and-switch.
Till some Persons of Letters
Thought she'd do well with feathers--
And a seminar, gratis, in Pitch.
#30: Oh no, there is no anger here, just mockery.
And you make a lovely pinata.
I swear, Dogbert Consulting Company has manifested itself in the world.
#50 Fiendish Writer, I too don't understand why she thinks we're flaming her (her comment #30), except that it's easier to dismiss the criticism that way and play the martyr. Although that doesn't fit into her "tough as her spiked heels" persona she's trying to project.
Hint to TPB, your slip is showing, darling. Might want to see to that.
If we were going to flame her, we'd just start by transposing the words in her screen name. Only "Bitch The Pitch" doesn't work. In the world of flames, that's just a freebie.
I don't think Adams invented Dogbert Consulting Company any more than Eco invented the scam publisher in Foucault's Pendulum. They're both fictionalized caricatures of real-life scams.
Oh yeah, the slush exists—just like dive bars and VFW wedding receptions exist.
As someone whose (entirely satisfactory)wedding reception was held at an American Legion hall, I am very glad we didn't invite Miss Noonan.
#54 Bill Higgins--Yeah, and what does she have against dive bars? I love dive bars!
Um...thanks, but I didn't make up that thing about not being entitled to your own facts. I was just quoting it. I think I got it here, maybe from Patrick?
Or were you teasing me for saying it just as if I were just thinking it up? I didn't attribute it. Wikipedia attributes it to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, which seems likely.
Btw it seems it's quoted without attribution all over the web.
Yeah, and what does she have against dive bars? I love dive bars!
Those are those icecream things, right?
Oh wait.
Ethan @ 55: if it ain't a dive, it ain't a bar.
I'd also bet your average VFW wedding reception is a lot fuller of warmth and genuine celebration than the monstrous Bridezilla-style affairs that crop up in overpriced venues every weekend.
(My event photographer-husband's favorite TV show is "Bridezillas." Nothing says "future marital bliss" like a coked-out PR-type screaming over the late arrival of her $15,000-a-gig troupe of former Cirque de Soleil acrobats.)
Pitch Bitch (30), is that the best invective you can manage? I'd have hoped for better from someone who has "Bitch" in the title of her weblog.
RE: The Todd James Pierce Connection
There I was, merrily following the links, when I got to the Algonkian Workshop's interview with TJP and found this gem:
Versatile enough to publish short stories while simultaneously setting his sights on novels
I can't wait to apply this new concept of versatility to my own life. I strive for the day when I can be versatile enough to pat my head while simultaneously endeavoring to rub my tummy.
Listen kittens, there are ways to bypass the slush pile.
Hiya, Kaley!
Tell me -- how's that working out for you? Bypassed the slush pile yourself yet?
Oh, Teresa, I don't know..."Have a fab day, kittens" has me quaking in my stylish, yet affordable, boots.
Starving artists don't produce deathless prose.
They don't paint timeless landscapes beloved of arts students for generations to come.
They push up daisies... which doesn't have much to do with "art."
Or does "Pitch Bitch" mean that anyone who calls him/her/itself an artiste is entitled to a middle-class salary just for being an artiste, even one who produces three or four short poems a year?
P.S. For even more fun, run down the actual publication credentials of the writing and publishing faculty at Emerson. Hint: There are several vanity presses in there... and not just for poetry, where that's more "normal" (even if still a rip-off).
I'll make some money "publishing" bad art,
capitalise on all that vanity and pride,
take simple folks and their cash for a ride,
and make believe I really give a fart
for all they say, pretend I have a heart
that's not as dead and wizened as my hide.
If I can do this and simultaneous deride
the carping critics I'll have done my part
to make the world a danker, nastier place
where vultures like myself can find weak prey
and curse the ones who try to make us go.
I'm a real expert, for if you seek to trace
my achievements all disappears into the grey
of winter, my job, indeed's, to snow.
More evidence that "snark" in the hands of the inexperienced can be a dangerous thing.
Well, hell's bells. If she's an editor, so am I.
I have not finished a college degree, I make $12.75 an hour, but I can cut, size, and restitch academic articles better than a lot of people who have PhDs.
I can also tell pretty closely who will and won't fare well in peer review. And, even more impressive, I've had articles published, and I live in Maine and eke out a miserable living too. In publishing, no less.
Maybe I'm in the wrong racket.
Please stop snarking at the poor defenseless target, everyone; all this sarcastic chuckling is giving me a severe pain in my Unique Artistic Vision.
Hmm.
Nyrond's Addendum to Yog's Law;
"but seldom very fast."
#59: If it ain't a dive, it ain't a bar.
Thus the need for the term "cocktail lounge."
Incidentally, our wedding reception was at the American Legion hall, too, and we were quite satisfied with it.
#30: Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzt! I'm sorry, you have failed the reading comprehension part of the contest, and so win neither respect nor Googlejuice. You do, however, get a copy of our home game, and some packages of Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco Treat.
From original post:
Look at this post (Its subtitle, A No-Excuses Truth to Understanding The Publishing Industry, is almost enough on its own.)
That link doesn't work anymore. Is that cockroaches I hear scurrying?
jennie @46
Your point, in slightly allusive verse:
The road beside the river tends to flood
When autumn storms bring rainfall to the hills.
Your wagons and your horses, mired in mud
Are trapped until the water rises, and it kills.
The mountain passes close with winter snows,
The desert's parched in summer's white-hot days.
The road that looks the safest often goes
To nothing but a hovel, thick with strays.
A canny guide is worth her weight in gold
When maps are not enough, and no one knows
When caution suits and when you must be bold,
And when to give up on the route you chose.
You wouldn't trust a guide who'd never been
Along the road, and learned from what she's seen.
(OK, now I really have to do some work.)
I don't think these guys are villains. Kaley Noonan may not know squat about trade publishing, and Michael Neff may have built an entire writing and workshopping career around non-paying literary fanzines, but no way are they in the same class as American Book Publishing, Linda Dockery, Barbara Bauer, Robert Fletcher, or PublishAmerica.
And yes, Greg London (72), that post has disappeared. You can still get the flavor of it from the first of the two spams I quoted.
PublishAmerica is so tempting a target that if I had a bit more time I think Betty Swallocks would be frantically working to get her DETECTIVE NWAR masterpiece ready to submit to them.
For $595, they could make me what they are?
Hmm. I fail to see the selling point.
elise @77:
You don't want to develop a narrative voice straight out of Heathers? Are you sure? Kitten?
Teresa @74:
I don't know if they're villains. But a blog that claims to have the Inside Dirt on the Publishing Industry, and serves only to divert authors' energy strikes me as, to a lesser degree, the equivalent of the witch doctors who "treat" patients until the cancer is incurable or the cataracts have made them blind.
It wastes time, wastes hearts, wastes courage and wastes joy. It's possible that this one does this in good faith, which would be a mitigation.
What I'm waiting for is the response.
Kaley Noonan now does have a reputation, as a shameless charlatan. From here on when anyone looks up her name; an agent, a publishing house, a reviewer, what they'll find is her history of misrepresentation.
That's gotta hurt. That's gonna hurt more.
I wonder if the folks involved in this debacle will somehow try and come clean and redeem what they can of their professional reputations? Or will they lay low hoping it all just goes`away (but Google doesn't forget.)
To dismiss and demean such esteemed and high-quality literary journals as Conjuctions, The Literary Review, Black Warrior, and many others as simply "non-paying literary fanzines" nt nly shws th dpth f yr gnrnc, Trs, bt scry cptlst prsn. r y Rpblcn f sm srt? Wrtng s nly t b jdgd by hw wll t pys? Thn y'r wr tht D VNC CD mst b bttr thn ny SF vr pblshd by TR bcs t sld nfntly mr cpy? nd ny bt f mrnc, clch swll pblshd ths dys n n SF rg mst b bttr thn ny pm vr pblshd tht md lss mny r n mny?
Gt ff yr BS hgh hrs. Mthnks hr lttl cmmrcl dgs brkng t p stn by bggr dg.
JF
Teresa has a scary capitalist persona, and might even secretly be a Republican... Say it ain't so.
Of course, as we all well know, Democrats hate making money. Thus, if one likes making money, one can't be anything but a Republican. (I remember how shocked my Republican father-in-law was upon discovering that the hubbies of his daughters all like the accumulation of pecuniary resources.)
She certainly lacks Miss Snark's wit, charm, and nice manners, which is reason enough for such bitterness of 'tude.
Those in the industry who might have helped K.N.'s career are now all too aware of her name in a negative sense.
Ms. Noonan has shot herself in the foot enough for one planetary rotation. Time to limp home and consider wiser options than writing more blog rants that beg for mockage.
Julie Field #80: If there's a dog here, her name is Julie, and she is barking up the wrong tree.
"The authors have deleted this blog. The content is no longer available."
You want to hear someone dismiss and demean such high-toned literary fanzines as Conjuctions, The Literary Review, and Black Warrior? Sure. They specialize in boring stories about dull people whose trivial problems have obvious solutions.
And the writing isn't all that good, either. Sure, I know about Sturgeon's Law. But in literary prose it's closer to 99% than 90.
At least Dan Brown convinced thousands of non-lit'ry people to donate their money and their time for his words. The folks who write for Conjunctions, et al.? They're hard-pressed to get the other MFAs to read their stuff. What really burns Kaley's bush is that Dan Brown made it out of the slush pile and she didn't.
You want the secret to avoiding the slush pile? Send your material to p/a/y/s/-/i/n/-/c/o/p/i/e/s/ free literary e-zines. They'll take anything. As long as it's unreadable.
Julie L #85: Not you!! Sorry.
Julie L #85: Not you!! Sorry.
Julie Field@80: To dismiss and demean such esteemed and high-quality literary journals as Conjuctions, The Literary Review, Black Warrior, and many others as simply "non-paying literary fanzines" not only shows the depth of your ignorance, Teresa, but a scary capitalist persona.
Wow, these folks really have problems with reading comprehension. Would you like to point out where Teresa "dismisses and dismeans" those journals, Julia? Was it where she noted that they don't pay? This may come as a surprise to you, but being published in markets that don't pay don't make you an expert on the industry.
That says nothing about the quality of the market or the works in it. Several SF markets that pay pennies consistently publish work that wins awards and critical acclaim. But if you're claiming to be an expert on the industry, that means you deal with the commercial side of it, and that means getting paid.
As for the supposed depth of her ignorance--child, someday you may know enough about the woman you're talking about to be embarrassed by that remark.
Get off your BS high horse. Methinks I hear little commercial dogs barking at a pee stain by a bigger dog.
Bit of a logic problem here. Who're the little dogs? I thought you all were supposed to be the little ferocious outsiders, barking at the monolithic publishing industry. Now you're the big dogs? And yet...you have no publishing success, no insider experience...how does that work, again?
From Conjunctions (from December '06, so it's recent):
"Flood" by David Shields.
This is written by someone who's never in his life slept in a wet sleeping bag, or tried to walk in the woods on a starless, moonless night. Where's the light coming from, David, for your first-person narrator to see the things he sees?
"The underside of the porch drips rain like a child peeing." Let's assume there's enough light for you to see that. Do childen drip when they pee? What are you trying to say?
"She likes the smell of bathrooms, mirrors, warm toilet seats." Does your perfect Carla really spend a lot of time smelling warm toilet seats? Or was that just clumsily phrased?
What happens in this story? Plot summary: The narrator isn't smart enough to come in out of the rain, but Carla, apparently, is.
At least I didn't have to pay anything to read this. At least it was short.
Would someone -- anyone -- care to defend this waste of pixels?
#80: I don't think the term "fanzine" is pejorative, certainly not in this context. It's also completely fair to point out that expertise in non-paying markets doesn't necessarily imply expertise in commercial publishing.
Oh well. At least Kaley Noonan has apparently reconsidered her venture.
T Th Drns f Tr,
Y wld ll prfr ln btt ntnn jmmd p yr nss t rl ltrtr. Hv y sn tht lkwrm pp tht Trs Hydn clls fctn? mn, th stff sh wrt? 'll bt sh's bn rjctd frm rl ltrry mgs nd tht's why sh's n th ttck hr.
Cllng gd ltrry jrnls "fnzns" s bth nccrt nd nsltng. t ws mnt t b.
I haven't seen a comment thread get this nasty in a while (though I don't read all comment threads). How did a situation where a self-proclaimed Insider turned out not to be turn into snarling?
Sometimes the world just doesn't listen when I want everyone to be friends. Alas for reality.
When that I was and a little bitty Bitch,
(With hey, ho, the Merry Drones of Tor)
A foolish blog did scratch my itch,
(For the drones they drone on ever more)
But when I came to make my Pitch,
(With hey, ho, the Merry Drones of Tor)
'Gainst knaves and thieves they pulled the switch.
(For the drones they drone on ever more)
But when alas I came to write
By swaggering could I never thrive,
And then my "friends" did raise their heads
With sockpuppets still I earn my bread
Not long ago my blog began
(With hey, ho, the Merry Drones of Tor)
But that's all done, Teresa's won
And abi'll write a sonnet every day
You would all prefer alien butt antenna jammed up your noses to real literature.
Yes, so what's your point?
Fanzines. Insulting? Perhaps. Accurate? Definitely.
Have you seen that lukewarm pap that Teresa Hayden calls fiction? I mean, the stuff she wrote?
No, and neither have you. Teresa doesn't write fiction. That Bitter Rejected Author fantasy of yours is just a square on the Bingo Card.
I do write fiction. Back when I started trying to publish commercially I listed "little and literary" credits in my first couple of cover letters. The Lit'ry Magazines didn't reject me. I dropped them when I figured out exactly how meaningless they were.
(And those were in the days of paper Lit'ry magazines. At least they paid in copies. What do the on-line 'zines pay in? Electrons?)
I also read literature. Real literature. I love it. It isn't in the literary e-zines. The literary e-zines are a refuge for the poseurs, the artistes, and the wannabees.
Don't try to sling words here, Molly. You're in the presence of people who actually can.
Calling good literary journals "fanzines" is both inaccurate and insulting. It was meant to be.
molly, if you spent much time here, you'd know that "fanzine" isn't a pejorative term at all. we are, you see, fans.
it is a comment however, on how "inside the publishing industry" a person whose work has only appeared in fanzines could be. fanzines can be repositories of great art, but they are, by definition, on the fringes....
nevermind. i'll stop feeding the troll now.
Julie Field@#80, Molly@#94: You do realize that you're making fools of yourselves in public, don't you?
How did a situation where a self-proclaimed Insider turned out not to be turn into snarling?
The MFAs, sensitive souls that they are, perceive that they're getting laughed at.
#92 James D. Macdonald, "Would someone -- anyone -- care to defend this waste of pixels?"
Oh, Jeeze. I'm going to get another scar from banging my head against the wall to get the stupid out that story/poem/whatever it was tried to get in. All I can say is that, way, too, many, damn, commas. I don't think it's a comma splice issue, I think it's death by a thousand commas. At least there's whale puke in there (really, there is). I doubt the author knows that's what the word means, only that it relates to "Pair-foom-airy."
So, have I crossed into the insulting side of this argument? Silly me.
Mr Macdonald, you have no idea how satisfying it is to me to have someone of your stature say what I have been having underground thoughts about for years.
At one stage, I had to attend a sort of literary salon where I was asked, perfectly po-faced, whether I found the act of commercial publication perhaps a little, well, um...
I answered cheerfully that it didn't require half so much pimping myself out as getting the Masters (Creative Writing) which was the reason I had to attend the sort-of literary salon. The conversation went south after that, alas.
At the government-funded "writers' house" where they paid me to present a "workshop" (which wasn't a workshop, but that's another story) I got asked whether it wasn't galling to have to put work in front of people who simply didn't understand, you know, its real artistic merits. I said something like, "Yes, indeed, not only don't they pay you, but you're out the postage as well."
Funny looks you get at government-funded "writers' houses".
The same place is talking about getting an actual anthology of their work out, but very few stories have been submitted, because the proposal is to get a grant and employ a, you know, professional editor with actual selection powers. Two of the leading lights remarked that they didn't feel quite right about being submitted to scrutiny in this way. A committee of members would be better.
Heigh-ho. Well, back to pimping myself out for commercial scrutiny.
Re: me@91: ARGH! "doesn't make you." Time for new glasses. Or to switch to the "Larger type" option, up-page, so I can see what the hell I'm typing.
So, we have a devotion of Snarklings. What's the collective noun for drones of Tor?* And do I get to be a drone? As I recall, drones get to make new queens by choosing who to feed royal jelly to. That would be kewl. Can I, can I, huh, oh great Tor-people? Pleeeeeease?
*"Hive" is obvious, but it sounds itchy.
I meant more #92, which is public bashing of stories from people who aren't involved in this. It seemed unnecessarily nasty, which may have been part of what you were trying to do-- show that Teresa was not particularly insulting by demonstrating what insulting really looks like-- but I like my conflicts simpler, with at least one side behaving well. Making Light comments show up on Google occasionally (the top hit for my name leads here) and the authors aren't really involved.
Like I said, I prefer simple conflicts. "That's not a knife. *This* is a knife!" might have motivated the post, but it comes out looking worse. It's easier to show that we are not the enemy if we don't rip bystanders to shreds.
Professor Doyle - I hear the 'woosh' sound when I read their posts.
If you'll excuse me, I'll go back to the other threads that include:
abi and Fragano's poetry
discussions of all things linguistic
handcrafts and fiber materials
commentary on literature in translation and language shift
amusing pet stories
debates of current events and politics
a remarkably small amount of SFF colloquy
#94 I don't mean this to be insulting or an attack. I'm hoping that you'll please play nice.
Now--stating the obvious here, but 'literary' is a genre like any other, albeit one that focuses on a theme, generally 'exploration of the self', rather than more easily-waved-about features of setting or style.
Like all genres, literary fiction has its freebee, publish-on-acceptance zines. Some of these will be reasonably good, some not so good.
The reality is, however, that on average any writer who feels that his/her work is of a standard to warrant payment will send it off to the bigger and more lucrative markets first. Writers, after all, like to eat too.
The result is that (again, generally speaking) paying markets will showcase a better quality of fiction than non-paying markets, simply because they have the first pick of the subs.
So, to be blunt, if you want 'quality' literary magazines you'd be better off investing time and effort in reading 'The New Yorker', 'The London Review of Books' or 'Meanjin'. All are paying markets, well respected, and at least reasonably well know.
I suppose, in a round-about way I'm saying that no-one here is attacking literary magazines or the genre in general. What has been pointed out (rightly) is that freebee online zines are nothing more or less than freebee online zines--and it's not sensible to claim vast publishing experience on the basis working for such a magazine.
A pattern is beginning to emerge here. I've long noted that people with MBAs are damn touchy about their work. They tend to think that their opinions are more valuable simply by virtue of their having that degree. Sometimes they actually think their facts are automatically better. This isn't SO bad when the topic is their area of expertise...but I've had MBAs try to tell me about linguistics.
Now it appears that MFAs may, in some cases, have the same effect. So the M[B | F]A degree is a marker of assholism?
Further study is needed.
So, we have a devotion of Snarklings. What's the collective noun for drones of Tor?*
Perhaps swarm?
I... Uh...
Oh, hell.
Mabel, git my shotgun. We've been overrun by varmints.
As I recall, drones get to make new queens by choosing who to feed royal jelly to.
Actually I think the Workers control the means of production.
Xopher@112: Oh, hell, that's right. The drones are the males. (Time to review apiculture, or get some sleep.) Well, that's not nearly as much fun. Dang.
Still, we could get "Tor Drone" T-shirts. "Two pens enter, one pen leaves"?
Definitely sleep.
Re: 113: Okay, so you folks like to pick on ezine people? MFA's are a detriment I suppose?
Wow. These people really do not get reading comprehension at all.
When's the last time TOR book was made into a film?
When was one of yours?
Side note: If you're trying to pretend you're not the same person, or in the same group, you might want to watch out for miswriting the same proper name in the same way in different posts with different names attached. Just sayin'.
Or when has one of your select group written a nonfiction book about something real, and not related to "How to Get Published."
Well, you could use Google to find out, but since that was just a shot and not an actual inquiry, I'm sure you won't bother. But I'm confused--now "How to Get Published" is bad and lame? Because when you were doing it, you made it sound so hip and cool.
Call me paranoid, but I think "Benedict Arnold" up at #113 is actually Mrk Yrk. View All By (thank the tech gods it's working again) show that "Benedict" has two posts, one of which is at #113. Both of which try to link to "Aga inst a Rap id Stre am" by guess fricken who.
Well, let's examine what the brilliant writer, Chris Johnstone has to say!
Here we go from post #108:
Chris Johnstone says: "The result is that (again, generally speaking) paying markets will showcase a better quality of fiction than non-paying markets, simply because they have the first pick of the subs."
Assuming, of course, that in your scenario all America's good fiction writers are following the Chris Johnstone formula and ONLY sending their work to paying mags. Also, it assumes no self-respecting fiction writer would want to be published in a mag that doesn't pay enough. Yes?
"So, to be blunt... "
Yes, be blunt Chris Johstone.
"if you want 'quality' literary magazines you'd be better off investing time and effort in reading 'The New Yorker', 'The London Review of Books' or 'Meanjin'. All are paying markets, well respected, and at least reasonably well know."
Mnjn? Wht bt Ztrp? Nw thr's gd pyng mrkt, ys? S thrfr, ccrdng t th brllnt pstr, th bst fctn MST b n Ztrp bcs t pys mr. ndd, th mr th rg pys, th bttr th fctn bcms, rght? t's tht smpl! Dmn!
Lt's lk t sm f Chrs Jhnstns rcnt plcs t snd hs "wrk" ...:
Th Hntng f Mrs Hggns - Fntsy nd Scnc Fctn, S
Th Pstmn's Nw Cstmrs - Wrd Tls, S
Rd f Lng Brdn - Shmmr, rlnd
Chtng th Ms - ntrglctc Mdcn Shw, S
Dn't th ttls snd hrrbly rgnl? Nw, lt's ssm th fctn f Chrs Jhnstn gts pblshd n n f ths ptrd rckt rgs tht rk f crtn chrctrs nd prdctbl plts, thn t gs wtht syng tht HS fctn MST b bttr thn nythng tht hs vr pprd n, lt's sy, Qrtrly Wst r Prr Schnr. Why? Bcs ntrgltc Mdcn Shw pys bttr!
It's all so logical.
Thank you Chris Johnstone. Y wldn't knw gd fctn f t kckd y n th blls.
While Jim's perfectly capable of defending himself, "Who the hell are you besides a hermit in Colebrook NH?" is probably not a good question to ask.
He's an EMT. He saves lives.
He has a wife and a bunch of kids, which is not exactly typical of hermits.
He's an instructor at Viable Paradise, teaching other people how to write.
He's a veteran of the U.S. Navy.
Who are you to belittle him?
Hey, Julie: Just so you know what kind of pissing match you're about to get into, you might want to read the message threads here:
Todd James Pierce Part I
Todd James Pierce Part II
Also, consider that you just ripped into one of the few people here who was treating you like a person capable of rational discussion. Good move.
Good call, Greg.
mrk,
a novel with fictional scenarios? horrors!
I'd like to apologize to Julie and her crowd for mistaking Mrk.Yrk for one of them. Y'all are obnoxious and not too well researched, but you're not on Mrk.Yrk's level. All I can say in my defense is that sometimes he starts out sounding almost coherent.
Hm, I can see how this story is going to end:
one by one, without any fuss, the vowels were going out.
Wow, I wish I had fictional scenarious like Jim's. I could tell some author about them and offer to split the money if he writes the novel.
And yes, Benedict Arnold, you are clearly Mrk Yrk. Go Yrk off somewhere else.
My work here is done.
Would that that were true. Will no one rid us of this tiresome wanker?
Will no one rid us of this tiresome wanker?
Gee, thanks for that mental image, Xopher. I'm sure I'll be able to sleep now.
And to Debra Doyle of #101
http://www.sff.net/people/doylemacdonald/
Ths hvng ld f bd SF nt nly mks fl f y, n pblc, bt dmnshs th dgnty f th hmn rc, rthr lk Rnld McDnld.
My rcmmndtn s t t yrslf t rck n th dsrt nd swt t yr nnr trll. Nxt, tk ll yr bks, sl thm n brrl wth trch, nd thn dpth-chrg thm nt th cn, t lst 50 mls ffshr.
Nxt, plgz t th hmn rc v th ntrnt nd swr y'll stp wrtng frvr.
Xopher, "tiresome wanker" is precisely the problem. Posting aimless abuse here is part of his kink.
Julie Field@131: This heaving load of bad SF not only makes a fool of you, in public
Man, doesn't it just kill you that more people have paid money for her books than will ever know your name?
Mrk Yrk, you're still incoherent. I'm sure you think you're being "subtle," but actually it's that your word-salad is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Seriously, Xopher, don't give him what he wants. He's probably sitting there right now with one hand on the mouse and the other hand not on the mouse.
Awww, Teresa, there was more candy in him! Oh well.
Seriously, good riddance. Thanks.
Yes, I know. I'm sure the brief intervals between his appearances here...well, calling them 'refractory periods' seems appropriate.
Xopher, that isn't candy.
In the meantime, anybody here want to see what they can make of the IP address 4.249.15.21 ?
Well, sleep is out of the question now.
Ew.
Julie Field, I'm getting the impression that you think that life has no penalties for being rude.
I'm going to assume you're Kayley Noonan unless and until I'm presented with compelling evidence to the contrary. What we know from innumerable online dust-ups is that when a writer is spoken of unkindly, and an online persona with no prior history of posting pops up to defend them, turn after turn after turn, that persona is almost always the writer in question.
Neither of my non-fiction books were about How To Get Published (though I will note that Pants-on-Fire Pierce has a book on How To Write). None of my newspaper feature articles were about how to get published either.
Perhaps dragging bystanders into this is wrong (though my comments on "Flood" and that thing in Black Warrior (another part of the Web Del Sol nexus) were mild). My comments were intended not to dismay the individual authors, who were no doubt doing the best they could, but to comment on the e-zines that "Julie Field" holds up as "high quality" models, not to be dismissed or demeaned.
Unfortunately, "Julie Field" is a common name -- too common to be sure if some story out there is hers. "Molly" is even worse. Lots and lots of Mollys in the world. If either cares to link to something they've published...? Or shall I just imagine that Molly's fiction is as bad as she imagines Teresa's would be, if Teresa wrote fiction? Shall I imagine that Julie Field was rejected by Tor?
No, just as I use my real name, I link to real examples that anyone can look at to see for themselves.
To spell this out for the MFAs (who really do seem to have reading comprehension difficulties -- is that why they like their literary 'zines so much?) the problem isn't that Pitch Bitch is a literary author. The problem is that she's selling snake oil for six hundred bucks a bottle.
She's pretending she can teach others something that she personally doesn't know.
To JAMES MACDONALD of ALL OVER:
http://www.sff.net/people/doylemacdonald/
As for writers, ace, you can't even write decent SF. Who would be fool enough to buy a book with a horrible cliche title like LAND OF MIST AND SNOW? It's sooooo bad it makes me ill. How pathetic of you to pretend to be a writer and hang out here like some kind of redneck curmudgeon attacking literary magazines. Conjunctions and those other journals are so far beyond your capability it's like comparing pearls to swine and guess who is the swine? You will never be able to write as well as the writers in those journals and that makes you furious and bitter.
It's so evident in everything you say!
And Terese DOES write fiction. It's even better than yours, which isn't saying much.
And btw, your lack of taste even shows in that putrid web page you use to showcase your garbage.
according to "tracert", the last stop of that IP address is:
dialup-4.249.15.21.Dial1.Washington2.Level3.net
Another site places it in Washington DC, specifically.
I assume "dialup" means its a modem that subscribers can dial into to access the internet, which means someone is trying to cover their tracks.
Maybe some web head can figure out more.
Well, let's see, #113. Do books designed to teach high school students with low reading skills about American law and history count as being about "something real"? I have had two of those published commercially. With advances and royalties.
So I guess that's at least one of us.
Oh, has anyone mentioned the kinds of books TNH used to edit? Hint: She's got academic chops, too.
"Or when has one of your select group written a nonfiction book about something real, and not related to "How to Get Published."(?)
As in also gotten it published, by a regular paying publisher, sold in actual bookstores, got critical attention, got paid an advance for it, am getting royalties? That stuff?
Is there any point in answering "I have, three times now, and what's your point?"
"Julie Field" is posting from a dialup in Washington, DC. "The Pitch Bitch" posted from Maine. So no match there.
I just want to make it clear that "Molly" (94), a.k.a. MollyJones@aol.com, is no relation at all to Red Molly.
And who is MollyJones@aol.com? Danged if I know. See what you can do with 01.23.07 .
Re 146:
It may not be a dialup at all.
The Dial1 designation indicates only that it can handle dialup traffic — not that all of the traffic it handles is dialup. Many AOL-, UUNet-, and backbone-controlled servers have maintained old-style names to avoid having to rename machines and rebuild indices and traffic-management cascades. (As an aside, the machine's actual location is Ashburn, Virginia, where UUNet used to have a major server farm.)
Okay, "Julie Field," I take that as a challenge.
I'll let you know when my stories appear in Conjunction and Black Warrior. I think I have some unreadable tripe in the bottom of my desk drawer that I can send them.
Who would be fool enough to buy a book with a horrible cliche title like LAND OF MIST AND SNOW?
Well, Avon/Eos. And several thousand people who could have walked right by it, but didn't.
Ever get published, anywhere, by anyone, "Julie"?
I'll take a credit from an on-line literary fanzine. Heck, for you, I'll even take PublishAmerica as a credit.
Aconite at #105 - How about "Torks" for a collective noun choice? Using the Warhammer 40K spelling of Ork, rather than the more traditional 'c'. (I also offer the John Normanity of "Slaves of Tor" as a runner-up.)
For what it's worth, the view from someone outside the publishing industry is that the "big dogs" of literary fanzines posting on this blog are coming across as Internet kooks who really don't have anything better to do than make fools of themselves on the Internet. (No, I don't expect this to change anyone's behavior, but I believe in the ritual value of rescue-making gestures.)
Not a good idea to threaten me, Terese. You're a coward. You turn your minions loose to act as judge and jury then you deus-ex-machina in to dispense justice? Just what are you going to do? Get me fired from my job?
You'll hear from an attorney, dear, if you try anything beyond the petty. And I can drive to Brooklyn in 40 minutes or less and stop by the Tor office for a chat with your husband and his boss. Would that suit you? And that's just for starters.
And I'm not KN. Believe whatever you want. I'm just irritated beyond belief by the arrogance and ignorance of your acolytes.
I've had enough though. It's like baiting alien space monkeys from the land of snow and mist. LOL.
Aloha
JF
Greg(@146) I've typically seen 'dialup' on any kind of non-nailed-up 'net access, including (in the past, at least) dynamic IP high-speed access.
Level 3's a large-scale backbone provider that amongst other things does colocation and managed dialup service, which could in theory mean that it's someone's dialup to a small business or organization's machine. It's vaguely possible it might be a small local ISP, assuming those still exist. (I wouldn't expect something larger, simply because I'd expect there to be someone else's namespace involved if so.)
Charlie (147), I'm just wondering about this supposed fiction of mine that Mlly so disdains. Unless I'm suffering a serious lapse of memory, it doesn't exist. I edit fiction. I write essays. Mlly is thick as two short planks.
Teresa, if you have a MS-Windows machine, bring up a DOS prompt and type "tracert nn.nn.nn.nn", where "n" is the IP address you want to look at.
It will give a list of all the stop over points between you and the final destination. The last entry will be the interesting one.
Looks at them squirming around to find the culprits to they can do harm. FungiHA will break out FungiHA stick to beat these little Avon sucky sucky writers. Yes, sucky sucky sucky no good SF poopie woopie stoopids all squirmy woormy around big old mama Terese at least 50. Mama Terese stomp her little feetums in anger at FungiHA HA HA stick. Slap slap them all I say, yessssssssssssssssssssssssssss.
I'm seeing some arrogance and ignorance here, and it isn't mine.
I take it, then, "Julie," that you've never published anything? Not terribly surprising, I must say.
No, Teresa won't try to get you fired from your job, you silly git. Nor is she threatening you. Your own efforts have already gotten you laughed at all across cyberspace. No fair trying to give her credit for your words.
I can't believe it. These doinkbrains think I use "fanzine" as a pejorative term. What is this, National Forget How to Google Month?
Fungi, could you clarify that just a bit?
I think MrkYrk is wearing a Fungi suit.
Teresa, I'm pretty sure these doinkbrains are using their own patented Wiki-of-the-contrary or possibly just pulling things from any handy orifice.
Julie Field might be this Julie Field
It's a student comment for a NYC Pitch and Shop conference for first novels.
Whether she is also Pitch Bitch, I have no clue. But if this is her comment, she's never been published.
Wow, Greg. I think you may be on to something. That's the NYC Pitch and Shop, eh? And our "Julie" claims she lives within 40 minutes of Brooklyn.
Let's see... let's see... if that's our Julie, when she visits Tor she can say "Hi" to one of the Pitch and Shop faculty members, Anna Genoese, whose office is right down the hall from Teresa's. And maybe she can say "Hi" for me to another faculty member, Diana Gill, who was the person who was fool enough to buy a book with a horrible cliche title like LAND OF MIST AND SNOW.
(The title, BTW, is an allusion to Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner. And to think, this whole time I thought lit'ry types liked literary allusions. Must all my gods have feet of clay? Curse you, Julie Field!)
If Julie Field shows up at the Tor offices, please, please, please have a videocamera handy. I want to see that encounter on YouTube.
Drags up chair.
Drags up table.
Pulls out blender. Makes and pours drinks. Puts fruit on toothpick-umbrellas. Offers drinks all around.
Wow. Shades of a tacky awkward 'roid rage. Can't look away.
Hey, Julie,
I'm curious. Did you do any research before you started posting here? Have you read any other threads on ML, to get a sense of the local community? Do you know what it takes to build a blog which can get hundreds of comments per post?
And, by the way, did you write the story "A Talk of the Rockies"?
There is a Julie Field account on Lulu. No published material. She appears to only post 3 times on the community forum. At least two fo them are spamming for the pitch conference.
A comment in the Lulu forums by Julie Fields talking about Pitch conferences.
Another comment here.
A comment by Julie Field over at Evil Editor defending Pitch events.
Hmmmm. The Wikipedia entry mentions chapter 15 of Atlanta Nights. Does that count as fiction that TNH has written? ;)
OK, this is creeping me out.
THere is a Lulu thread in their community forum talking about the NYC Pitch conference over here
People who posted a positive experience of the conference on Lulu's thread include:
William Holland
Julie Field
Guy Forcucci
Alice B
Susan Breen
Amy Hanson
Lisa Buie-Collard
Barbara Keegan
Kristine Tate
Greg Bascom
Richard Romfh
Every single person in this list only made maybe only 1 or only a few posts total to Lulu's forum. All posts occur from August 4 through August 7. Every single one fo these poeple created an accoutn, made a post, and then dropped out of sight. None of them have any published content on Lulu.
More weirdly, every single person in the above list was also compelled to make a comment on the Pitch Conference Student comment section here:
If I didn't fricken know better, I'd say every single one of these names are nothing but sock puppets.
The last post on the Lulu thread is by Kaley Noonan , spamming the URL for
h t t p : / / w w w . w e b d e l s o l . c o m / A l g o n k i a n / C l a s s e s /
I'm just amused to realise that (a) Julie hasn't twigged that insulting SF on a SF interested blog is not a clever debating tactic, and (b) neither is misspelling the moderator's name.
I went through a conversation with some poster here once, misspelling their name every post for several days. I was rather mortified after I realised, and I was only having a spirited discussion, not a handbag at dawn affair. (At least on Julie's side.)
(Fungi)#158
Bwuh?
Gollum? Is that you?
It gets even freakier.
a number of student comments (I haven't checked them all) to the NYC pitch conference here appear to have been cut and pasted into the lulu forum over here
This is crying out "sock puppet" more and more.
Julie hasn't twigged that insulting SF on a SF interested blog is not a clever debating tactic
I thought it was just flat-out hilarious that when someone tried to be polite to her, she was openly scornful that they'd pitched to F&SF.
Because, you know, getting your short fiction into F&SF... well, it's only one of the most prestigious markets in the English-speaking world: Chris should obviously have had the good sense to be like Julie, and aim lower.
For the love of sweet glazed ham, Julie Field, look at the fucking letterhead! Before you start flaming someone, make sure you have their name right. If you're trying to claim that someone is ignorant and moreover bad at writing, you yourself have to take minimal precautions to not be an ignoramus who is bad at writing: which is to say, read their post at least enough to get their name right! Shee-it.
Other things that lose you huge points in a flamewar:
--Threatening someone with your physical presence, since 99% of the time you're lying to make yourself sound grand in your head, and the other 1% of the time you're a certifiable nutcase.
--Threatening a female that you'll tell her husband might fly on some places, but the blog of a New York editor is unlikely to be one of them, as New York editors are famously liberal, and liberals are generally feminists.
--Threats in general mean that you've lost the battle for the mind of the readers, which is all that's worth winning in a flame war.
I'm glad you're though; the history of UUNet backbones is pretty darn interesting, and the flamewar distracts from it.
Well, yes, Atlanta Nights. I suppose Teresa does have a fiction credit.
Do you know what would be hilarious? Getting a chapter of Atlanta Nights accepted by one of those demanding and prestigious lit'ry e-zines. I think I even know which one to use.
============
You'll hear from an attorney, dear ...
And a cartooney! Wow, the Bingo card is filling up fast.
============
There is a Lulu thread in their community forum talking about the NYC Pitch conference over here.
Want to see something else freaky? That entire thread was started by a "Dan Smith," and that post was his first and only post in the Lulu forum.
You don't suppose we're looking at "guerilla marketing," do you?
Greg (162), if that's true, I'll just let him float there until the keymaster shows up.
Onward. Let's have a word or two with Julie.
145: "To JAMES MACDONALD of ALL OVER:"Did you not think to check out the masthead? People here already know who Jim is.http://www.sff.net/people/doylemacdonald/
"As for writers, ace, you can't even write decent SF."Tactical error, Julie. No one's going to believe you're familiar with his work. You haven't even noticed that he's half of a writing team. He and Doyle are good and accomplished writers with a substantial following. (You probably aren't familiar with that last term. It signifies people who've bought, read, and enjoyed their previous works, and are on the lookout for more of it.)
Now, if you want really bad SF, you need look no further than Kayley Noonan. All of her stories that I've been able to track down have been wanna-be SF, and they're risibly bad. Mary Sue Whipple herself would bow down in awe before the stories where the girl's going around with a big old workboot pulled down over her head (only her mouth shows -- and yet she navigates!) as a way of trying to "force those around her to acknowledge her pain."
"Who would be fool enough to buy a book with a horrible cliche title like LAND OF MIST AND SNOW? It's sooooo bad it makes me ill."No, it doesn't. You're just pretending. And while we're on the subject? That's a junior high school trope. If that's the best you can come up with in the way of gratuitous insults, I can't imagine that you're a very good writer.
As for the question of who would buy Land of Mist and Snow, the answer is "at least two NYC trade book publishers --" (the other house got it), "-- plus the buyers for all the major bookstore chains, and a steadily increasing number of readers."
Turnabout is fair play: how many people have ever wanted to buy your work?
"How pathetic of you to pretend to be a writer"What a spiteful little bitch you are, and how graceless and unimaginative you are about expressing it.
Jim and his wife have been full-time professional authors for many years now, and are respected members of their community. You, on the other hand, are still paying to attend weekend conferences in order to get a few minutes of face time with some industry pro, and you're grateful for the opportunity.
When Doyle pointed out that you and Molly were making fools of yourselves in public, she was being kinder than you realized.
"and hang out here like some kind of redneck curmudgeon attacking literary magazines."SERENITY MOONFLOWER: Wh-why wasn't he dumbstruck by my scathing remark?
OTHER SPARKLYPOO STUDENT: I don't know. Everyone's been acting weird lately.*
"Conjunctions and those other journals are so far beyond your capability it's like comparing pearls to swine"Now, that is just plain embarrassing. The line you're actually thinking of is Matthew 7:6, "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you." (It's right after the bit that goes "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.") The idea that pearls are being compared to swine is a novel interpretation, and I don't mean that in a good way.
"and guess who is the swine?"Again, that's junior-high-level bitchiness. Being impressively nasty requires that you have control of your rhetorical stance and your tone.
"You will never be able to write as well as the writers in those journals"Then you have no hope at all, for he's a far better writer than you.
Tell me, Julie: why is it that all the instructors for the Algonkian Workshops who've made real paid professional sales are at such pains to feature them prominently in their bios? And why were you out trolling a pitch conference for editors, if you weren't hoping to have your work published in some more commercial venue?
"and that makes you furious and bitter."A note on achieving an adult style of rhetoric: In the real world, it's not usually an effective tactic to respond to criticisms with "Oh, you're just jealous."
I've known Jim for a long time. Believe me when I say that he's never spent a moment's time wishing his writing appeared in such places. He'd consider it a shocking waste of his time and effort.
By the way: are you defending those publications because they publish you, or because they turned you down?
"It's so evident in everything you say!"To be a good writer, you first need to be a good reader. You need to work on that one.
"And Terese DOES write fiction. It's even better than yours, which isn't saying much."You really have no idea how stupid you're being here. Would you care to point out some of this fiction, so we'll all know what you're talking about?
"And btw, your lack of taste even shows in that putrid web page you use to showcase your garbage."And you have stupid hair.
I suppose that it is worth mentioning that the word "fanzine", which we see as coming out of SF fandom over 70 years ago, has been adopted in other areas, and used in ways which are related, but different enough to be awkward.
But the general core of this remains: the magazine produced by enthusiasts for a topic, with little or no commercial gain. And there is a class of SF fanzine which does match the literary magazine in scaope and approach.
Nevertheless, if you want to get published, and paid for it, while such zines might teach you something, not all the experience transfers. And I'm not sure the experience of SF fandom, and SF zines, is applicable to writers choosing other genres. SF is small enough a community that, if you're in it, there are editors who will have heard of you. Which, if your writing is competent, will help get past that first rough filtering of the slushpile.
And some stranger throwing insults at an editor is, strange as it may seem, a stranger throwing insults at a friend.
I'm not sure that somebody who doesn't get that is ever going to get to the point of making friends and influencing people.
I'm now looking at the comments that went up while I was writing. The idea that "Julie" thinks our chapters in Atlanta Nights are representative samples of our writing is so bizarre that I still haven't fully assimilated it.
I'm going to bed. Please, someone else explain to Chicken Little how Atlanta Nights is not like other books.
And Greg? That's good work. I'm impressed.
I'm going to bed. Please, someone else explain to Chicken Little how Atlanta Nights is not like other books.
Waste of time. She wouldn't understand even if you drew pictures.
Teresa wrote at #179:
> The idea that "Julie" thinks our chapters in Atlanta Nights are representative samples of our writing is so bizarre that I still haven't fully assimilated it.
Did she come right out and say that - or was it a deduction on someone elses part?
I think I prefer the idea that you have a significant body of work that you've never noticed writing, and are living a Jeckyll and Hyde life. Or even a Jonathan Hoag life.
Wow....what a thread to come in on. I feel almost, but not quite sorry for Julie. If Atlanta Nights is the fiction she's basing her evaluation of everyone's mad writing skillz on, no wonder she's wibbling over the edge of sanity.
(Also, the PitchBitch blog seems to have disappeared in the twinkling of an eye, only without the resultant resurrection that usually follows.)
*sits back*
*wipes brow*
Phew. What a battlefield. Teresa, I bow to your patience. I don't know how you do it.
Steve @181: I think it was MWT @ 169 who first thought it might be an Atlanta Nights reference...
Well, it goes like this. "Julie" at #80 said of Teresa's fiction that, well, she didn't like it, essentially. Since the only fiction that Teresa's ever published was her chapter of that great sago of lust, passion and goo "Atlanta Nights", it would follow that "Julie" is referring to that. This, in turn, means "Julie" is either the most incompetent reader under God's heaven, or that she's ignorantly and hysterically screaming anything that comes to mind. I go for the latter, myself.
But Atlanta Nights is a wonderful novel! I mean, a Traditional Publisher accepted it, so it must be good!
Also, how about the "Tories" for the Merry Drones of Tor?
The Romanian for Drone is Trântor.
Julie Field@154: And I can drive to Brooklyn in 40 minutes or less and stop by the Tor office for a chat with your husband and his boss.
Teresa's husband. And his boss. Oh, my, my. The dmbss assumptions packed into that sentence are legion. Julie, you do not have the intellectual capabilities or maturity God gave a turnip. You're an enormous amount of fun to bat around, though.
Had you bothered to read the Todd James Pierce threads, you might have noticed--then again, maybe not, as your reading comprehension skills are positively abysmal--that many people here are very good at research, and quite comfortable with technology. Consider that, sooner or later, your real name is going to be linked with your onscreen handle, and that Google is forever. That's a warning, by the way, not a threat, though I doubt you understand the difference even when it's explicitly pointed out to you.
Eve, #185: please don't pin the word "Tory" on me. Ever. If you want to live. Please?
I'm just boggling that this has lasted so long. Julie, lesson #1 of life: when you discover you're in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.
ATTENTION: THE GOD EMPEROR OF WEB DEL SOL WILL ARRIVE SHORTLY TO MAKE A PRONOUNCEMENT!
Oh my. The pinata lives. And now it wears socks!
Speaking of livinge pinatas with socks... How was the State of the Union speech last night? I'm sure it wasn't as much fun as this, but one must ask.
Julie, I'm not sure what your damage is, but you're not doing yourself any favours.
This is a blog run by SF professionals: editors and writers. So the folks who read here tend to be people who like SF. Some of us also like literary fiction, but hey, if we wanted to discuss only literary fiction, we'd be off reading some other blog. Some of us don't like literary fiction.
Let me, however, make a distinction for you:
Author who has been paid money by a publisher (whether a magazine publisher or a book publisher) for their books = professional. Margaret Atwood is a professional author. Carol Sheilds is a professional author. James D. Macdonald is a professional author.
Person who works for a publisher that pays authors = publishing professional. Literary agent who sells to paying markets also = publishing professional. Teresa is a publishing professional. Patrick is a publishing professional. Miss Snark is also a publishing professional. I, gods help us all, am also a publishing professional, albeit not in trade, so I'm kind of in a different league.
I'm sorry if you don't like that cold fact. I'm sorry if you don't like it that some people here don't have a lot of time for the kind of literary fiction that appears in non-paying online publications. Me, I don't read much SF from non-paying markets, either, because life is too short to read amateur work for free (I get paid to read bad writing. It stops being fun when you do it all day.) I'm sorry if you haven't even read the mags to which the targets of your ire have sent their work, but feel that you must assert the superiority of your favoured publishing venues.
But, when we're talking about professional publishing—you know, the kind that pays—then we must concede that a paying publication, whether it be the New Yorker or Subterranean, is superior, from the point of view (you do know about point of view, right? Being a connoisseur of fiction and all) of a professional author. Sure, some fanzines (literary or genre-based) find the formula for consistently pubishing great work. But you know, if you're earning your living by your pen (or word processor, as the case may be) and you consistently give away your work, you're not going to last long.
Now, mayhap you prefer to read the stories in Prairie Schooner. Bully for you. Great. Toddle off and do so. Do come back when you've calmed down and can argue coherently. Or not.
Tantrums and insults such as "you wouldn't know good fiction if it kicked you in the balls" do nothing to demonstrate the validity of your arguments, if I may be so generous as to call them that, and they really won't do much to advance your cause here.
And when you've sold your first story to a paying publication, then you can style yourself a paid author, and mayhap you won't feel you've so much to prove. You'll forgive me, though, if I don't attend your first reading. Your prose here does nothing to entice me.
You do have a point there, Charlie. Never mind, bad idea there.
This is really great theater. I laughed, I cried, I snarked in my beer.
Oh, she's going to see Mr. Doherty (hey, lookie, I even know the name) about Patrick? Oh, that might be scary (makes "jazz hands" and says "ooooo"). So I have to ask, has anybody spoken for the popcorn concession license for the Tor Office? 'Cause that is going to be a great moneymaker. Although it's all going to be in presales as I don't expect the actual event to take too long.
Teresa (and I bet "I spelt that right 'cause I can copy 'n paste," unlike Julie), I think you're being way to generous in your usage of the term "bitch" to label her. I think she has a long road to walk before she can rise to that level. Mostly I see "whiner," One that isn't even as good at my 16 year-old niece. That may just be me.
Who would be fool enough to buy a book with a horrible cliche title like LAND OF MIST AND SNOW?
Me. And since I have never to my knowledge set eyes upon Mr. Macdonald nor exchanged any direct conversation with him, it's not because he's a buddy of mine, either. Next question?
Nt gd d t thrtn m, Trs. Y'r cwrd. Y trn yr mnns
Oh! Oh! Can I be a minion? I've never been a minion!
Jst wht r y gng t d? Gt m frd frm m jb?
No, the penalty for rudeness (the thing with consequences that Teresa was mentioning) here is to be disemvowelled, as several of your posts have been. It makes it harder to read them accidentally (or really at all, for me, but that's not generally a big loss). I have disemvowelled your quoted comments as an example.
nd cn drv t Brkln n 40 mnts r lss nd stp b th Tr ffc fr cht wth yr hsbnd nd hs bss. Wld tht st y? nd tht's jst fr strtrs.
Wow. Just...wow. The comments that come to mind are 1)If you have a problem with Teresa, why are you going to talk to Patrick? Is he supposed to keep his lil' woman in line or something? 2)What's Patrick's boss got to do with it? Is s/he supposed to tell Patrick to keep the lil' woman in line? 3)Perhaps you aren't aware that you can't delete comments you make to ML. That means that 4)If for some odd reason it actually comes to lawyers at 20 paces, there's going to be evidence that Teresa mentioned that being rude on ML has a consequence (disemvowelling) and you escalated it. Perhaps not the brightest move you've made this week.
And I can drive to Brooklyn in 40 minutes or less and stop by the Tor office for a chat with your husband and his boss. Would that suit you?
It would suit ME. Ohhh, how it would suit me. Especially if Patrick could maneuver her in front of a webcam.
Seriously, Julie: this is a great idea. You should absolutely follow through on this impulse. Do you need me to Mapquest some directions for you?
Nver been a minion, Carrie S? Not even a henchperson?
Nver been a minion, Carrie S? Not even a henchperson?
Alas, no. Somehow I always seem to miss the job fairs.
That entire thread was started by a "Dan Smith," and that post was his first and only post in the Lulu forum. You don't suppose we're looking at "guerilla marketing," do you?
Aw, shoot, I didn't even notice "Dan Smith" being a sock puppet. You'd think "Smith" anything should have set off a red flag for me. Point goes to you, Jim.
The entire thread was contrived spam from beginning to end. And they would have gotten away with it to if it hadn't been for you pesky kids. And their stupid dog.
woooby Woooby WOO!
I know I'm not going to say anything that others haven't already said better than I will, but, still, here goes.
I used to work as an Editorial Assistant for the Antioch Review, which is a fairly respected literary magazine.
Want to get out of the slush pile? Simple: WRITE WELL. AND COMPELLINGLY.
The Review regularly plucked first time contributors out of the slush pile--hell, even first time authors. One memorable essay came from a gentleman in prison, writing about being the projectionist for the prison's weekly movie night. It was fascinating, compelling, and well received.
It ain't rocket science. But writing well and compellingly is something that can't be solved by a $600 workshop.
The webcam hadn't occurred to me, Rivka. I was too busy thinking it would be a good plan for anyone planning on visiting Tor in order to demand that Tom Doherty tell Patrick Nielsen Hayden to rein in his wife to find out if the windows in the Flatiron Building opened or not, and making sure not to stand in front of any open stairwell doors. Because, you know, the force of the laughter from those present would be, um, well, I wouldn't want to be hit by the shockwave.
Holy fckn sht. Go to bed and it all hits the fan....
Is that JF girl smoking crack or what?
Thanks for the jump start to my day!
I'm amazed, and I was there for it last night.
The word we use for people at Tor is "Toroids".
Teresa @203: Yes, but the poor dear can't spell "Fluorospheroids." I knew when I posted my pastiche last night that she thought ML was an official Tor publication, but mocking her for it? Fish in a barrel. Besides, "the Merry Drones of Tor" scans so nicely.
I knew when I posted my pastiche last night that she thought ML was an official Tor publication
Oh, is that why the threats to talk to Patrick's boss? That actually makes a vague amount of sense. Not as much as talking to Teresa's boss would, granted.
"Toroids"?
As in "Attack of the Toroids II: The Coming of the Protractors"?
she thought ML was an official Tor publication
Does thta mean that, if ML has a gathering at Denver's worldcon next year, we won't get to wear toroids? I was kind of looking forward to that. Drat.
Julie Field ranted (#154): ...You turn your minions loose to act as judge and jury then you deus-ex-machina in to dispense justice?
So who's the executioner in all this? I'm no literary expert, but that seems like a rather loose metaphor to me (not to mention mixed).
I think Julie overestimates her importance in this matter, suggesting that we need divine intervention (I do not think it means what you think it means) to keep her down. I think Teresa and the rest of the gang here have managed to rebut Julie's (let's call them) arguments here quite nicely without needing to muzzle her. The disemvowelling was for gratuitious incivility.
So would that make us Toroid Henchmen or Toroid Minions? I was thinking of getting t-shirts made and I just wanted to be sure.
We are Toroid elves
Filling Toroid shelves
With books in hands
We attack in bands
Oh, we are Toroid elves
We sling invectives all day
But our work is play.
Trolls we pry out,
See if they cry out.
Oh, we are Toroid elves
Who would be fool enough to buy a book with a horrible cliche title like LAND OF MIST AND SNOW?
The Yale bookstore stocks it, and, as I observed in comment #183 on this thread, they shelve it under Literature rather than SF&F.
Serge @ 191:
I don't know; I can't stand watching or listening to the guy. I was reading the thread about it at firedoglake - the comments are probably much better than the speech was (it was around 500 comments when I was in there, and a new thread had started). Verbal tomato-throwing would be a good description.
I can't stand even a glimpse of him, P J... Everything was pretty much pre-empted last night so there I was, doing the manly thing of surfing quickly thru channels, and I kept coming across his this-is-supposed-to-make-me-look-resolute-but-comes-off-as-petulant expression.
"Molly" is even worse. Lots and lots of Mollys in the world.
Just pointing out that *this* Molly isn't *that* Molly. Or I'm not she, or she's not me, or something.
And as for this:
Who would be fool enough to buy a book with a horrible cliche title like LAND OF MIST AND SNOW?
...it reminds me: I went to my local corporate book emporium yesterday specifically looking for Land of Mist and Snow. The inventory computer said it was on hand, but alas, it was not to be found on the shelves. Still looking.
Also, who would be fool enough to buy (or publish, even unpaid) a story containing the deathless line "She said, 'Turn.' She meant, 'Around.'"? Still giggling over that one.
Teresa @150: just saw your comment. Thanks.
JF:
Go ahead. Contact an attorney. Although I'm not admitted in New York, and I'm not Teresa's counsel of record, I feel sort of like Br'er Lawyer:
"Don' t'row me in dat dere courtroom, Sis'r Julie!"
Any attorney who takes action on the basis of what's in this thread — even writing a nasty letter to Teresa, let alone her husband or boss — would run smack into the ethics rules that prohibit harassment on the basis of a claim without factual or legal foundation. Now, admittedly, there are some intellectually and ethically challenged members of my profession, but (unlike litrachur) we can at least discipline them or kick them out and make it stick.
Teresa:
By "academic chops" (147) I meant the editorial work you've done for the Evil Empire (you know, the one from which I'm a refugee, back in my own academic-litrachur days).
Generally:
Rather than dropping to a DOS window, there's a much better way to get a relatively anonymized tracert from inside your browser:
http://www.dnsstuff.com/
(at the moment, you'll have to page down once). This has the bonus that you can use your browser's print function to make a time-stamped record. <sarcasm class="impersonal"> Of course, I wouldn't know anything at all about doing this sort of thing after being the successful lead counsel in Ellison v. AOL and working where I did before I became a lawyer. Or having been on the Internet and its predecessors since early in the Reagan Administration. </sarcasm>
DNSStuff.com also has other handy tools, like a much-better-than-average whois, a couple of good reverse-directory tools, and so on.
what a long, strange thread its been.
sock puppets, spam, "guerrilla marketing", "how to bypass the slush pile", threats to call a lawyer, threats to call a boss, threats to call a husband, and even an appearance by MrkYrk under a pseudonym. I feel like years from now I might recall this thread and say "I was there on Saint Crispin's day."
Susan... They shelve Land of Mist and Snow under Literature rather than SF&F? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? My wife probably would say not-so-good, based on the experience of her fantasy novel being put in the Romance section because of who the publisher was.
#165, query for Jim or others: Doesn't charging $600 for the opportunity to pitch to a bunch of editors constitute a violation of Yog's law? Or is this considered a "how to pitch" teaching venue?
Confused about whether the whole thing is evil, or if it's just being marketed evilly.
1. The link to the pitchbitch blog vanished from the NYC Pitch & Shop page at the same time that the blog itself vanished. Coincidence, no doubt.
2. And I can drive to Brooklyn in 40 minutes or less and stop by the Tor office for a chat with your husband and his boss.
Please remember to viddy that for YouTube.
Google cached the site here for your viewing pleasure. Unfortunately it was cached on 1/15, so the most recent posts weren't preserved for posterity.
Laughter is good for the soul. My soul has now got the equivalent of toned abs and a sixpack. Good lord.
Ah, thanks, Susan@#220! Shame about that blog deletion, but Google remembers Who am I? Do I know?, (9 Jan 2007):
I’d rather have people feel sorry for me than think I was stupid.
Can't we do both?
Ah, mrk yrk rides again at #222.
I thought comprehension was a necessary part of learning to read.
And I can drive to Brooklyn in 40 minutes or less and stop by the Tor office for a chat with your husband and his boss.
I'm puzzled that JF thinks the Tor offices are in Brooklyn. Have they moved recently?
Greg, Mary, Jim -- could you please take full copies of the pages you find?
Thanks.
Wristle: Wrats! You gave it away! I was looking forward to Julie driving all around Brooklyn looking for the Flatiron Building. 23rd Ave skiddoo, Julie!
Xopher #112: That's absolutely correct. Now, I'll just go and spread some of that lovely Marxist-Leninist honey on my pancakes.
Fragano, sometimes I wonder if anyone notices. Thank you.
I'm a Marxist-Lennonist, myself. And the Marx is more Groucho than Karl.
Julie Field #145: I am one of those fool enough to buya book with the title Land of Mist and Snow. I also thoroughly enjoyed it and am waiting for the next production of Dr Doyle and Mr Macdonald, which I will also buy.
"Closer!"
"If I get any closer, I'll be in the back of you."
Fragano @ 230
Also. And the Mageworlds books (which, as I recall, began in fanzines, and stood out quite nicely there as being well-written and attention-grabbing).
(note: s p a c e d words are done to prevent google from giving this stuff any more hit counts than it deserves.)
So, the NYC Pitch Conference website says at the top of its page: "A l g o n k i a n and New York Writers Workshops present: NYC '07 Pitch and Shop"
A l g o n k i a n is related to w e b d e l s o l and K a l e y N o o n a n. At the end of the Lulu forum thread about the NYC Pitch conference, N o o n a n posts:
If anybody is interested in taking any of the live or online workshops that precede the NY Pitch N Shop (the same organizers) I recommend the Algonkian workshops. I'm one of their short fiction editors.
http://www.web del sol. com/Al gon kian/Clas ses/
Not only do they help you to vastly improve your own work (I'm a vet of four of them), but if your work is good, the editors will maintain relationships with you to see you get published.
I couldn't figure out why n o o n a n was posting at the end of the Lulu thread about the NYC Pitch, but it appears she is somehow related to "presenting" the Pi tch and SH OP.
Alg on kian and New York Writers Workshops present
NYC '07 Pi tch and S hop
Xopher #229: One of the central Asian countries, I forget which, did issue a stamp honouring Groucho and John Lennon.
Fragano #234: That's almost enough to drive me to philately.
Xopher #235 Philately will get you nowhere.
P J Evans #232: I haven't read those yet, but I will.
So, this is the narrative thus far as best as I can understand it:
noonan is part of the organization (Algon kian?) that "presents" the pitch shop. Not sure what 'presents' means exactly, but she appears to have some kind of vested interest in it. Lulu has a thread that appears to be nothing other than spam for the pitch shop, with a number of apparent sock puppets (including a "Julie Field") to try and camoflage the real source. The thread ends with a post by noonan spamming her (Algon kian) thing.
This ML thread is created regarding The Pitch Bitch, and identifies noonan as TPB. Then an apparent sock puppet of noonan, "Julie Field", appears to attack this thread. Julie appears to have no other web presence other than posts and comments spamming the pitch shop.
I think that about sums it up.
Fragano #236: I appreciate your remarx, but please stop now before I go postal. We're both men of letters (not that we'd have to be mail of course); we've already put our stamp on this thread. To do more would be pushing the envelope.
Re: Lennon/Marx
The Firesign Theater album cover for How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All.
Hey, kittens, Kaley's a busy girl!
On the warm and wholesome side, here, Kaley's byline reveals that she helps girls get over their fear of the tech sort of "mouse". Maybe that's where the kittens thing comes in? There's a picture, too! Check out that hair, kittens, for an object lesson in the need for regular dye jobs to cover dark roots.
Okay, that was catty. Keep calling me a kitten and look what happens! I shouldn't make personal remarks. I should stick to criticism of her work. Repeat one hundred times. Right. Here we go:
The real prize is here, where we have an excerpt from her novel Backwoods East Jesus, with the immortal opening line:
"Mark cupped a protective arm around his cereal, watching the nutty nuggets bob in the milk like rabbit turds."
Along with the reference to eggs as "white gelatinous bulbs", it's enough to put you right off breakfast, isn't it?
Just a few lines further on we hear about Mark's father's retinas "jerking with every word". Is it just me, or does "Jerking Retinas" sound look a good name for a band or something? I'm more partial to "retinae" as the plural, myself. It's a Scrabble thing.
And then there are Mark's mother's breasts, "like five-pound sacks of flour". Can we all pause for a moment to visualize a five-pound sack of flour relative to the average human chest? Holy mammoth mammaries, Batman!
I'd go on, but I think the sheer artistry of the prose of the literary crowd may just be too much for my tender sensibilities.
I'll just go read the decomp section of the forensics manual now.
Xopher, Fragano... Stamp it out. At the least, change the timbre of the conversation.
Ya know, I'm just a little dissapointed that MrkYrk wasn't actually the pitch bitch, and noonan was just another pseudonym of his.
re: Marx & Lennon stamp
Abkhazia were wondering - it was issued in 1989. It was part of Abkhazia's efforts to show they were free of the Soviet envelope.
I'll just go read the decomp section of the forensics manual now.
Is it true that flesh decomposes 20 times faster in sewage than in clean water?
Does that mean that leather bookmarks in Kaley's books are Right Out?
(Don't mind me...I'm still trying to visualize how you cup your arm.)
Xopher @ 245
I'm wondering how a person's retinae can be visibly jerking, since they're at the back of the eye and inside it.
(I have to say, that writing would have gotten bad grades even in my elementary school classes.)
Xopher @ #245:
I dunno, but I can tell you that when it comes to putrefaction, one week in air = two weeks in water = eight weeks in ground. If you're really curious, I can ask tonight.
Also, for scrotal swelling/bloating/crepitence in a non-decomposed body: think tension pneumothorax/resuscitation. Or, um, don't.
I would tell someone that this manual badly needs an index, but I suspect that would result in my being put in charge of making one.
If it's convenient, I'm curious. Something they needed to know on CSI, and I don't trust that show for accurate science at all. Or any show, really.
Do you have the manual in Word? Or just hardcopy? If it's in Word, making an index isn't a horrific task, not if you mostly want to index the headings and subheadings.
Xopher: I'll try to remember to ask the medical examiner and report back.
I only have the manual in hardcopy, but presumably the author has it in some electronic format - he gave me a printout to make copies from. It's basically a collection of lecture notes on various forensics topics (tonight is "Asphyxia"). If I had any ambitions of writing a murder mystery or forensic thriller, it would be a great reference. As it is, I just read it for occasional amusement and to get things like the nutty-nugget-rabbit-turd imagery out of my head.
Xopher #239: Post-marx should seal the deal.
Oh, my. This has been just the BEST fun!
I particularly enjoyed Aconite's turnip comment at #187, and Terese's (like the new spelling, by the way, but it'll be hell to change throughout the blog: perhaps better stick with Teresa?) one about the hair at #177. Thank you all for providing me with a whole load of entertainment, taken at little sips throughout the day. Wonderful. Flowers to you all.
I'm wondering how a person's retinae can be visibly jerking, since they're at the back of the eye and inside it.
Well, see, if his eyes are in the back of his head, but still facing the same direction, then if you just lift up his hair in back, the retinae are visible...oh, wait, that would be that trashy science fiction stuff, wouldn't it? Never mind.
I'd bet that Jane Smith is another sock puppet for either Julie Field or Mrk.Yrk, but no one would fade me.
Xopher, I know this Jane Smith, actually, as I found out when I checked the e-mail addy. Perfectly legit, and witty to boot. You'll enjoy having her around.
Terese's (like the new spelling, by the way, but it'll be hell to change throughout the blog: perhaps better stick with Teresa?)
I hate to break it to you, but her name is spelled Teresa. You're the one who spelled it wrong, as "Terese", first at #145 and then at #154. You are also the only one who's done so, as far as a grep of this page can determine.
By the way, I thought you were leaving? At least, it certainly seemed as if your comment at #154 (that being "I've had enough though. It's like baiting alien space monkeys from the land of snow and mist. LOL. Aloha") meant that you were retreating^^^^^^^^^^ leaving us to ponder your club-sharp wit.
Or perhaps you just meant "for now", or that the particular "Julie Field" sockpuppet was leaving, to be replaced by "Jane Smith"? You'll have to make that a little clearer.
Oh dear--Aconite at #254 vouches for Jane Smith, which means I have misread Jane's comment entirely. I do apologize, Jane.
Serge #242: I would, but the message was misdelivered owing to a lack of zip.
There isn't really an objection to workshops, conferences, or even paid pitch sessions (though one editor described a weekend of doing 'em by saying "Now I know how it feels to be a crib-house whore").
The objection is to the "guerilla marketing," the comment spam, the sock puppets, the astroturfers, the dishonest and deceitful who promote one or another thing. We've commented on this sort of thing before.
#258 - Thanks, Jim. I guess I'm surprised that paid pitch sessions are considered ok. To me it sounds like paying an editor to read a submission, or a director to view an audition--but I know nothing about pitching (except that I should never try it, because I summarize like Proust) so I expect that I'm wrong about this.
Does someone want to lay out the anatomy of a pitch session from the editor's perspective, since we're on the subject?
The objection, to be crystal clear, is to people who represent themselves as having "inside information" about commercial publishing when in fact their actual knowledge and experience of commercial publishing couldn't be detected with a microscope and a Geiger counter.
There's nothing about commercial publishing that's necessarily morally or aesthetically superior to a "little magazine," a fanzine, a LiveJournal, or a self-published book. I can easily think of little magazines, fanzines, LiveJournals, and self-published books I'd much rather read than most commercial novels. Some of the best writers I've ever known have contributed the great majority of their work to such venues.
What's true about commercial publishing is that it's different from self-publishing your own fanzine, weblog, or garage full of books you paid Braun-Brumfield to print for you. People who represent themselves as having inside knowledge should, you know, have some inside knowledge. Otherwise they've got that "bearing false witness" problem going on.
Greg London@216: I feel like years from now I might recall this thread and say "I was there on Saint Crispin's day."
Oh, great. Now I have to fit a leek on the T-shirt too?
muttermuttermutter
Serge #259: Given the way I feel today, no. However, post-haste will do. Please send cash by postillion.
Mary, I personally hate the whole idea of writers'-conference "pitch sessions", i.e., time set aside during which each attendee gets a few minutes to verbally "pitch" their book to the visiting editor. Indeed, having been that editor once or twice, I'd really rather not do it again.
Books aren't movies. I don't want to be "pitched." I want to read the book, or at least part of the book. That's what the actual reader is ultimately going to do, after all.
I know some aspiring writers are big on these "pitch sessions," and I know editors who have positive things to say about the procedure, but I find it hard to escape the sense that the aspiring writers are getting a raw deal.
We are Toroid elves Filling Toroid shelves....
Steve, I want so very much to make that scan to the tune of Tori Amos's "Happy Workers". It doesn't quite work, but if I apply a shoehorn, we might get something plausible out of it.
I thought pitch sessions were the equivilant of a query and synopsis, but delivered in person--that you'd still decide any decisions, only after reading the book.
Aconite #262: Not to mention strip your sleeves and show your scars.
I guess I'm surprised that paid pitch sessions are considered ok.
I see them as part of the cost of the entire weekend with whatever other panels and presentations and whatnot go on. As long as you know going in the door what you're paying for, and what you're getting, I don't object. Not that I'd ever pay for one myself, or recommend that anyone else do so. If you've already paid for a conference for whatever reason, and they're offering pitch sessions, I don't see the harm.
Presenting pitch sessions as a kind of Golden Secret Key that will result in a sale is something else ... like Noonan in propria persona (for the MFAs among you, that means in her own person, that is, not a sockpuppet) saying "By the way, three editors have asked to see my manuscript."
Fragano #267: She doesn't have to. A right is not an obligation.
What right? Why, the right to bare arms, of course.
I had the impression that pitch sessions were mostly found in the romance field; I know RWA is very big on them. Is my impression wrong?
Susan @ 241: And then there are Mark's mother's breasts, "like five-pound sacks of flour".
Flourospheres!
Tee-hee.
Patrick at 264: I know some aspiring writers are big on these "pitch sessions," and I know editors who have positive things to say about the procedure, but I find it hard to escape the sense that the aspiring writers are getting a raw dea
I suspect (but I have no experience of the phenomenon, myself, so I'll defer to those who have either pitched or been pitched at), that writers like them because they actually get to sit face-to-face with the editor, and tell that person to their face why their book is so awesome. They know that the editor has actually been there! with them! in the room, and they've had their chance.
This is by contrast with the uncertainty of sending a ms or partial or proposal off to the murky submissions desk, where heaven knows what will happen to it, if it will ever be read, or if some publishing minion (that word again!) will simply open the envelope, extract the SASE, put the international reply coupon in a drawer, take a pre-printed rejection slip from a stack, stick the slip in the SASE, toss the MS, and crush the author's hopes and dreams, without even being told how wonderful the book is, or what a nice person the author is.
Just a guess.
Susan @ 242 -- I'll mention "Jerking Retinas" to my son. He and his mates are looking for a new band name, having decided that their current name, "The Jolly Naked Fishermen," while amusing, isn't really suited to a punk-metal band. (He decided that my favorite, "Gunmen of the Apocalypse," was too obscure.)
As far as the rest of this thread... it's always amusing to watch "Teresa's minions" dismantle sock puppets into small piles of disemvowelled electronic fuzz.
#265 Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little, sorry, it's "We Are Santa's Elves" by Johnny Marks from "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." It's a song that has stuck with me and I sing to myself if there's some completely mind-numbing task I need to accomplish at work.
The classics, they never go out of style.
Nicole @ #271: I am ignoring you.
ML is now the fifth result that comes up when googling Kaley Noonan. There are more excerpts from Backwoods East Jesus too!
"Gunmen of the Apocalypse" isn't obscure, it's brilliant!
Jeez, kids today don't know good stuff when they hear it. Uphill both ways in the snow.
pat greene @ 273
'Rudolf Diesel and his Rational Engine'?
Mys sister's ex (while they were married) had a band named 'Bonnie Solder and the Hostages' (spelling not guaranteed).
Well. I go and eat my dinner and in the meantime am revealed as a not-very-convincing sock puppet (which I just typed with a rather startling Freudian c at the beginning, instead of the s--good job I read this back), I am vouched for and referred to as rather witty by the rather-witty-herself Aconite, someone suggests said Aconite should strip and then my husband, reading this over my shoulder, notes that five pounds seems rather light for Proper Woman-Breasts, and should we try weighing mine just in the interests of research?
How my life is enriched by Making Light.
Pat @ #273: Jerking Retinae. Or maybe Jerkin' Retinae. "Retinae" just sounds better than "retinas", doesn't it?
Jane @ #278:
It's not the weight, it's the volume. Proper Woman-Breasts are a whole lot denser than flour.
There's got to be someone here other than me who buys 5lb bags of flour regularly for baking.
Nicold @265,
When I read Steve's rhymes, I found it matching the earworm I've been fighting recently: "Oneovr Tvey." The first 4 lines scan perfectly, and at least now I've replaced the earworm lyrics. (a top 40 from 1997. more I won't say. rfcrpvnyyl nobhg gur cnebql ynjfhvg Znggry ybfg.)
Jane Smith: and then my husband, reading this over my shoulder, notes that five pounds seems rather light for Proper Woman-Breasts, and should we try weighing mine just in the interests of research?
Now I know why you never return my e-mails.
A friend of mine once had a band called "Go f**k a nun". Not surprisingly they didn't do too well, as they could never get anywhere to display posters with their band name on them.
Steve @ #274:
All I can think of are the Siamese cat lyrics from "Lady and the Tramp":
We are Toroid ELVES filling SHEH-ELVES.
We are Toroid ELVES filling BOOKshelves.
"#154 ::: Julie Field ::: (view all by) ::: January 24, 2007, 01:07 AM:
"Not a good idea to threaten me, Terese. You're a coward. You turn your minions loose to act as judge and jury then you deus-ex-machina in to dispense justice? Just what are you going to do? Get me fired from my job?
You'll hear from an attorney, dear, if you try anything beyond the petty. And I can drive to Brooklyn in 40 minutes or less and stop by the Tor office for a chat with your husband and his boss. Would that suit you? And that's just for starters.
And I'm not KN. Believe whatever you want. I'm just irritated beyond belief by the arrogance and ignorance of your acolytes.
I've had enough though. It's like baiting alien space monkeys from the land of snow and mist. LOL.
Aloha
JF"
I think that is a flounce worthy of being considered a Platonic Paragon.
Well flounced, Julie.
Regards,
Scott
The impression I've gotten, as an aspiring writer on the ground, is that certain of my fellow aspiring writers are hoping that the pitch session might be the secret key they've been so desperately searching for. A way around the slush pile! A way to write "Requested Material" on that envelope! Glory can't be far behind.
The pitch-happy aspiring writers often seem to overlook the fact that a first-class stamp and a decent query letter can also get material requested. Maybe it's the fact that with a pitch conference, the feedback is immediate, and you don't have to wait. Maybe it's the idea of being face to face with a real live publishing professional. (Zoinks!)
Whatever it is they're getting out of it, I'm happy that they're happy; but I wish they'd stop talking about pitch sessions as if they were a required writer skill, because as far as I can tell they aren't. I've sent out queries that got agents and editors to ask for more material, and I'm a nobody. If I can do it, they should be able to, too. But they don't see that -- they just think pitch sessions are a really great opportunity to get their books in front of Real! Live! Editors! And then some of them try to go sell that theory to other aspiring writers as the One True Way, which just irks the hell out of me.
G. Jules@286: That class of writer also seems to think that spending money on writing-related activities is proof that you're serious about writing.
Strangely, they are often the same people who want to submit everything via e-mail because it costs so much to send a manuscript thorough the post.
There. See. That's how you ignore Aconite. Just talk about something else.
Sorry, darling, we were too busy with the scales for me to make a sensible reply. And I will reply to emails, I will, I'm just... hopeless. Sorry.
Xopher #269: And all this time I've been calling for the right to arm bears.
Aconite @ 287
That class of writer also seems to think that spending money on writing-related activities is proof that you're serious about writing.
Yes, thank you Aconite. Excellent point. The lovely modern American: How can you know I am serious unless I spent money? The inverse argument of "You get what you pay for." Maybe we should call them "designer writers" no, "designer authors" instead, that way we can't get them mixed up?
Strangely, they are often the same people who want to submit everything via e-mail because it costs so much to send a manuscript thorough the post.
Not so strange, they're lying. The other modern American fault: trained to instant gratification. e-mail is the next best thing to face time ... it's faster! Like kids who are willing to pay the College Board an extra $20 ($50?) bucks to get their SAT scores e-mailed before they show up in the mail a week later. They'll say it's the cost, but it's actually the speed, or at least the illusion of speeed: you know the editor got it faster, so you will get a response quicker.
Would pitch sessions make more sense for nonfiction?
Regarding my comment at 169 - that was meant kiddingly. ;) I have no special "inside knowledge" to the workings of "Julie Field's" mind. I just saw someone link to the Wikipedia entry, followed it, read it, and saw what I saw...
Of course, now I'm curious whether an Atlanta Nights chapter is really going to get submitted, and if so which one. ;)
Careful, Fragano (@#289)...that kind of behavior can get you in trouble with the Colbert Nation!
261: Patrick said:
"garage full of books you paid Braun-Brumfield to print for you"
After I picked my jaw up off the floor, and finished shuddering at the memory of the [printrun price deleted]-worth of defective Braun-Brumfield-printed college textbooks I had a hand in rejecting some time back, I have just one question:
Just how big is your garage, Patrick? Braun-Brumfeld's minimum order would keep you from using a typical one-car attached garage for anything else...
Lawrence -- I think it's brilliant, but he thinks nobody will get the reference. He also wanted to name the band "Galloping Foxley" after the Roald Dahl story, but that got rejected on the grounds of obscurity as well.
"Rudolf Diesel and his Rational Engine"? That might work.
Susan -- "Jerkin' Retinae." Got it.
For band names, I was always fond of "Boots Randolph and the Carroll County Car Strippers."
Skwid #292: That doesn't bear thinking of. However, if the Colbert Nation has me in its sights, then I shall grin and bear it. I shall follow ur sine.
Just as long as you don't panda to their anti-bear prejudice, Fragano.
#284 Susan, because, as I've stated at John Scalzi's blog, I am but your web monkey, a lyrical treatment that bears only some slight resemblance to some other song, and is offered as satire and parody (mess Not with The Mouse).
We are Toroid Minions if you please,
we are Toroid Henchmen if you don't please.
Here we hanging out at our domicile,
We likey and post a good long while.
Do you see the scammers swimming 'round and 'round? (Yes!)
Maybe we could expose them and make them drown!
If we share publishing information openly
Maybe they no grab money so gropingly
Do you read what she post? (A baby cry!)
Where we finding whining, there are snark nearby.
If we look in business model there could be,
Plenty of snark for you, and maybe some for me.
Oh, fur goodness's sake! It's starting to get downtight grizzly in here. Could you guys just skin out, I'm bealy able to concentrate on the real hairy issues being in this thread.
Jane Smith @ 278:
and then my husband, reading this over my shoulder, notes that five pounds seems rather light for Proper Woman-Breasts, and should we try weighing mine just in the interests of research? ... How my life is enriched by Making Light.Because Susan is ignoring me, I can rest assured she won't smack me for going all Beavis-and-Butthead on your bakery double entendres (huh-huh, she said "enriched").
Right, Susan? Right?
[reads #284]
OK, that's it, now I'm ignoring you.
(Didn't even have the decency to protect us from the earworm with ROT-13 a la Kathryn @ 281! Lordy, Lordy!)
Aauuugh! Steve! Nooooo!
Ummm that's "bearly" able, sorry.
I'm so ashamed! I want my teddy!
#220 -- Thank you for the cached link.
The P.B. stated in regard to something not related to this thread: "I’d rather have people feel sorry for me than think I was stupid."
Be careful what you wish for; now you've got both.
#301 Sorry, Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little. If I knew Tori Amos I would do my dance for you as well. Alas, I'm buggered to admit I don't know her well enough.
Regarding Braun-Brumfield's minimum quantities, I know they affordably printed and relatively low-run small press books in the 1980s. I haven't looked at them since, to be honest.
*CHA/Braun-Brumfield/Lulu.com
To get this all in one sitting is amazing. Hats off to the witty, pants off to the snarky. Disenvowelments rule.
Poor, poor dears. If you wanted to count up pro editors laughing at you, you will have to list me, too. I have edited for Harcourt and Knopf. If you want to list pro writers laughing at you, I have shelfloads full of books, stories in little magazines and big, and poems as well.
If you want to count admirers of the N-H and Macdonald crew, count me there. I have been edited by the first and edited the second. Ah yes, we are a cabal.
I will, however, for free (I am feeling generous) tell you the secret word to getting published. No there is no secret handshake. We tell you that to keep you off-balance. The secret word is BIC.
Butt in Chair.
Feel free to pass it on to the poor saps who sign up with your scams. It's all right,. They won't believe it either. But, alas, it's true.
Jane Yolen (to make it easy for you, try www.janeyolen.com)
My main problem with pitch sessions is that they can raise false hope in the writer. It is damnably difficult for many editors to say No in person, face to face, to an aspiring author. It's easiest when the thing being pitched is far outside your wants and needs (and then the whole pitch has just been a waste of everyone's time and someone's money). Or when the person simply cannot make the book sound coherent despite questioning by the editor.
But a lot of the time, editors say yes because we want to be kind. And then the writer goes off thinking, "I'm in!" when often (usually?) all it means is that the writer gets a personalized rejection rather than a photocopied one.
At a house like Tor, where we have an open submissions policy, I'm not sure that taking a pitch from a brand-new writer makes one bit of difference. Interestingly, many-published authors also sign up for pitch sessions. That can make a difference by making a brief connection that may be followed up on later.
And sometimes this happens: I was at a conference last year where I overheard one of the people who pitched to me saying to a companion, in essence, "I pitched to three people and they all gave me the same advice, to stop trying to sell Project A and finish and try to sell Project B but I don't want to do it because I really love Project A."
I wonder if Project A will ever be finished?
Steve:
Susan...I am but your web monkey
*startled blink*
That's a generic sort of "you", right?
On your song, while it certainly doesn't resemble the lyrics belonging to any humor-impaired company, I do note that it loses the internal rhymes that one might expect if it did resemble any such lyrics. It nonetheless beats my modest effort all to flinders in its completion and general evilness.
#284: All I can think of are the Siamese cat lyrics from "Lady and the Tramp":
We are Toroid ELVES filling BOOKshelves.
ba boom, boom boom
Gak! earworm! earworm! make it stop! I've had that friggen bass drum riff stuck in my head since I read this.
Xopher:
The Deputy Chief Medical Examiner of New York says that being in sewage might slightly hasten decomposition, since it is a bacterial process, and being in a bacteria-rich environment might have some minor effect, but overall it doesn't make much difference since it's the internal bacteria that count, not the external bacteria. Twenty times faster is definitely a made-for-TV statistic.
(After giving this answer he got a certain gleam in his eye and started to expound on the possibilities if there were rats in the sewage, but I cut him off, since I don't share the local capacity to eat dinner while hearing about these things.)
I don't suppose this is the time or place for funny subcutaneous emphysema stories.
Susan, yes, it's a generic me. Didn't mean to imply anything else except, "Oh goodie, a challenge. Oh yes, my Precious, I know L&T, I can do this, he he he." I didn't mean to imply any relationship proposal.
While we are disclaiming, my "We are Toroid" lyrical musing should in no way be taken as my working for Tor or any business relationship with such as I do not and have not. My only contact, beyond reading what they have published, is meeting some editors at conventions. And they are all most wonderful people, really.
Also, GREG, DON'T READ POST #298! I tried to warn you.
I hate it when I come in after the disemvowelments.
Should I be a minion or an acolyte? My boyfriend has a henchman already...
Thanks Susan (310). I thought that was at least exaggerated, if not outright fabricated.
Steve:
Oh, good. I was frantically trying to figure out if I knew you. Or maybe if I could pretend I did long enough for you to work amazing html-fu on my websites.
Oddly enough, I only know "Lady and the Tramp" from one of those misbegotten school chorus things where we had to sing songs from various Disney films. I've never actually seen the movie.
I have no business connection with Tor unless you count one of my ex-boyfriend's other ex-girlfriends having sold a few books to Tor long after we had become friends, compared notes, and both ditched the jerk. I have about the social connections with Tor one would expect from a nonpro who socializes in New York-area fandom, which sometimes seems to be populated entirely by former Tor interns.
I'm uncomfortable with the concept of pitch sessions, but I have to go home now, so I'll explain why after I get there.
Hmm, let me see, I speak certain author's name on John Scalzi's blog and he shows up. I speak John's name on this blog and he shows up. (Screws eyes tight and holds hands out front) "I want a million dollars!" (peeks with one eye, nothing). Relaxes. (email ding) "Damn, 50 emails on how to make a million selling on ebay."
Susan, no worries. And, ah, (looking nervously around) me no speakaty HTML. No, no. Nobody home.
Longtime lurker and newbie poster.
This was a fun (and enlightening) way to spend my working day (don't tell my boss).
#215 (C.E.): Thanks for the DNSStuff link. I have a feeling that is going to come in handy for many of us (me, I'm just nosy but some of you will put that to great use researching the disemvowelled, I hope that I never fall into that category).
Also don't know if this link has been posted yet (I combed the page a few times and didn't find it) but here's another lovely excerpt from Ms. Noonan's "Backwoods East Jesus."
Deep In The Reverend's Closet--K. Noonan
Can anyone help me figure out what she means by saying someone was "pooter-faced?" And just for fun, I did a find to see how many times the word "like" popped up in the fiction excerpt because it's all over her poorly written blog.
Seven times. Seems like a lot of like for a small excerpt.
Also--Does anyone have any idea why she yanked the blog so quickly? She posted here yesterday (#30) telling you all that no amount of flaming would make her shut down the blog and yet the blog was shut down 24 hours later.
Seems odd.
For some reason I'm reminded of a pub quiz team named "Captain Pedant and his gender-non-specific-henchbeings". That would also make a good band name.
Gunmen of the Apocalypse : even if people didn't get the reference, it's still a good name (Guns, Men, Apocolypse - what's not to like?)
Pat Greene #297: I wouldn't give them such a kodiak moment.
Greg London's remark in #216:
I feel like years from now I might recall this thread and say "I was there on Saint Crispin's day."
reminds me of something else which makes the same allusion: this peculiar encomium, which James Nicoll characterized as "How Jim Baen saved SF, Earth and the universe from commie leftist nihilistic postmodern anti-Western New Wave Literati."
(He's only kidding about the universe.)
It gets kicked around like a battered soccer ball here.
Katie W., that's absolutely horrible. The excerpt, I mean, not your post!
Did you notice that because Josephine has to go to work, Mark has to take care of the baby, but said baby apparently vanishes into the ether when Josephine calls him over? No sign of it at any point, Mark clearly doing two-handed tasks.
Of course, to notice that I had to actually read all her painfully broken sentences. Yuck.
Katie W #319: All you ever wanted to know about pooter.
Xopher @ 323: I don't blame you for skimming quickly, esp. since that sentence was, like, dangling participles like a squamous rugose participle-dangling like, thing, but in "Mark watched her leave the house, pooter-faced over it, not wanting to take care of the six-month-old baby", I believe both dependent clauses refer to Josephine, not Mark. When Mark responds to her phone call, Josephine is dandling a grubby baby on her hip and then stuffs it into a crib in the kitchen (why the kitchen?) on the way upstairs to the smut.
My best guess at "pooter-faced" is that it's derived from a childish mispronunciation of "pouter" or "pouty".
Steve@318: According to Hogfather, the wishing-for-a-million-dollars won't work because it's not filling a hole for an unexplained phenomenon that exists in the universe. I wish I had my copy handy because Pratchett explains it much better.
There was a brief flurry of MFA slagging upthread, and since I have had some small experience of the breed while at Irvine, I thought I'd pipe up in their defense. In my experience, an MFA degree is no better marker for assholism than any other advanced degree. Probably less of one, say, than seeking an advanced degree in Philosophy, f'rinstance. (Even an MBA isn't a very good indicator, in the aggregate. You do start getting a pretty good hit rate with MDs who additionally feel compelled to seek an MBA, but that's a whole 'nother story.)
I should also point out that the MFAs of my acquaintance have been people of remarkable discernment and taste, being as they were often effusive in their praise of MY writing and wit. Not that this will have influenced my opinion in any way. But seriously, if the various sock puppetry that's popped up here recently actually had MBAs, I'd have to say, it can't have been from a very rigorous or selective program. They ain't none of them Alice Sebold or Michael Chabon, that's for damn' sure.
Yesterday was the anniversary of the Zulu victory at Isandhlawana (1879). I am seeing a metaphorical tie in here.
Do you think I should have been an MFA in literature?
Regards,
Scott
Ulrika@327: Indeed. It's as much the institution as the degree. An MFA from the University of Iowa and an MFA from Diploma Mill U are not functionally equivalent.
(Which is why real scholars don't say "where did you study?" as much as they say, "who did you study with?")
There's also the (apparent) fact that people with a given degree who are not assholes are generally less inclined to pull it out and wave it around. Lots of decent, reasonable, intelligent people have MBAs, but in my experience none are likely to bring that up in casual conversation.
If you're Toroids does that mean you are isomorphically the Bangles?
I know, I know. Fish, barrel, bang. But this nugget:
"When Mark turned back to the floaters in his sad bowl of cereal, he found his father's black eyes directly on him. It jolted him slightly; those eyes were scary dead like a tarantula's."
Raised a nostalgic smile.
"Ahhhh - he has his grandfather's eyes."
"Gomez, take those out of his cereal."
OK, slight word slippage, but still.
NB: This post is not intended to advocate putting your father's black eyes in your sad cereal bowl. The nutritional value of your father's eyes has not yet been established. But if they are that scary dead, imagine how terrifying they would be if they had been alive, bobbing about like things which are slightly bigger than rabbit turds.
I'm so glad that Serge quoted Julie's comment about alien antennae, because, seriously, do you know how hard that is to read when it's disemvowelled? I never would've figured that out, being the boy of little brain that I am.
I also just want to comment, briefly, about... well, I've noticed some disparagement of MFAs. I'm a graduate student right now. I'm at USC. It's technically an MPW, or "Master's in Professional Writing," rather than an MFA, but a lot of my fellow classmates put "MFA in Professional Writing" on their resumes.
We're not all assholes. I've been a struggling, unpublished writer for a lot of years (and I probably will be for several more), but I needed this, and I've been lucky... well. I don't know if USC's program is remarkably different from others (it may well be. It was the only one I applied to. I didn't want to go to Iowa, or NYU, or Columbia), but it's been a godsend for me. I've learned a lot from Patrick and Teresa and Jim and Will over the years (Will, especially, and for that I thank him), but the progress I've made at USC in a few months has staggered me.
I registered my first screenplay with the Writers' Guild today, in fact. I hand it to an uber-producer tomorrow. And I'm only writing this right now because my class with Syd Field was cancelled. I have class with Sid Stebel on Mondays (who may not have written a whole lot, no, but check out what Bradbury said about him. And he's cool).
So far, I've studied fiction with Rachel Resnick, who doesn't write in the genre I prefer but managed to give me excellent feedback, anyway; Ted Post, who goes way back with Jim Harris (who produced Kubrick's "Lolita," and, yes, helped Kubrick write it [though it's credited to Nabokov]) and Richard Mattheson (and I probably don't need to tell you what he wrote); Coleman Hough, who worked with Soderbergh on "Full Frontal" and "Bubble"; and Irvin Kershner, who directed "The Empire Strikes Back."
It's been the sort of experience I never dreamed of because I simply didn't know it was possible.
I don't mean to act as wounded-feelings writer guy, here, or anything, but I've learned, over the years, how smart everyone here really is, and I just had to mention all that.
Owen King, son of Stephen and a friend of mine, has an MFA from Columbia.
He's not a douchebag. He's one of the funniest, wittiest, and genuine people I know.
I like Steven Brust's tip for bypassing the slush pile:
"Send it out. Keep sending it out. Ignore all the bullshit tricks for getting past the slushpile. If it's good, someone will buy it."
Worked for me. Tooks years but it worked.
I'm well behind on the comments, but somewhere around comment #98 or #99: Does it really surprise anyone that applying fandom terms to literary folks is like throwing Mentos in Diet Coke?
Julie L #325. Oh, waaaaaaaoooooowwww. That's even worse than I thought. She can't even make it clear who's being pooter-faced!
All who spoke up in defense of MFA's: thanks. I knew it couldn't be as bad as it looked.
"Ahhhh - he has his grandfather's eyes."
"Gomez, take those out of his cereal."
point. ;)
Xopher, I'm an MFA - well, MA (Creative Writing) - and there's some aspects of it I'm proud of. I'm proud of who supervised me and I'm proud of who marked it - and the assessment was pretty severe, I can tell you. I'm not proud of my motives or, as it happens, of the actual product itself, because I haven't been able to sell it, which means that it fails the only test I really think matters. I realise that this attitude makes me a philistine.
Julie L @ 325 squamous rugose participle-dangling
...sometimes I come here just to find new vocabulary words.
OH MY GAWD!
I know Kaley Noonan.
Well, not personally, but visiting kaleynoonan-com was deja vu. A former beau of mine was looking to get some webwork/promo writing done and somehow she was on the list of locals he had. I was asked to take a look at their respective websites to see if the html code was sound on the inside (one of my particular sorts of geekery).
I don’t recall the evaluation, nor am I inspired to do so now, though he did go with someone else.
The fun part is that apparently he & Noonan overlap in some ways, and I’ve now an excuse to call him (and not incoincidentally twit him about forgetting my birthday.)
Wow–small world. Guess I know what’ll be cocktail gossip in it soon enough :)
Somewhere up in the 250-280 comment range, there was some discussion of pitch sessions. BT. DT.
Never again.
(Of course, I was trying to sell horror and then SF at a mainstream writer's conference. Shudder).
At one point, I was somewhat involved in the planning part of this conference for a year or two(which shall remain Anonymous to protect the innocent, save that I will identify it as being in Portland, Oregon and that its claim to fame was getting Jean Auel started). IIRC, the editors got some $ cut from the pitch sessions. The pitch sessions were viewed as money-makers for the conference organization.
After a couple of years, I started going to SF conventions (Orycon and Westercon, in particular). The writing advice was much, much better, the writing networking was better, and the cost of the con was *extremely* cheaper than any conference I've seen out there advertised as a "writer's" conference.
And...the editors at a SF con are much more interesting and entertaining. Especially at room parties....
Home where I can laugh out loud at what I read.
Pity JF and their lot are so thin skinned that they have to stand up and provide us something to whack at... great sport for us, tho.
I have to said I read Land of Mist and Snow and I loved it. In fact I started it on their web site and said, 'this won't do, gotta BUY it so I can carry and read it until I finish it..."
I aspire some day to write that well.
I'm sure there are some fine MFAs out there, but I'm not convinced that the degree helps anyone become a writer more than, say, rounding the Horn in a schooner with the complete Everyman's Library on board would. A better idea for folks who want to be writers would be going through a certificate program in Air Conditioning and Refrigeration, so they won't have to do the Starving Artiste thing.
Something struck me today, while thinking about this affair: "Julie Field" likely got more personal attention from professional writers and commercial editors in the course of this thread than she likely got at the Pitch and Shop she's pimping, and she didn't have to pay $600 to get it.
...but perhaps not the type or level of attention she'd have preferred, -no?
By the way, James, leading with those opening chapters of The Land of Mist and Snow was a bit nasty, but only in that it cost me the extra fuel to drive across town since I couldn't wait until morning for the strip mall store to open...
in my world, mfa's are in visual arts. & i'm a bfa who emphatically does not want to go for her mfa, even though that's what all the "most promising" students at my school were supposed to do.
i'm very glad i went to art school; i learned leagues more than i would have staying home & drawing. both my technique & my direction would be nothing like they are, had i not done four years of art school (well, three ana half).
& i loved school, but i had no doubt that once i was done with it, i was done with it. the mfa programs i have heard of seem kind of like the writing mfa programs you have described: too much snobbery, theory, & patting each other on the back, fervently believing that an extra degree is better than extra talent/skill/something to say.
when i graduated, a perpetual-art-student friend of mine told me that bfa secretly stands for "bachelor's of f**k-all." that pleased me very much. & i guess that means that our sensitive literary trolls are masters of f**k-all.
is anyone else seeing Toroid Minions and reading song-attempts and thinking of a WorldCon masquerade..?
(runs away,hides)
is anyone else seeing Toroid Minions and reading song-attempts and thinking of a WorldCon masquerade..?
(runs away,hides)
sorry about the double post-honestly not sure what happened.
#331: Every story's got an ending.
#333: Nothing against MFAs here. All you people with degrees look alike to me.
#337: "Does it really surprise anyone that applying fandom terms to literary folks is like throwing Mentos in Diet Coke?" Don't know why, unless you think "fandom" and "literature" are exclusive sets. A lifelong lumper, I say fie. It's all literature. It's all fandom.
Debra @ #329
I don't know about other disciplines, but in medieval studies, "where and when" is a signifier of who in the larger sense. While my advisor has had a significant influence, those who taught my classes have also put their stamp on my research methods, my understanding of my subject in the broader context of place and time, and certainly in my writing/editing process. And someone who knows the faculty of this particular institution can trace certain bits and pieces back to specific people. When I've gone to conferences, I have been asked first for my affiliation, and then for with whom I'm studying (sometimes, it's unfortunate to obviously be a student. Sometimes, it's useful). Now, if who my advisor is had an obvious bearing on my specialty, it would give colleagues a lot more clues to what I do..."Oh, you must do French lit then!" "Not really, no. My French is atrocious." "But....."
I interviewed once at our local Art Institute for a staff position. (they offier BFAs and MFAs). While touring I spotted some things posted on a hallway bulletin board and made the comment that someone's mama must be proud of their small child's progress in school (they looked like preschool pasta conglomerations).
The interviewer told me "Staff must never criticise a student's work, even if they ask for criticism. That is grounds for firing."
I think I had a brief tourettes moment, as in, "What the fuck are they teaching them then?" I had been jurying ConQuesT's art show for several years at that point and was just dumbfounded. I also went, "I am sorry I wasted your time, you don't need someone like me on staff, I am a consumer of art as well as a professional writer, and if they can't take criticism, that is a problem because the rest of the world, including the world they'll sell their artwork to, is critical."
And as a published writer, I know that if you fold at the first criticism, you just don't need to be there. Got taught that in college, where I was a journalism major and had Jehovah for my first editing professor (John Bremner, 6 foot +, curling white hair and beard, God-like voice, etc.). I write what I write, and if I feel it is good enough to submit to publish, I take what an editor says to heart, that it will make the piece beter. or that it's crap. or whatever.
(though I admit to having a really craptacular day when i worked for the ad agency, stopped at my PO box and got a really nasty rejection from MZB and melted down....I was just so worn down that that was a Last Straw. I revised and actually sold the story elsewhere.
This was *precisely* what I needed after a long day in the brain mines. Teresa's "stupid hair" comment, coming as it did after such a beautiful takedown, and "We are Toroid ELVES filling BOOKshelves" completely restored my good cheer.
Having had my B in C but spent the entire time reading this instead of writing... sigh.
1) Way up near the top, two limericks. I hate people who can write limericks, except when I ask: Dave Bell and Dan Layman-Kennedy, can I infuse some of your stem cells so my brain will write limericks, too?
2) I thought I was having browser trouble, but this was probably intentional. For me, some posts (including nos. 113, 116, 121, 123, and 126) come up blank. Please do not repeat the text, but tell me what deleted them. The moderators? My ISP? A department of the Federal Government that I don't even want to think about?
The moderators. It was troll-spam.
Rejections from MZB, like acceptances from MZB, like guidelines for submitting to MZB, were so eccentric as to be meaningless except as far as you wanted to deal with MZB.
Noting the misspelling 'Terese' and the use of 'Hayden' by itself, I wondered if the puppetry (like the infantry, but without boots) had perhaps mistaken Teresa Nielsen Hayden for a Terese Hayden who wrote fiction of some sort.
No google-luck with that, but there does appear to be a theatrical director of that name.
I'm wondering what the correlation is between TPB's being pulled off the shelf and the first hit for the search "The Pitch Bitch" now being a link to this very thread.
I also note that while the search "Kaley Noonan" doesn't (yet) result in ML, the first result for "Kaley Noonan writing" also is this thread.
And Kaley Noonan, this result isn't specific to you. It's just that ML has lots of Googlejuice*. Whatever they write about will get linked to Making Light. For example, look up "oathbreakers" or "freelance gig".
The sad part is, you (KN) could learn a lot, here. Our Good Hosts routinely hand out great advice on many diverse subjects, often related to writing and its Industries**.
* ML doesn't just have 20,000 readers, it has thousands of links from other sites to it. Google's algorithms consider this a good thing. Powerful stuff, googlejuice.
** by 'hand out' I mean write extended essays filled with insiders knowledge. I, for instance, learned how to throw a parties for hundreds of people. It went very well, thanks to TNH's essay on same: she's an expert on throwing even larger parties.
(Which is why real scholars don't say "where did you study?" as much as they say, "who did you study with?")
I've spent the last few years giving myself an unofficial PhD in a discipline which has few places that actually grant degrees, none of them particularly local to me. Its all about who I studied with. (Power twin: the past tense is only because I've been shoved out of the intellectual nest to fly on my own now.) His influence is all over both my dancing and my teaching and always will be.
That said, once I finish my unofficial thesis, I'd still like to shop around for somewhere that will then admit me to a PhD program, since that would give me an excuse to spend a few more years studying full-time and filling in background material.
(I live my life backwards: quit job, then buy house. Write book translating several hundred pages of Italian, then learn Italian.)
I'm one of those people who usually "misses half the fun" by skipping the comments here, but I'm glad I dropped by, if only to see Jane. Yolen. show up so I could go to her webpage and get all fangirly. (Jane: Hi. Huge fan. Read all your books growing up.)
And the rest of it was very entertaining as well. Is it always so... invigorating? There goes another hour of my day.
Okay, look— I really tried to give Ms. Noonan the benefit of my contrarian nature, so I went and read all the excerpts from her novel Backwoods East Jesus that I could find with cursory applications of Google-fu.
I tried. I really did.
According to one of the pieces of metadata I could dig up, the novel is supposed to be about "incest, anarchy and the twisted Christian values of a small Ohio town," i.e. three nouns that don't seem to add up to a story. After reading two chapters, I'm still not seeing a story. But that's okay. I'm not the sharpest tool in the drawer— I could be completely missing the ineluctable transcendant beauty of the thing, for all my wanking over the game of guess the plot.
Alas, my head exploded when I read the following excerpt.
"I'll make time." She began a dance, one hand holding onto the boot. "Gonna go to the store for a Hostess Treat. Skipping out of class to eat. Don't care what the nuns do to me." She smacked the honey filter with her lips. "Hostess Treat. I'll give you a Hostess Treat." Josephine grabbed the front of his gray slacks. "Come here, boy, let me feel your Twinkies."
"Jesus!" Mark shoved her hand away. "My Twinkies are not yours to touch," he said primly.
"Oh really? What about your Ring Ding?" Josephine laughed and paused, serious for a second. "Think about all the Hostess Treats you can turn into bad words. Twinkies. Ring Dings. Sno Balls." She shoved him, then. " ‘Excuse me sir, may I lick your Sno Balls?' "
Mark stopped walking. "You are foul," he said.
"Oh come on," she said and grabbed his arm.
After they'd walked about ten feet, Mark said solemnly, "Jo."
"What."
"I know you want it up the Ho-Ho."
I'm going to print this out and tape it to the wall over my workstation, to help me get through the next time I'm staring at my horrible manuscript, wondering whatever possessed me to think writing would be a worthwhile expenditure of my time.
Of course, I'm probably just revealing my prejudice against "literary fiction" again. Who am I to judge the merits of this sparkling and provocative dialogue, eh? It could be fookinbrilliant, and I wouldn't know. Watch: Backwoods East Jesus will be sitting on the front table at West Portal Books next month, and I'll be like, totally, embarrassed.
Or, maybe not.
Patrick @349: Don't know why, unless you think "fandom" and "literature" are exclusive sets.
Maybe my experience with folks aiming for literature is not as typical as I thought. (There is hope yet.) But disemvowelment in a person's first post fits in with what I've seen when people from outside the Geek Hierarchy feel that people from inside it are assuming too much common ground.
Susan @241
My gods. I've read bad fanfiction, but that is *really* pushing for prizes in purple prose. I haven't seen anything so awful since the time I decided to work my way through the "Lord of the Rings" section of fanfiction.net alphabetically by author. I quit *that* at the e's, because I decided no matter what the karmic crime I'd committed, I'd surely atoned for it well and truly.
[Oh, and purely for statistical purposes: I wouldn't describe myself as a writer, since the only stuff I've written is fanfiction, and the only place it's been published is on the 'net. However, I would count myself as an experienced *reader*, and as such, capable of judging good and bad writing.]
Re: The excerpts at #360:
My god! Travis Tea is real! Ms Noonan must be a pseudonym. No wonder she is pissed at Teresa, what with her pretending to have written a chapter of Atlanta Nights. It's like The Dark Half, only lamer and with Twinkies.
jh woodyatt @360
Arrrrrrgh! It burns! It burns! I must wash out my eyes with...tar! No, soy sauce!
Gawd is that terrible. I go away for a day and come back to find KN excerpts that explode the soul. What a world! What a crazy, crazy world.
Teresa said in post #17:
Any one of her mistakes is a mistake anyone could make. Taken all together, they're something else again.
(Someday, in the far future, a student who's set the translation of the preceding two sentences as an exercise in their Ancient Terrestrial English class is going to curse my name.)
I really like that idea, but I suggest an improvement to your second sentence:
Taken all together, they're something different altogether.
Because why stop at slightly sadistic if you can go for truly horrible. :D
I don't want to be tiresome here, but my inner Columbo* has been hanging around, being mildly apologetic about wanting to point something out.
We have been gently shallow-frying Ms Noonan's coterie about her inability to spell Teresa, but Teresa herself has been prone to inserting an extra "y" in Kaley, thus rendering it Kayley.
This does not invalidate any of the substantive points that have been made about misrepresentations of expertise, writing both good and bad, the tension between Art and Money, et cetera, in verse and prose.
----
* You all do have one, don't you? Hanging about in your brain in a rumpled mac and a deceptively baffled expression, bringing up inconsistencies? No?
Oh, well.
It seems to me that what we are witnessing here is the inevitable collision between those who believe that if you live the professional writer's lifestyle you will get to sell the book, and those who believe that you have to sell the book before you get to live the professional writer's lifestyle.
(And the latter group seem to have a better handle on what the PW's L entails, i.e. financial insecurity, hard work, and lots of folks having very weird ideas about how you live.)
T, who is a consummate editor, may very well have inserted the exta Y in Kayley to twit her. Ms. N-H is quite capable of such subtleties.
As I read all these comments, I keep thinking: where is Mike Ford now that we really need him?
JaneY
abi@366: True. But then, Kaley's name wasn't right in front of Teresa's eyes on the masthead or the author line of the posts she was responding to.
#351 Paula Helm Murray
"The interviewer told me 'Staff must never criticise a student's work, even if they ask for criticism. That is grounds for firing.'"
Sweet Madre Dios. Everday, in every class, we had critique.
Although this explains many experiences I've had working with other professionals in the design field.
I do have an inner Columbo, abi. Unfortunately, when I take him out, I get arrested by other cops. Something about older men walking around in dirty trenchcoats...
Steve Buchheit said (#370):
Sweet Madre Dios. Everday, in every class, we had critique.
Not quite the same thing, but I know from my friend's progress through Harvard's Graduate School of Design that they had regular critiques, which were apparently intense, detailed, and sometimes quite savage.
(Ultra-nit-picky-ness: "Madre de Dios")
#372: not if he meant "Mother God."
not if he meant "Mother God."
Wouldn't that be "Madre Diosa"? Or is that a word Starhawk made up for that, uh, novel of hers?
#370 -- Yeah, I was thinking the same thing! I only took a couple of college art classes in my mad pursuit of Making Art For A Living, but even then, I have vivid memories of my drawing prof, a tiny Russian woman who came up to my collarbone, staring out across a classroom worth of work and saying "Zees....Zees are some real turkeys."
I wonder if people in those programs develop their own code? I knew one instructor who, when she had nothing positive to say at all, would say, with painful enthusiasm, "I wonder how this would look outside? In natural light?" Eventually we all learned that this meant "I can find nothing redeeming about this piece at all, oh god, it burns, make it go away."
I rather suspect that anybody in a job where they were supposed to give critique but could not criticize student art at all might find themselves doing something similiar, and then the students have to learn to translate if they want to get any better.
Seems complicated.
360:
(sobbing)
I'll never be able to eat another Ho-Ho again!
(points finger accusingly)
you ruined them for me!
No criticism allowed? Sheesh. I went to college for creative writing, and regret it now, but the criticism was the good part. God.
#362 I haven't seen anything so awful since the time I decided to work my way through the "Lord of the Rings" section of fanfiction.net alphabetically by author.
You want awful? Try the Professional Wrestler Real People Fic.
(BTW, when you Google on Kaley Noonan this thread is now the fifth hit.)
But, as Teresa said back at #74, Kaley isn't a villain. She just tried to guerilla-market these pitch sessions (which may or may not have some value for some people) and got caught, giving us a little glimpse into the demimonde of 4theluv lit'ry fanzines.
For villainy, you have to look (again as Teresa said) to folks like:
American Book Publishing (a vanity press run by C. (for Cheryl) Lee Nunn (a former financial planner who lost her license for churning clients' accounts in order to generate fees).
Linda Dockery (AKA "The Book Doctor") a lady who took Todd Pierce's advice to "Lie a little. Yes, lie" about publications and awards and ran it into the ground, who used those credentials to appear at various writers' conferences and workshops as an expert on writing and publishing. (Todd Pierce is part of the reason MFAs are held in low repute around here.)
Barbara Bauer, a particularly obnoxious scam agent.
Robert Fletcher, convicted conman, another very enterprising scam agent.
PublishAmerica, a vanity press that relies on false and misleading advertising to reel in the unwary newbie writers.
D'ye know something? All of those folks, (Fletcher, PublishAmerica, all the rest of them) rely on one thing for their pitches: a desire among the newbies to "bypass the slush pile."
I'm having a little trouble sorting out the anatomical comparisons here. My experience suggests that most, um, Ring Dings are shaped more like, um, Twinkies, in the loose sense of being longer than they are wide. But Kaley does say "Twinkies" (plural) and "Ring Ding" (singular).
Also, am I misremembering or were Ring Dings once called Ding Dongs?
Lately I've been more into the cupcakes with little squiggles of icing on top of them, so this, um, memorable imagery isn't going to spoil my junk food habit.
#372 Peter Erwin, "Not quite the same thing,"
Only from the standpoint that "there mother must be proud" would not be an acceptable critique of the piece (critique the work, not the person). Mine was undergraduate, and to give an example of the detail and intensity of our critiques, as a class we pooled our money and bought our Package Design professor a new box of red markers, because he must have gone through a whole box in critique. And you haven't lived until a prof calls your work, "Crap" and pulls it off the wall to throw on the floor. One prof also had a hand-held sign that read, "Do NOT use the 'L' word" (as in "I like this...").
And, yes, it was Mother God. Also, most speakers of the phrase omit the "de/of" or swallow that part. There is also a musical group by that name.
Wow. So I tuned in to this along about post 40 and thought, "oh look a kitten" (Ms. Pitch Bitch) "is about to find out about cats—that should be educational." It always is with the genuine furcoated variety. Then I wandered off to do other things, returning about 150, and thought, "Ouch!" and realized it's actually a jingle ball learning about cats. At this point I'm just following along in fascinated delight to see what the cats break next. Actually that describes much off my non-writing day anyway. Maybe it's a sickness.
email thingie that will generate a response: http://www.kellymccullough.com/mail.html
From the dept of writing that might need some rewriting... A few years ago, I bought a calendar where each page was the reprint of film noir posters. There was one, the title of which eludes me, but it was about your typical deadly dame, and warned that "her mouth was filled with broken promises".
<sarcasm>
Well, it's obvious that there's one course at Emerson in which KN was an honors student — and it's in the Secret Catalog Available Only to Actually Enrolled Students.
WP 691 MFA Lifestyle Orientation
3.00
Lecture/workshop with the aim of helping students learn how to act like they have an MFA. Lectures cover proper kvetching technique concerning non-artiste Establishment; rejecting crass commercialism, including especially the mythical "steady living" and "student loan repayments"; balancing presentation of the student's artistic and technical shortcomings with arrogance; writing with authority after neglecting basic subject-matter research, knowledge, and/or analysis; misapprehending others' comments as criticisms of the Artistismus or self-invented technical language concerning the Artistismus (especially relying upon inept translations); and condescendingly criticizing all who disagree with the student's work, approach to Art, and/or personal hygiene and appearance. Optional laboratory sessions on advanced techniques of substance abuse and child support collection and avoidance (lab fee: $37).
</sarcasm>
If you think I'm somehow antiacademic, you should ponder why I found it necessary to add the HTML tags missing from the language definition to the above.
Ursula (375) said:
"I rather suspect that anybody in a job where they were supposed to give critique but could not criticize student art at all might find themselves doing something similiar, and then the students have to learn to translate if they want to get any better."
Try law professors — there's never a "translation problem" there. Of course, since that's not an entirely human subset...
not if he meant "Mother God."
Wouldn't that be "Madre Diosa"? Or is that a word Starhawk made up for that, uh, novel of hers?
Hmm... the standard Spanish (Catholic) phrase, I which assumed Steve was referring to, is "Madre de Dios" = "Mother of God" = "God's Mother." (Actually, I just noticed that Steve said that many speakers swallow the "de", so that it sounds like "Madre Dios", which wouldn't surprise me.)
But "madre" is also an adjective, so you could say "madre dios" = "mother god"[*]; "madre diosa" would then be "mother goddess".
[*] With a sense similar, I think, to the English translation (either male mother god or mother god of unspecified gender).
Sisuile@350: True. But the where and the when still come back to the who.
(UPenn. '81. Springer, Rosier, Irving, Wentzel, Lloyd. The sf/fantasy field is full of defrocked medievalists.)
"Madre diosa" means "mother goddess". "Madre dios" sounds really, really odd in Spanish ¡Válgame dios!
Greg @ #376
I'm looking at 'Results 1 - 20 of about 49,900 for "Ho-Ho" ' of my search, and none of the images look at all edible.
This reminds me of something that really irritated me about Stephen King's writing in several of his books: the brand-name dropping. It would keep pulling me up and out of the story, while my mental imagery went racing off on the equivalent of a Google search (but in a paleo-Google epoch) trying to figure out from assorted clues in the story what it was he was trying to summon up. I never worked out until they started advertising here whether 'Chinos' were trousers or shoes, for instance. At least with Donaldson's sprinkling in of eccentric & obscure vocabulary, a simple check in a good dictionary was enough.
In its culture, King's habit was probably quite effective & evocative. Outside the culture, it was like using in-jokes, slang, or jargon to subtly exclude Not Us, or at least indicate that we aren't interested in communicating to anyone else. Ian Fleming would use brands in a slightly different way; I've heard there's a strand of modern writing that follows & overextends him in the snobbish line.
To those Spanish speakers whom I may have offended by my ill use of your language, I apologize. My excuse is having only 3 years HS Spanish, and 1 year College Spanish (that my most vivid memory is having to stand when we said "Bolivia"), all of which is more than two decades old, I am still only barely able to ask where the bathroom is in your language.
Mea cupola.
What? What did I say now? Oh, bother.
Poor observation of the real world, coupled with an over-reliance on simile and metaphor, is characteristic of lit'ry writing.
Mez, google "hostess ho ho", or look here. They were one of my favorites growing up.
Serge (382):
I kind of like "Her mouth was filled with broken promises."
For much more -- and much worse -- of this kind of thing, I would like to recommend some books by Bill Pronzini. (And I would think that most Making Light readers will enjoy these thoroughly.) They are out of print, but used copies are readily available:
Gun in Cheek
Son of Gun in Cheek
Six-Gun in Cheek
They are compilations of great (in an alternative sense of "great") lines and plot points from mysteries (the first two) and Westerns (the third). Like:
"She...unearthed one of her fantastic breasts from the folds of her sheath skirt." --Michael Avallone
"Tolefree heard the car door bang, a deep voice exploring the soles of its owner's boots, and footsteps in the hall." --R.A.J. Walling
"I felt as gay and feverish and as desperate and inadequate as a lover in a t.b. ward." --Milton K. Ozaki
"Camping in a deep barranca, daylight burst over the mountains to find the Legionnaires in saddle." --Walker A. Tompkins
"'Got you spotted,' he apostrophized the hidden rifleman." --Leslie Scott
See, it's not so hard to get out of the slush pile and get published after all!
Jeffrey @ 392... Actually, I like the line too, although it kind of undermines the dame's threatening aspect that it sounds like she needs serious dental work done.
As for "She...unearthed one of her fantastic breasts from the folds of her sheath skirt." --Michael Avallone... I had to drop by the grocery store yesterday, so I took advantage of that to verify how voluminous 5-pound bags of flour. Susan was right.
Hide that in the folds of your sheath skirt!
*splutters*
he apostrophized???
Good Lord.
If I could do that, Jeffrey, it'd mean I have a serious hormonal problem. Which reminds me... Didn't an animated theatrical feature come out recently about farm animals? One of the characters was a cow, but why it had a man's voice, I don't know.
May I at this point put in a plug for the great and good David Langford's "Ansible"? Under the heading "Thog's Masterclass", he quotes random gems of fictive excellence like the ones given above; but he also devotes an entire section, ("As Others See Us") to the real thoughts of the literatists of the world about science fiction and fantasy.
We may occasionally put the boots into them, but brethren and sistern, let me tell you, anything we say is as nothing - nothing! - compared with the constant assault they mount on us.
Serge @#396 - The movie is Barnyard and they were bulls with udders, not cows with men's voices. Apparently anthropomorphized male animals can't have smooth lower regions. Why not? It worked for Bugs Bunny.
Bulls with udders... We are sowing nothing but confusion in the minds of our young ones, Tania. As for Bugs Bunny, during Xmas, I watched with my 5-year-old nephew the cartoon where Bugs wound up in a bull-fighting arena (*) and at no point did my nephew question the anatomical correctitude of the bull. He was too busy having a good time.
(*) Because, and I quote, he had taken a wrong turn at 'Albuquoique'.
Xopher @ 109: A friend of mine (with an MFA in film) used to insist that MFA actually stands for M****r F*****g A**hole. I figure he's had more exposure to them than I do.
And look where it got Bugs Bunny!
Jane
#379:
"Also, am I misremembering or were Ring Dings once called Ding Dongs?"
Ring Dings are by Drake's Cakes, a NE regional brand. (When I was really little, there were Ring Dings and Ring Ding Jrs. The former were huge; at least 4" across. Juniors were for lunch boxes. Now they're the default.)
Ding Dongs, AKA King Don's, are by Hostess.
While Hostess snacks were around when I was a kid, for some reason Ding Dongs weren't distributed in my area, and I thought the name was made up for the purposes of a parody song. It was a weird experience seeing them (and "Ho-Hos", the Hostess version of Drake's Yodels) for real.
Defrocked medievalists? Nah. I see some interesting names at k'zoo, ones that I recognize from my fiction bookshelves.
SF/F is full of medievalists who have found a paying (*gasp*) outlet other than academia. Or in addition to sitting in the ivory tower. We've got some of the richest/most "accurate" source material for the most common setting of Fantasy, and had it pounded into our heads for 4, 6, or 10 years. *grins* And then we add the hobbyists and the numbers get staggering.
And while I'm here...what book of Ms. Doyle's would you start a new reader on? I ask the accumulated wisdom, because I can't decide!
I'm suffering from staircase afterthoughts. Back around #118, when Julie was shrieking at us about how we couldn't possibly appreciate the quality of the work that appears in non-commercial literary publications, it completely slipped my mind that I've been published in the Mississippi Review. It's so wasteful to have a piece of specialized ammo like that and not remember to use it in the appropriate circumstances.
I'm still thinking about the overall subject of pitch sessions. I have a couple more bits of fact-checking to do before I say anything at length.
This is a wonderful thread. It's made me laugh out loud too many times to count. I keep slowing down appreciatively as I read it. How often do you get to see Jane Yolen pull rank, with all the ruffles and flourishes? Then Charles Petit did it too, only he used a different (if equally daunting) set of them. And I have to pass on Paula Helm Murray's story about the art school policy to my father-in-law, who taught art for many years.
Busy, busy, busy. Must get back to work.
Apparently anthropomorphized male animals can't have smooth lower regions. Why not? It worked for Bugs Bunny.
They almost put a loin cloth on the Wookie.
Sisuile, try The Price of the Stars. It's Doyle-and-Macdonald rather than just Doyle, but that's true of all but one of their books.
Land of Mist and Snow is also a swell book and a good place to start, and at the moment it's also easier to find. Keep an eye out for the allegorical personifications.
Jane (401), it's just as well they left it unspecified. Bugs Bunny is the biggest cross-dresser in the Warner cartoon universe.
C.E. Petit@383: Me, I'm plumping for:
<p lang="EN-SARC"></p>
...with "SARK" as the alternate version for languages that use a variation on the Greek spelling instead of the Latin:
<p lang="FI-SARK"></p>
But the real question about this much-needed addition to the XHTML spec is how the companies that make web browsers and other user agents should handle the default presentation for information marked up in this way. Screen readers would definitely need a separate "sarcastic voice" in each supported languages.
It's my official recommendation that graphical browsers refrain from visually differentiating text marked up as sarcasm unless the user presses a special key combination to indicate that he or she didn't get the joke. A unique key combination is essential; ctrl+W+T+F is recommended as the default combination.
Once this special combination is activated, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and most other browsers should cause the text marked up as sarcasm to flash in a sequence of eye-catching colors, perhaps accompanied by an embedded sound effect.
Internet Explorer should not recognize the designated key combination. Instead, a special-edition extended Microsoft keyboard should be made available, and should include a large, easily located special key marked with the interrobang (‽ or ?!, for those with less gifted browsers). When the user presses this special key, all text marked up as sarcasm should flash twice in neon green, and then Internet Explorer should close itself and the user should be logged out of his or her computer.
Lynx and other text-only browsers should ignore the markup entirely, as it's assumed that users of such browsing agents possess sufficient cognitive sophistication (and experience with the archaic customs of the pre-Netscape 2 interweb) to recognize sarcasm without the provision of additional interface cues.
Greg London @405: as long as they don't put a brassiere on the camel.
Teresa @ 407... Remember the cartoon where Bugs is chased by Elmer Fudd while going thru 'the Marriage of Figaro'? Or was it 'the barber of Seville'? Either way, by the end, Elmer is in full cross-dressing regalia and gets married to Bugs.
I believe I read in an interview with one of the creators of Barnyard that the rationale for giving the bulls udders was that "udders are funny". I suppose that had they done a live-action film, there'd be a lot of boob jokes (5 lb four sacks anyone?) because "boobies are funny". Why it's so high-larious I can't help myself. Of course I'm sure it never occured to them to make the owners of the udders the gender-correct Cows, because how could you write a comedy script with women and keep it from being about nekkid-sexy-lady-cows?
I swear,sometimes nothing makes me feel like a humorless old fart more than reading about The Industry that employs me.
#410
"Wetuwn, my wuv, I want you awways beside me..."
"Oh Bwunhilde, you'we so wuvwy"
"Yes, I know it, I can't help it..."
Oh hell. There goes *my* productivity for the rest of the week.
Sarah S... One wonders how any of that managed to get by the censors.
#413
Serge--I'm constantly wondering that sort of thing.
Oh, btw, here you go.
"Awise stworms
North winds bwow
Swowth winds bwow
Typhwoons, hurrwicaynes, earthquakes. . . SMOG!"
#413 Serge, it was standard vaudville schtick. Today it has very different meanings. Same thing for Bugs kissing other male characters (meant as an insult at the time).
Thanks for the link, Sarah S... I also ask myself that question about the movie Some Like It Hot. Besides the obvious crossdressing, you get masturbation jokes, and Jack Lemon telling the rich guy who fell in love with 'her' that they can't get married because he really is a man, a revelation that the other brushes off with "Well, nobody is perfect."
True, Steve, there was vaudeville. (And did you know that vaudeville is where James Cagney started and that his speciality was female characters?) Still, even by the late Fifties and early Sixties...
When I saw the trailer for Barnyard, I figured the male cattle were wearing falsies over their bullhoods so they could mingle with the herd and, well, not get clipped or sent to Bovine University.
Stefan - you have now given me images of what happens to bulls with falsies using automated milking machines. Images I did not need. Thanks.
Sisuile @ 403
And while I'm here...what book of Ms. Doyle's would you start a new reader on? I ask the accumulated wisdom, because I can't decide!
I assume you mean starting on SF/F? While I like TNH's choices, my favorite is actually Knight's Wyrd published and (I believe) still available through Scholastic.
#420:
You're welcome!
In an episode of "Rocko's Modern Life," Rocko and his pal Heifer (who's actually a young bull) go to a dude ranch, where the latter is accidentally hooked up to a milking machine. In one of the last scenes, Heifer and the machine and having a tearful farewell by a campfire.
Paula - #351
Is that the Art Institute that's a chain of Art Schools around the country? Because if so - my first bit of advice to anyone looking at art school is to not go there. I have yet to see someone come out of there better than they went in. I will also say that your story does not surprise me - not one little bit.
@414: Thank you SO much for that link, Sarah S!!! And please send new keyboard to replace wine-soaked one.
"Wwabbit twacks" Bwahahaha.
Pedantic Peasant@421: Actually, KW was from Harcourt (in hardcover) and later from Harcourt's Magic Carpet Books paperback line; alas, it recently went out of print, a casualty, so far as we can tell, of Harcourt's increasing de-emphasis on fantasy in their YA lines. We're working on rectifying the situation, but These Things Take Time.
Regarding udders: I love it when cartoonists who've lived in cities all their lives draw cows with six teats.
ala #414: It's the "Rubenesque" horse that just SLAYS me for some reason. The ballet oriented hippos from Fantasia have nothing over on that horse when it comes to proportion, style and a clear and delicate grace. And it made me snort out loud, so maybe I'm just biased.
ala #360: I've now had a detailed discussion with a half-dozen people of varying levels of dirty-minded proclivity; and NONE of us think that using the plural twinkies instead of the more obvious (and singular) twinkie makes any sense.
A twinkie is a spongy tube with a creamy white filling. Having a twinkie is a rather obvious phallic allusion. Having more than one seems to imply vestigial genitalia.
While there's certainly a spot on someone's bookshelves somewhere for a "highbrow lit" exploration of the intersection of romantic attraction and abnormal sexual organs, based on the excerpt at hand I have to think that wasn't really the allusion she was going for.
I am tempted to illustrate all of this with a blog post and pictures (ala the "Helm's Deep in Candy" Particle) using actual Hostess baked goods...but I'm quite sure that once we get to the Twinkie vs. Ho-Ho visual I'd be breaking decency laws somewhere.
That somewhere might well be my own mind.
#398 -- One of the fun things about being in the audience of Into the Woods on Broadway was tracking the reactions of audience members as they realized the Wolf was emphatically male. That's the only anthropomorphized creature in mass media that I can (or am willing to) think of (I've seen some furry suits that I'd like to block out of my memory, thank you) who gets to keep his genitals.
She unearthed one of her fantastic teats from the folds of her sheath skirt.
Karl #427: It's the "Rubenesque" horse that just SLAYS me for some reason.
Ditto. I just swoon and giggle every time it shows up.
Don't let's all forget that we're talking two separate Bugs episodes here, the Rabbit of Seville and What's Opera Doc.
#423, unfortunately, no. Granted my interview was about 10 years ago, but still it sounded like an instutional policy and you know how glacial that can get. I'm not naming them but they're named after the city, and are highly regarded. And I know a bunch of graduates (it used to be a benefactor to some extent from our Renaissance Festival..) but they are mostly three-d artists (glass, metal sculpture, potters).
#429 She unearthed one of her fantastic teats from the folds of her sheath skirt.
Hey now, nothing wrong with pendulous breasts...
More inappropriate udders: Cows with Guns.
Aconite @ 426: Regarding udders: I love it when cartoonists who've lived in cities all their lives draw cows with six teats.
...um, maybe they're turbocharged V6 cows? As a born-and-bred suburbanite, your remarks caused me to Google "cow udders" to find out how many teats are accurate, and was promptly rewarded with cow udder eclairs. Thankfully, there are no pictures, but they're not just called that for visual resemblance though I think (or at least desperately hope) that the recipe is bogus anyway.
from the folds of her sheath skirt
Must be an Issey Miyake skirt. I can't think of any other designer offhand who could manage something like that...
Or am I even less fashion-savvy than I think I am?
Lexica - I agree with your Miyake surmise. I can imagine Gaultier making an attempt, but it would end up looking like high-end fetish wear.
Jim, #433: I've seen that before, and I still can't believe they left out the rhyme "No cow thumbs." Burns me, it does. Other than that, serious earworm potential!
Mr. Owl, how many teats are there on a proper cow udder?
Let's find out... One, two, three.... four.
Four.
Carrie S. #374: Or is that a word Starhawk made up for that, uh, novel of hers?
I assume you mean The Fifth Sacred Thing, which wasn't very good.
Mez #388: At least with Donaldson's sprinkling in of eccentric & obscure vocabulary, a simple check in a good dictionary was enough.
Only if he actually uses the word correctly, which with Donaldson is NOT a given. I'm convinced that for Lord Foul's Bane Donaldson just ran his writing through some kind of Thesaurificator or something, without paying much attention. I can't stand Donaldson. "The horses were almost prostrate upon their feet" is one of his laughably clumsy sentences. If you don't have command of the vocabulary, you shouldn't try to use it.
Also, I find a protagonist who's a rapist—even though he thinks it's all a dream—impossible to identify with or enjoy reading about.
As for King, in its own culture the brand-name dropping (why does that phrase make me think of highly-advertised shit? Or maybe it's the phrase 'Stephen King' that does that) seems like what it is: product placement. His horror fiction is all schlock in my opinion.
Karl Kindred #427: A twinkie is a spongy tube with a creamy white filling. Having a twinkie is a rather obvious phallic allusion.
A twinkie (or twink, these days) is also a young gay man, usually 18-22 or so, and generally not terribly muscular.
Shall I admit that one of my nicknames for my aa-of-ten-days-ago ex was "my cream-filled twinkie"? No, perhaps I'd better not admit that.
Rats! I meant to mention that Starhawk's novel Walking to Mercury, which is set in the present day, with a main character much like Starhawk herself, IS good.
Margaret at 423:
I'm at an Art Institute (Seattle) right now for culinary, and it's pretty good. It's not the CIA (Culinary Institute of America) or Cordon Bleu, but then, if I'd wanted one of those, I'd've gone there instead. (The CIA scares me.) I won't speak for any of the other departments, though. I never see anything with which I am impressed up on the walls, and the general education classes are abysmal. (I'm currently in a Public Speaking class, taught by a man who averages 2.4 "um"s per sentence, who cannot coherently present a story or lecture, and who speaks in a monotone.)
Xopher @ 439... I take it that your ex didn't quite look like Hugh Jackman did in The Boy from Oz...
I think Walking to Mercury is actually the prequel to The Fifth Sacred Thing. The main character of WtM is Maya, no? who is of a grandmotherly age in tFST?
I'll admit I enjoyed both books. I'm sure I'm not the only one, but I'm not about to argue ad sales figures because that way lies madness (cf. The Da Vinci Code, Left Behind, Eragon).
Serge 442, I didn't see HJ (ooo, bad initials!) in TBFO, but I don't think HJ could ever have passed for a twinkie. My ex is skinny even for his age (undiagnosed lymphoma will do that to you), and one of the things I always promised to do for him was fatten him up (and put meat on his bones, yeah, yeah, I made all the puns about that too).
But it was not to be. :'-(
Nicole 443: I also enjoyed both books, but my enjoyment of TFST was for reasons independent of it's actually being good. Whereas those reasons don't really apply to WtM, and I enjoyed it because it's a good story and pretty well written, with much more believable and sympathetic characters than TFST (even though one or more of them are technically the same people...compare Anakin Skywalker across the Star Wars movies to see what I mean), and a story with real breath in its body.
Debra Doyle at #386, is there a name for the listing of one's physical or spiritual progenitors?
I remember being impressed by the concept when we read The Iliad in highschool, with the heroes describing themselves and listing their families before they battled each other. Later I ran into the practice of combatants listing their sifus and their sifu's sifus in martial arts films (and in wing-chung class). Much later I read Cennini's Artist's Handbook and saw how he traces his artistic lineage back to Giotto. Now I see it in the academic context, so it's certainly widespread. I feel as if I should have its name by now, or is it not recognised unless part of a formal challenge?
-Barbara
Xopher--My sympathies on your recent breakup (though it sounds as though you're not taking it too hard, which is a blessing).
Susuile 403, I second Teresa's The Price of the Stars as an excellent introduction to the duo's work. It stands alone quite well, but will allow you to enter that universe very easily.
That said, I take it as more 'straight SF' with The Land of Mist and Snow as SF&F and requiring a bit more of a cognitive jump to get in tune with.
"YMMV", "Objects in the mirror..."
I'd like to note for the record that, for all I know, that excerpt from Backwoods East Jesus I posted above (#360) is a crucial turning point in whatever Ms. Noonan's book is actually about. I only know that the book is supposed to be about "incest, anarchy and [mumble something about Ohio and Christians]" and that Mark and Jo are its main characters. (No, I don't know whether they're siblings. Blech, just thinking about that...)
Maybe somebody has seen a synopsis or a hook or something for Backwoods East Jesus and can comment. Who knows? It could be the narrator knows full well that the sexualization of Hostess food-like products is a good way to twist the knife while she goes about squicking the reader with incest between Christian anarchists in Ohio. (For my part, I'm a lot more interested in the anarchy than the incest, but Ms. Noonan hasn't delivered any anarchy in the excerpts she's gotten published on the web. Why, Ms. Noonan, why did you make me carry this VW Microbus all the way up this hill?)
Oh, and Greg (#376)? Sorry about that, but you know they're bad for your diet, right? You'll thank me later.
Barbara at 446, I've heard people refer to themselves as 'grandchildren'. One of my professors is McCarty's grandchild (he's a microbiologist, big in the field) because his adviser worked with the man. Beyond that, I don't know.
Vicki 447: Thanks. I have control of my tone in writing, that's all. I'm actually heartbroken but soldiering on. It gets a little easier every day.
I remember being impressed by the concept when we read The Iliad in highschool, with the heroes describing themselves and listing their families before they battled each other. Later I ran into the practice of combatants listing their sifus and their sifu's sifus in martial arts films (and in wing-chung class). Much later I read Cennini's Artist's Handbook and saw how he traces his artistic lineage back to Giotto. Now I see it in the academic context, so it's certainly widespread.
I was just doing this in email.
"Your riprese?"
"Sparti, definitely Sparti. My saltarello too."
"Yeah, me too. Via Bourrassa. As opposed to -----, who's definitely a Brainard."
The comparison to lineages is perfect.
(Despite my best efforts to NOT fall back into the 15thc, I am about to venture forth into battle on behalf of the Sparti lineage against both the Brainard descendants and the Other One. Like I have time for this detour.)
Susan @452:
Sorry, you're making me think of:
"HaHA! You're using Bonetti's defense against me!"
"I thought it appropriate, given the rocky terrain."
"You must have expected that I would counter with Capo Ferra."
"I find that Tybalt cancels out Capo Ferra. Don't you?"
"Unless your opponent has studied his Agrippa. Which I have."
Xopher #439: Even using your definition (which actually correlates to a common pejorative noun used in MMORPG games and makes me wonder which begat which), I STILL don't think that was the allusion she was looking for.
Even if he did have two "Twinkies" of his very own AND they were BOTH stuffed inside his grey slacks (still not entirely out of the realm of possibility) the rest of the conversation still plays out awkwardly. It does add a bit of subtext to the whole "take it up the Ho-Ho" line though...actually, maybe you're on to something...
Either way, the resulting visual aids using real Hostess baked goods violate many expressed and implied rules of decency and good taste.
Damn funny, but a violation none the less.
Xopher #439: Even using your definition (which actually correlates to a common pejorative noun used in MMORPG games and makes me wonder which begat which), I STILL don't think that was the allusion she was looking for.
Even if he did have two "Twinkies" of his very own AND they were BOTH stuffed inside his grey slacks (still not entirely out of the realm of possibility) the rest of the conversation still plays out awkwardly. It does add a bit of subtext to the whole "take it up the Ho-Ho" line though...actually, maybe you're on to something...
Either way, the resulting visual aids using real Hostess baked goods violate many expressed and implied rules of decency and good taste.
Damn funny, but a violation none the less.
Fragano (#387):
"Madre diosa" means "mother goddess". "Madre dios" sounds really, really odd in Spanish ¡Válgame dios!
Now that I've had a chance to think a bit more about it -- shouldn't it be "diosa madre" (or "dios madre")? Or is "madre" being used in a more figurative sense (e.g., "pobre hombre" vs "hombre pobre")? Or is "madre" just atypical as Spanish adjectives go?
Of course, "mother god" sounds somewhat odd in English; does "madre dios"/"dios madre" sound more odd, if you can make such a comparison?
More seriously, bookbinding also moves in dynasties. X studied with Y, who studied with Z, all the way back to Thomas J Cobden-Sanderson and before. There are genetic linkages - the Van Daals in the Netherlands, the Brockmans in the UK, but the student/teacher links are more powerful. It's a remnant of the guild system.
It's an interesting world, one which I see from the outside, being almost entirely self-taught. And that messes with some heads.
Pedantic Peasant 421--Ah yes, Knight's Wyrd--that would be one of theirs I edited! But Groogleman is still a great favorite around here.
JaneY
Peter, Fragano (387, 457): is there some reason we're avoiding Madre de Dios?
Barbara Gordon (446) "...is there a name for the listing of one's physical or spiritual progenitors?"
Yes. It's called "being Mormon".
Oh--and I meant to write this before when we were talking about overwriting and how to revise it--if possible. A story told to me by one of my PA's a while back. She had taken pottery classes and was sitting at her wheel trying for the umpteenth time to get the vase or bowl to squeeze up between her fingers properly. Her teacher came by, took one look, slammed his hand down on the clay, and said, "Don't overwork shit."
I took it as a life (art) lesson to remember and think more people should as well.
JaneY
Lexica, Tania, I'm still trying to figure where the folds are on a sheath-cut shirt, let alone you youd fit breasts into them. Unless they are detachable breasts, and it's not a fold but a pocket.
I mean, by definition, a sheath skirt isn't cut to have folds, unless there's some confusion present between "fold" and "kick pleat" going on, and since those are usually in the back, at the bottom edge of the skirt, I'm really having trouble imagining breasts there. Same with folds = pockets, really.
Karl 445-6: No, I didn't mean to imply she was trying for anything resembling current slang in any community. I think she was trying for originality, and achieving boredom. And incongruity, but not the amusing kind. Distracting from your joke with a bad shape analogy makes no sense.
What MMORPG term? I'm curious.
Fannish lineages: Tim Kyger got me into fandom, and has some responsibility for getting Patrick into fandom. Patrick and I got Scraps into fandom, and he did the same for Victor Gonzalez. This makes Tim Kyger Victor's fannish great-grandfather.
Ulrika O'Brien : I find your name intriguing and wish to nick it for various RPG purposes, none of which will end up on the web or otherwise published. May I?
... most of my other points have been covered, thoroughly and delightfully, and the conversation has moved on.
(I still get author-squee on here. )
There's a website out there that does mathematical genealogies. You could trace ideas from advisor to student through it.
Peter Erwin #457 & TNH #460:
The use of "madre diosa" and "diosa madre" depends on context.
Pero ¡Madre de dios! ¿Qué debo hacer con esa confusión entre la santa madre del salvador del mundo (por llamarle asi y por antonomásia) y las diosas madre de las viejas religiones de la zona mediterranea?
Xopher at #463
In MMORPGs a "twink" is a lower level character who has been set up with the best gear or items by a more powerful and experienced character.
Think: someone who benefits from a virtual sugar-daddy.
Xopher: "Twink." I ran across it in a different type of online RPing, where it generally meant "person who really pisses off the GM, for reasons including (but not limited to!) power-gaming, rules-lawyering, and bringing OOC into IC."
That's probably not the exact same definition as the MMPORG one, but I'm guessing it's similar.
Leah Miller #468, on a different definition of the word "twink" than I'm used to: Think: someone who benefits from a virtual sugar-daddy.
And severely tweezes his eyebrows? And keeps his hair products in his hair rather than in his bathroom? And is excessively clean?
There are some traditions (more or less denominations) of Wicca that do initiatory lineages. The hard-core Gardnerians, or Hard-Gards as some of us call them, are like that. The difference is that for them, you don't count as Gardnerian (or even Wiccan, for the most extreme ones) unless your lineage is legitimate. And they check.
As a neo-eclectic upstart with no lineage before the night three of us initiated each other (unless you count my years-later almost-accidental initiation that came directly from the Goddess, in which case my lineage is...still short, but very ancient!), I think this is profoundly silly. But then I would, wouldn't I?
Since Hard-Gard stuffiness has no real power over me, this only annoys me when some Gardnerian brat with half my experience snoots me as "not really Wiccan," because only people "descended" from Gerald himself are "really" Wiccan. Generally I just laugh at them and they go away.
I wish to stress that only a tiny minority of Gardnerians actually snoot other Witches in this way—but all of them know their lineage at least a few steps back, and the High Priestess of any Gardnerian coven has papers to prove she can trace back to Old Gerald.
Leah 468: I'm almost certain the MMORPG usage derives from the gay one. The semantic progress is fairly obvious, as you point out, even though in gay terms not every twink is a kept boy, or even a trust-fund baby.
Hehe.
G. Jules @ 469
In our text-based or table-top RPing that's generally known as a Munchkin. A Munchkin is anyone who uses rules lawyering, ooc knowledge, and strategic character design with one goal: to be the strongest, mightiest, most overpowered person on the block. They often tend to be Mary Sue types as well - wanting to be incredibly handsome and strong and have a never-ending series of girlfriends...
Yet another story of folks who think they should get it all without paying their dues, taking their lumps, or grinding their experience.
There, I knew I'd tie this into the thread somehow!
Nice thing about GURPS, at least as I GM'd it for 18 years: if you can get the magic gem, but only by using knowledge your character wouldn't have, you get more points for NOT getting the magic gem than for getting it.
Also, if I set that kind of trap...I'd find a way to take the gem away, since after all you cheated to get it.
I learned to fence about 12 years ago, in Los Angeles, in a college PE class. Didn't think at the time to ask who my instructor's teachers were.
About six years ago, in a different part of the country, I started fencing with a group of people who, as it turned out, had almost exactly the same style and learning/teaching philosophies that I did. Their instructor had learned to fence at a school in L.A. We theorized that their teacher and my teacher learned from the same instructor, back in the day.
Unfortunately I have no way of checking, but it's a neat theory.
I used to GM Amber. It's diceless, which makes finding ways to administer justice to PC's very, very easy. We never had a name for that type, because they didn't last long.
The trick was ensuring, like Roger Rabbit, that you only did the smackdown when it was funny.
fidelio @ #462 - I've been imagining the folds as purely decorative, if that's any help.
I'm also trying to figure out why the breasts are fantastic, and I've had this Bette Midler anecdote/quote/attributed quip going through my head since the breast and scales discussion:
Got myself a little mail scale, the kind they weigh postage and cocaine on. Unhooked my bra, flopped one of those suckers down... I won't tell ya how much they weigh but it costs $87.50 to send 'em to Brazil... third class!
In tabletop RPG's, twink == munchkin; I don't know whether twink came from tabletop to MMORPG or vice versa.
I tend to . . . hmm. . . play to win. My defense is that so do actual martial artists and other people who spend ten years training for a ten second fight.
( farther off topic: http://www.gamegrene.com/node/131 )
In Calvin and Hobbes wasn't there a character who kept calling Calvin "Twinkie"?
#479: Ugh, creepy! That was Moe. Yuck.
Barbara, #446: Now I see it in the academic context, so it's certainly widespread. I feel as if I should have its name by now, or is it not recognised unless part of a formal challenge?
"What makes you think an academic discussion isn't a formal challenge?" says a jaded survivor of the MLA convention.
Barbara@446: There's always "apostolic succession."
Teresa@460:
Yes. It's called "being Mormon".
The grew-up-Southern version is what I call "playing 'who ya kin to'" -- it's a two-person game, and once begun, usually continues until some variety of personal connection is established. Blood relationship (however remote) is best, but in a pinch it can work with something as far-fetched as either you (or one of your close friends or distant relatives) having once lived in the same town as the other person (or one of the other person's close friends or distant relatives.)
On the number of teats per bovine udder... I couldn't find a good photo of Holly, but she has six. All of them work.
This is not the least of her imperfections.
The naming of family connections seems to take up a great deal of my time in 3D social life. That's often because I'll say something and be asked, sharply, "How do you know that?" which leads to explication of who said what at Uncle Mervie's on Christmas Eve.
Patrick, *way* back at #349, you said, in response, to my #333, "333: Nothing against MFAs here. All you people with degrees look alike to me."
Okay. I'm glad to see you have nothing against MFAs. And can I just tell you that you were actually the person who inspired the beginning of my decision to return to school and seek a graduate program? Way back, many, many moons ago, on the Well. Because I said talent couldn't be taught in a classroom, and you said probably not, but craft might be (or something to that degree).
And years later, I remembered that. So, first, this is really thank you, because you Nielsen Haydens have really taught me as much about publishing and editing and blogging as USC has taught me about things I haven't yet put my finger on yet (forgive me. I have only just begun, and am yet green around the ink).
But the second part: "All you people with degrees look alike to me"... The only times I've ever heard people say "all you" anything "look alike to me" have been negative (they're all associated with racism, in fact. "A nigger's a nigger." [which I'm using as an example of racism, and not as a statement, mind you] "All you Asians look alike to me."
I can't imagine you meant it that way, and, in fact, I'm pretty sure I know better. But I hoped you might elaborate...?
Fragano (467): Ah, lo comprendo. Gracias.
Doyle (482): I know that game. When Lydy Nickerson was visiting recently, we determined that we're at minimum related through the Hopkinses.
Will (484), Patrick will be along shortly, but trust me: he was joking about his own lack of a degree.
Xopher @ 471 -- I've heard this kind of lineage recital referred to as "showing your puppy papers".
I used to be a member of a group that was very big on "our lineage goes all the way back to Gardner!" (I didn't much care), so that made me laugh a lot.
Serge: I only wish. I was referring to Gerald Gardner, founder of Wicca.
@351: 'The interviewer told me "Staff must never criticise a student's work, even if they ask for criticism. That is grounds for firing."'
With modest gleefulness at my own perspicacity, and with deep apologies to Kate Salter and all the others who keep the wheels turning at Viable Paradise writer's workshop, I note that staff are not allowed to criticize students' work. Faculty, on the other hand... If the staffer doesn't understand the difference between him/herself and Faculty, the Faculty will be pleased to rub the staffer's nose in it.
(Apologies to non-demigod faculty.)
Ceri... Oh well... My wife's genetic lineage goes back to George Washington. Yes, she could become a Daughter of the Revolution, if she felt so inclined, which she doesn't. As for the direct science-fictional 'lineage' that led her to being a writer, you can blame C.J.Cherryh, and Sharon Lee & Steve Miller, with a pinch of eluki bes shahar.
Well, not entirely, Brenda. If a student asked a staffer for comment (or asked another student for same) well, I don't recall ever asking about it, and can't imagine caring.
The reason folks are there is to get critiques from the instructors, and they do get them.
And staff definitely reads and comments on student submissions during the acceptance phase.
Teresa #485: No hay para tanto.
Xopher, I read it too long ago to argue with you over whether it was objectively good. All I know is I enjoyed it, and nothing stuck out at me as "not good" about it. I tend to be a little reluctant to pass judgment as to a book's objective quality, as opposed to more subject things, such as whether I liked it and why. It has to have really transgressed something I can recognize as a universal standard before I'll feel comfortable stating that the book simply isn't any good.
Until I reread WtM, and possibly even after, I'll just have to remain humbly agnostic about its objective quality. That's all.
That Bugs Bunny with the bull is the best. One of the moments when the bull pauses in mid-air with that "WTF is happening?" look at the audience is priceless. I was lucky to see it on the big screen in Cardiff many years ago, and it's ten times better on a cinema screen than on tv.
I miss made-for-cinema animation like the original T&Js. So much imagination went into them. The set-up with that poor bull--iirc, there's at least three elements to it, something with glue? then he has to strike a match at the end? Been too many years since I saw it.
I lurk here a lot, but rarely post. The competition's way too fierce!
Very amusing thread. My own meager addition: pimping a Firefox extension. In tracking various IP addresses, some folks referred to dnsstuff.com, a recommendation I wholeheartedly second (or third; I may have lost count).
Anyway, I know of a useful extension that leverages dnsstuff.com: ErrorZilla. It makes Firefox error pages more useful by letting you ping or traceroute or whois a URL that maybe failed to load, with dnsstuff doing all the hard work. It also lets you check the Google cache or Coral cache or even the Wayback Machine, tools I believe were also used in this thread (well, at least the Google cache).
On the subject of tracing intellectual 'genealogies', just this morning a friend sent me this:
Jim #492: AAAiiieeeeeeeeeeeeee, no! The bit about VP was parenthetical!!!!!!!!! Yikes!!! But I was attempting to say that the concept of staff not being allowed to give critiques, which people found so puzzling, is explainable by the tour guide's choice of words. The faculty/instructors are Real People, and those who make the coffee, put out the name cards, and know where the spare toilet paper is, are not. (BT, DT)
And Viable Paradise was wonderful and everyone should go.
Serge @410::: (view all by) : Remember the cartoon where Bugs is chased by Elmer Fudd while going thru 'the Marriage of Figaro'? Or was it 'the barber of Seville'? Either way, by the end, Elmer is in full cross-dressing regalia and gets married to Bugs.
Bugs dressed up as Brunhilde and briefly married Elmer in 'What's Opera, Doc?' (if I'm remembering this correctly).
On #486 (Teresa/Patrick): ah, see, I hadn't known that. Which makes Patrick's joke make so much more sense. And is precisely the sort of self-effacement/deprecation I've come to expect from everyone.
So thanks for clearing that up, Teresa. And also, to Patrick: just want to point out, I'd figured it would turn out, upon elaboration, to be as inocuous as it seems to've been.
Serge @ #491: How does one list science fictional lineage leading to being a writer? It certainly sounds interesting.
Jim at 343: I'm sure there are some fine MFAs out there, but I'm not convinced that the degree helps anyone become a writer more than, say, rounding the Horn in a schooner with the complete Everyman's Library on board would.
Well, it's not the *degree* that's supposed to help, is it? It's the *program*. And the program, at least as I observed it at UCI, is essentially a two-year workshop series. Workshopping seems to help some folks more than others, but then, what tool or technique doesn't? At the very least, it provides a period of time when there is not only the time and money to focus on writing, but also an extensive and supportive peer network to hand who are all engaged in the same process to get feedback from, and practiced teachers to get extensive critique and help from.
And my sense from the folks who were in the Irvine program when I worked there was that they felt it helped make them better writers in their chosen genre. It's hard for me to argue with that view from the ones whose first novel sales came during or after the program, including Charmaine Craig and Alice Sebold and David Benioff and Aimee Bender and Andrew Winer and Glen David Gold. I know Alice credits the Irvine program with a lot of her progress as a writer, and she, as you may remember, made kind of a big splash with her first novel, The Lovely Bones
I wasn't in the program myself -- not my genre of choice, for one -- so all of my observations are second-hand, but at the time I was there, Irvine certainly seemed to be taking in a lot of not-published writers and turning them out to become published ones.
I'm having a weekend jewelry construction teaching session at my house for a dear friend who I think was a graduate of the KC Art Institute, I'll ask her if those standards were there when she was a student.....
Rob & Serge - Yup, it is What's Opera Doc? and the other one with the great opera interpretations is Rabbit of Seville.
Sandy B. - Er, sure, I guess. Nick away -- just, you know, no intramural porpoises or whatever. (I am reminded of the friend who on first being introduced asked, "Is that your SCA name?" I was not quick enough to ask him if that was his war surplus brain.)
abi @ #454:
Arrgh, what is that from? It sounds familiar, but I can't place it.
The lineage that happens to be in my mind at the moment is actually a meaningful shorthand for how one performs certain sequences of steps. Hop in the vuodo at the end (shudder!) or at the beginning (rah!) or, horrors, in the MIDDLE, due to what I think is a sad misreading of Cornazano?
(Some people in the Brainard lineage do the middle thing, apparently not having noticed that Brainard herself (later?) wrote that she preferred the hop at the beginning. Such is the danger of teaching while still processing. The processing is neverending, or course, so all your early work will be coming back to haunt you forever....)
Having just caught up on this thread, I would like to say several things.
I don't have anything against MFAs, or holders of any other university degree. I'm stunned and flattered to have been such an influence on Will Entrekin's life.
I like quite a lot of writing that some people would describe as "literary."
I really, really hate the slighting epithet "lit'ry." What are we saying when we deploy this little joke? What we're saying is that proponents of the "literary" lisp. Now, what are we suggesting when we associate a class of people with lisping? (Programming language geeks: shut up.) What we're saying is one of the following: (1) they've got something physically wrong with them, (2) they're members of the decadent British upper crust, or (3) they're gay. Not to put too fine a point on it, but: ick.
Can we please come up with a way of talking about dingbat pretentiousness that doesn't rely on appealing to the nastiest prejudices imaginable? Thank you very much.
#461: "I meant to write this before when we were talking about overwriting and how to revise it--if possible. A story told to me by one of my PA's a while back. She had taken pottery classes and was sitting at her wheel trying for the umpteenth time to get the vase or bowl to squeeze up between her fingers properly. Her teacher came by, took one look, slammed his hand down on the clay, and said, 'Don't overwork shit.'"
At which point, if I'd been the student, I might well have walked out. Maybe I knew perfectly well it wasn't a good piece, and maybe I was nonetheless still trying to figure out how to get that one particular technique right.
Any teacher who destroys a piece of my work because they think they have superior knowledge of what I was trying to learn is probably going to be an ex-teacher in a big hurry.
I really, really hate narcissistic, authoritarian "teachers" like that.
If Jim picked up "lit'ry" from anyone, he picked it up from me. I think I picked it up from Dave Langford, though I may be conflating it with "triffically", which I know I picked up from him.
I don't know about the other two, but if someone needs to be shot now, I'll go quietly.
And furthermore, that wasn't what was going on with the pottery teacher. He was right. He was teaching the same lesson we teach when we tell VP students that if they've been laboring over the same novel for the last eleven years, it might be a good idea to lay it aside and work on something else.
I don't care where it came from, I don't like it.
It feels to me like an exercise in making fun of the geeky lame kid. That kid was me.
And when we tell our VP students that, we don't accompany the lesson by destroying the only copy of their manuscript.
I don't admire bullying. The whole Zen-master thunderclap sudden-realization thing? Zen was a system designed to produce an elite warrior class. Fuck elite warrior classes. Fuck Zen. And fuck teachers who think it's okay to destroy students' work merely in order to dramatize their point.
Ah, Patrick, we have each taken a different meaning from that teaching instant. I see it as freeing, you as controlling. Possibly we are both right.
One of the questions I am often asked (as a writer, as a teacher of writers) is: how do you know when you are done? And I know that I myself have this problem. I can literally rework a piece to death. So I have had to learn when to slam my own hand down on whatever shit I am working on--and only then am I free to move on. A zen koan if you wish, or Cohen, the Jewish version. (Spelling has never been my forte.)
As an aside,am currently having that trouble with life, too!
Jane
Hmmmm bit of overlap there, Grasshopper.
Jane
I have no problem with the intended lesson. I'm frequently the editor--or teacher--urging someone to let go, to not "overwork shit."
But as a student, I despise the kind of arrogant teacher who thinks their position entitles them to interrupt my own learning process in order to enact their own little drama. I was working on a very specific piece of technique, and you came along and used it as an occasion to grandstand to the whole class. Fuck you. You get no more chances from me.
This is probably why I never finished high school, to say nothing of ever going to college. Because I know what I want to learn, I know how to do it, and I have exactly zero patience people who use the "teacher" role as an occasion for this kind of abuse. It's an emotional betrayal as bad as any other.
Teresa@460:
Yes. It's called "being Mormon".
Only Mormons? (Not being snarky) I would have thought that since it's so prevalent in the Bible, most religions would have some form of it. That being said, it gets tricky in the Mormon lineages back around the 1840's when you have to start asking, "Which wife were you decended from"? Would you call it "Trading Begots"?
BTW, the Stupid Hair comment was priceless. Thanks!
Which rather leaves me at a loss for what to call those stories, since calling them "literary" means that I agree that this, and no other, is "literature."
Give me a name for that material that isn't "literary," that doesn't prejudice that genre with the seal of approval, that doesn't come right out and say that it's the good stuff.
Because whatever it is, it isn't.
i read "lit'ry" as not an upper-class lisp, but sort of a faux mark twain aw-shucks-i-cain't-ever-measure-up-to-you-folks-&-your-big-city-larnin'.
which, i guess if you get right down to it, is either about the hickishness of the lower class or anti-intellectual know-nothing snobbery.
so i suppose you can't ever win.
I'm with Patrick on the pottery instructor. It goes beyond the teacher not being able to know what you're trying to learn from what you're doing, it's also that the teacher can't possibly tell what you're *feeling* from what you're doing. Centering and throwing on the wheel is an incredibly kinesthetic skill -- something the teacher damn' well ought to know. As with any kinesthetic skill, you often have to futz around in the approximate vicinity of doing the thing right before you do it the right way once and --click-- you know how it *feels* when you're doing it right. And even once you know how it feels to get it right, it may take yet more repetition before you learn how the approach to getting to the clicky place feels. And all of that repetition and feeling your way, you gotta do for yourself, 'cause no one else can feel it for you.
Now, maybe the pot in question was already beyond salvaging as a pot -- maybe it had never been centered right in the first place for instance -- but the rest of the experience of wrestling with it, and feeling what it's like when it goes totally off course and collapses, that was still available. And the student needs to feel that for herself so she will be able to anticipate it the next time.
abi: I've been told by those in the know that Bonetti, Capo Ferro, etc, are real schools of swordplay from the Renaissance, whose manuals have survived to today. I was told this by someone who was bemused that they would use those schools, as they're all heavy swordwork styles, not fencing styles, which is what the movie is mimicking -- and that there are vastly *more* fencing school manuals still extant.
_______
As for the lineage games, it's my understanding that human beigns have been trying to trace connections (or potential enmities) in that kind of genealogical way for as long as we have recorded history. Is there really no pithy one-word description for it?
Illlustrators have a joke re overworking a piece -
"How do I know when the painting is done? When the Fed Ex guy pries it out of my fingers!"
Upstream someone (Rachel? This thread is too long - I'm losing things) said that the culinary program at the Art Institute is working for her - that's good. I didn't even know they had one; I thought they were mostly commercial art/advertising. I do know that I have not been impressed with what the people who went there learned, at least as far as illustration goes.
Greg London @405:
They almost put a loin cloth on the Wookie.
I've been watching the FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST anime series lately, and keep asking myself, "Why does Al's armor* wear a loincloth. Why would a set of battle armor need a loincloth?"
It makes me think of the old chant from my Army days: "This is my weapon, and this is my gun; one is for killing, the other's for fun."
*The plot of FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST makes this a clumsy sentence. Al doesn't wear his armor; he's a human spirit that's been infused into, and animates, a set of battle armor. So Al actually is the armor. (Very interesting anime series, by the way; Bruce-Bob says check it out!)
Rather than "literary" or "lit'ry", how about the reliable old...
..."artsy-fartsy"?
510: TNH said, "...if someone needs to be shot now, I'll go quietly."
Patrick, before you shoot Teresa, please discuss it with her husband.
Alternative names for `literary' fiction:
Li-Fi? (By analogy with Sci-Fi)
Lenora Rose@521: Am I imagining things or has nobody actually mentioned what movie abi was quoting @454? I'm not actually sure myself, but I'm going to guess The Princess Bride.
#503 Well, they sure broke the bank on this one eh Watson? Everyone loves a pile-up it seems.
Not a pile-up now; a party. All the cool people came!
#518 Which rather leaves me at a loss for what to call those stories, since calling them "literary" means that I agree that this, and no other, is "literature."
Good question. I say "highfalutin" or "pretentiary." But I may have a leetle chip on my shoulder about that particular genre. I'm an escapee from an MFA program. Guess how much they respect SF/F? Nope, less...less...a little less...you got it.
I think of it as "mundane fiction", myself. (In fact, in my book log, I tag entries by genre, using "SF" for science fiction and fantasy, and "MF" for non-SF of most sorts -- including things like King Lear and The Praise Singer in the rubric. Although I suspect I'm going to put The Bacchae and The Odyssey under SF.)
Brenda Kait, #498:
That reminds me of a story at the Customers Suck LiveJournal. IIRC, the poster was on staff at a convention center that was hosting some sort of academic thingumabob at which the leading lights of some discipline or other were to lecture, complete with transparencies. (I think they were mathematicians.) The lecturers were to handle their own projection. Except they couldn't, because the poster couldn't get to them to explain how the thing worked, because somebody in a suit kept getting in his way and telling him that Doctor So-and-so did not talk to persons of his type.
Patrick @516:
I know what I want to learn, I know how to do it, and I have exactly zero patience people who use the "teacher" role as an occasion for this kind of abuse.
This is why I am a self-taught bookbinder with no lineage in the hereditary dynasty of the craft. That and the fact that the only person who was a candidate for a teacher at my current level wanted me to study under him, in many senses of the phrase. Some of that would have stayed as an emotional subtext rather than a physical reality, but still...ugh.
Having said that, I too have learned that sometimes I have to toss a partly completed binding in the trash. There is only so far one can save a disaster. Or sometimes I have to set it aside for a month, or a year, to untangle my own feelings from it and see it clearly for what it is. I had to do that with the Dream Hunters binding that's now en route to Boston.
David @527:
The Princess Bride it is. The swordfighting scene between the man in black and Inigo Montoya.
Bruce @ 523
Possible answers regarding Al's loincloth:
a) It's a visual reminder to us-the-viewers that Al is the armour, not someone wearing armour.
b) Despite being a living suit of armour, Al still feels naked without clothes.
c) Since when has anime had anything to do with sensible clothing choices, anyway?
#446: Debra Doyle at #386, is there a name for the listing of one's physical or spiritual progenitors?
Not sure, but it has a long tradition:
"From my grandfather Verus I learned good morals and the government of my temper.
From the reputation and remembrance of my father, modesty and a manly character.
From my mother, piety and beneficence, and abstinence, not only from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts; and further, simplicity in my way of living, far removed from the habits of the rich..."
--Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
#514: A zen koan if you wish, or Cohen, the Jewish version.
"Hurry up, snatch the pebble already."
Lenora Rose said (#521):
abi: I've been told by those in the know that Bonetti, Capo Ferro, etc, are real schools of swordplay from the Renaissance, whose manuals have survived to today. I was told this by someone who was bemused that they would use those schools, as they're all heavy swordwork styles, not fencing styles, which is what the movie is mimicking -- and that there are vastly *more* fencing school manuals still extant.
All the fencing/swordplay school references are there in the original novel by William Goldman (who of course also adapted his novel into the screenplay for the movie). It wouldn't surprise me if Goldman knew that these weren't really "fencing" styles and used them as a sort of inside joke; proper historical fidelity isn't quite the point of The Princess Bride (and the book has references to a made-up "McBone" style).
The novel tells the scene from Inigo's viewpoint, and doesn't have quite as much dialog; it's kind of fun to compare it to the movie's version:
They touched swords, and the man in black immediately began the Agrippa defense, which Inigo felt sound, considering the rocky terrain ... Naturally, he countered with Capo Ferro which surprised the man in black, but he defended well, quickly shifting out of Agrippa and taking the attack himself, using the principles of Thibault...
If you compare that with the dialog abi quoted, it makes for a nice little demonstration of how to successfully translate a scene from a book to a scene onscreen.
There's a brief rundown of the different swordmasters mentioned in the movie here (mild spoiler warning if you haven't seen the movie or read the book).
Ceri @ 501... Serge @ #491: How does one list science fictional lineage leading to being a writer? It certainly sounds interesting.
Well, in the early 80s, Cherryh was Sue's favorite writer. Meanwhile, 3000 miles away, there was this guy (that'd be me) who felt the same way. Both separately joined the same Cherryh fan group. That's how we came together. Later, in the pre-internet days, Sue was involved in a group of fans of Sharon Lee & Steve Miller. In that group, was another writer called eluki bes shahar, who'd read some of Sue's Beauty and the Beast fanfic and said she should write a novel.
abi @ 531... I guess I could say I taught myself to learn speaking English. Sure, I had the mandatory classes in high-school, but most of it I did on my own. I had a great teacher one year, who introduced me to Mad Magazine's glory days, and to comic-books in their original language. The point is that I practiced and practiced and practiced. In the Beginning though, there were the cartoons of Bugs Bunny, and does that explain a few things about me?
Erin Kissane @ #408:
It's my official recommendation that graphical browsers refrain from visually differentiating text marked up as sarcasm unless the user presses a special key combination
But what good is that? The people who most need the visual differentiation are the ones who can't be counted on to recognise that it's time to press the special key combination.
Bruce Arthurs @ #523: The armor has a loin cloth before Al's soul is bound into it; check out the very very first image of the series.
Which doesn't answer the question, but at least it isn't something that anyone did after Al was bound into the armor.
I also highly, highly recommend Fullmetal Alchemist; it ate my brain like nothing else on screen, and very few things on page, have before or since. I wrote a recommendation post about halfway through the series, which I don't think I would materially change now.
Thread... went... explodey!
I'm feeling a touch of that old academic shame. Before anyone mistakes me for anything I'm not, since I've publicly mentioned doing skiffy school via Stonecoast, I'd like to state for the record why I decided to get an MFA:
1) Jim Kelly teaches the genre program. (Anyone who's ever workshopped with him should know that this is, in some ways, enough to justify anything.)
2) Financial aid is the magic license to spend two years doing something that is not working myself into the ground.
Does this make me a better writer? Only in the sense that two years of profuse reading and writing, and exposing my backside to criticism and advice* is going to make me a better writer, which is to say, sure. To be candid, I wouldn't have gone this route initially if not for the financial aid. In fact, I got the idea when someone referred to the MFA process as "taking out two years on loan to write a book." But after a year and a half, if I had to do it over again, if there were a way to take the two years without going through the program -- I'd still go through the program. Good teaching has done more for my writing than a year and a half in a cabin with a well-stocked bar would have done.
But it's still worthless if after all the workshops and teas and ices, I've not the strength to force the moment to its crisis -- 'scuse me, random spasm of Eliot -- I mean, if I sit there and write or don't write and either way don't sell a thing.
Or if I sell pittances and puff myself up like an angry housecat. Er, kitten.
* From people with actual publishing records. I would advise anyone who's going to go this route to check up on the list of faculty names and their publishing houses. I'm pretty satisfied with mine.
A.J. Luxton @ 540,
I don't think you need to defend your choice from anyone here. Sounds like you've had a really good year and a half, and I'm really pleased for you.
I think what a lot of people are saying is just what you've said: it doesn't matter what credentials you have if your writing sucks, if you don't write, or if you don't do the work to become a better writer. Like anything.
In fiction, it's the writing that counts not the credential.
Bruce Arthurs@523: I've been watching the FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST anime series lately, and keep asking myself, "Why does Al's armor* wear a loincloth.
"I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way."
To jennie above, and as addendum: I somehow missed the latter third of the MFA-related subthread. I did a search on this page to try and follow the discussion, but apparently Mozilla's find-in-page function has a limit on how far it'll go. So I missed a number of comments on the skim, and hit them on the full readthrough, and saw that, in fact, My Existence Has Been Justified.
Whoops.
Regardless, I'm glad I got to throw in a bit of praise for Stonecoast and Jim Kelly.
And, really, Doyle @ 329 bears some loud repeating:
real scholars don't say "where did you study?" as much as they say, "who did you study with?"
I assume you mean "The Fifth Sacred Thing", which wasn't very good.
I did indeed.
It's also one of those books that I don't like very much, but I keep being compelled to read anyway. I don't know why that happens, and it rather annoys me.
I meant to mention that Starhawk's novel "Walking to Mercury", which is set in the present day, with a main character much like Starhawk herself, IS good.
I think I read that, and was disappointed because I thought Maya was about the least interesting character of the first book. Also, Mary Sue.
PNH @ 516:
This being your blog, your existence may need no justification, but I've got to say I really appreciate it when someone comes out and says they didn't finish high school. Thank you. Hearing someone actually talk about these things is refreshing.
I was only in high school for a year. I got my GED and muddled around in lots of maladaptive environments until I found a couple of self-directed ones, and I'm well aware this was equal parts luck, unwillingness after the first several tries to accept a teaching system that did nothing for my learning style, and having a family well-off enough that this meant slow progress rather than homelessness.
I find it spooky when people say high school is how you learn life -- I have to bite back remarks like oh, is that how you learned that working yourself sick was normal and okay, or yeah, if the people some authority figure says are your peers don't like you, you might as well shoot yourself.
It's where a person learns some things about life in an authoritarian society. Not having those concepts drilled so deeply in makes living different. Choices and sacrifices that people make in order to live are more visible as choices and sacrifices, not automatically assumed. I could write at length on that subject, but on the West Coast it is bedtime for one anti-authoritarian blog-bat.
Jenny Islander: (530)
The lecturers were to handle their own projection. Except they couldn't, because the poster couldn't get to them to explain how the thing worked, because somebody in a suit kept getting in his way and telling him that Doctor So-and-so did not talk to persons of his type.I've had that attitude from self-appointed guardians (a grad student who assured me that the Professor (Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy) I had come to help with a t
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