World in the Satin Bag

World in the Satin Bag

Five Irritating Things About Other Writers (part three)

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Here is the final installment of this series. This brings us to a total of fifteen irritating things about other writers (including Part One and Part Two)! So, feel free to leave a comment and enjoy: Thirteen-year-old kids who self-publish a book and think they are worthy of the same adoration as J. K. Rowling, Terry Pratchett, or any number of legitimately published individuals who have sold millions of copies of books. While I’m okay with people self-publishing, one should understand that you are not entitled to fair treatment. You chose to subvert the publishing process by doing it yourself. By doing so you’ve taken upon yourself the stigma that is involved with self-publishing. If you don’t like it, then don’t self-publish. You have to earn the respect of your prospective readers; readers are not entitled to respect you (which works for legitimately published writers too, but you get what I mean). Thirteen-year-old kids who did the same as above and then get really uppity with you when you point out the obvious and irritating flaws in their writing. This is part of the business. If you don’t like people throwing slams at your work, don’t write (talking fiction, of course, because I can do whatever the hell I want with my blog). This goes for all writers. If I review your book and I don’t like it, don’t argue with me about it. Being classy like some writers have been and just take the criticism. If you act like a petulant child it doesn’t look good on your part. Literary writers who rip on genre writers for writing drivel. This is almost exclusively in the realm of jealousy on their part. Get over it. People don’t want to read literary novels as much as they did in 1810. That’s just the way it is. Writers who talk more about themselves than the person they’re supposed to be interviewing. I’m not listening to your audio interview to listen to you babble out yourself in response to your own questions. I want to hear what this other person has to say. I know about you already; that’s why I’m listening to your podcast. I don’t know about the other person. So let them talk! That is all!

World in the Satin Bag

Five Irritating Things About Other Writers (part two)

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Irritation, it seems, is not limited to five things. Here is another list of irritating things about other writers (plus Part One and Part Three). Enjoy: People who think that free publication is the same as being published in a professional magazine. It’s not. Stop pretending that your free podcast fiction piece that nobody paid you for and is being put out on the net to about thirty people is the same as someone like Jason Sanford selling a piece to Interzone. It’s not remotely the same. It’s nice that you’re building yourself up and trying to get publication credits, but editors care about as much as I do about non-paying markets: none. It’s worth very little, especially when placed next to someone of equal skill who has sold to better markets. (For the record, I am editor of a small magazine, but we’re a paying market. We don’t pay much, hardly anything, but it’s better than free. Writers with talent deserve to be paid for their work. You wouldn’t work for Taco Bell for free would you?) Writers who say stupid things like “science fiction is dead” or “I write to the market.” Science fiction isn’t dead and you can’t technically write to the market unless you happen to be incredibly good at predicting the future. Trends change so damn rapidly these days that most people just get lucky when they hit on a big thing. Maybe a few writers are capable of writing fast enough to write to the market, but that’s still stupid. At least to me it is… Infodumps in short stories. It’s a short story; there isn’t time for that sort of thing. People who think they are better than you because they wrote a book. Nothing wrong with being humble. Seriously. Try it. People who think that science fiction is exactly the same as fantasy, based upon the terms’ standard definitions and common understandings. The categories are held to be generally distinct for a lot of reasons, but mostly for marketing purposes. Generally speaking science fiction is spaceships, technology, and science, while fantasy is dragons, wizards, and magic. That’s speaking generally. There’s certainly something to be said about the blending of genres, as discussed in the comment to one of my recent posts, but the two are still distinct genres for the most part. Any thoughts?

World in the Satin Bag

Donations For Vera: Scalzi Offers Story For Donations

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Not too long ago I posted about Vera Nazarian’s financial troubles and how she could really use some donations. Well John Scalzi and Subterranean Press have joined forced to help out by, well, pulling a Scalzi (a term I’m coining to mean any time someone puts a story online for free, but asks for donations and ends up receiving quite a lot of them). Go ahead and check out Scalzi’s story and consider donating! Seriously. Subterranean will meet your donations up to $1,000! You’d be doing a good thing in this time of need, and we all know that more good things need to be done these days. That is all.

World in the Satin Bag

The Lurker Meme

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Since everyone else is doing this and I’m a curious person, I’m going to play copycat and see who is out there. If you read my blog and have never commented before, I ask you to comment on this post and let me know who you are and where you are coming from (a feed reader, email, bookmark, etc.). Don’t be afraid. I won’t bite. I just want to know who is out there. And if you comment regularly, well, say hello! There are quite a lot of you who are subscribed to my blog, so I’m curious who you are. Maybe mention a link to your own blog or something! Anywho!

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