From Script As Cow To Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
There’s an interview with me over at the Book Cellar, where I talk about extreme situations and what’s next for the Strange Angels series.
I feel old and slow today. So, links! First up, some hard truths about writing.
* Writers, Emmys, and Hollywood Logic.
The thing is, it’s easy to decide writers “don’t do anything.” Particularly when they’re staring out a window or pacing the parking lot, muttering, and other people are off doing the “real work.” The vast bulk of a writer’s job happens before they ever sit down at a keyboard, and it happens all over the place — while they’re sitting in the dentist’s office, while they’re picking up their kids, while they’re trying to sleep, while they’re in the shower. Most people in the world can draw a firm divide between working and not working. You could take a picture of them, and see whether they’re working or not working. But a writer hitting keys could be far less productive that day than they were while walking the dog last night. I suppose a filmed documentary of a writers’ room would translate to most people as “work” — but anyone who isn’t a writer is not at those meetings. They generally aren’t standing in the doorway watching the typing, either.
They do see a script, eventually, but I swear, somewhere in the back of people’s minds they believe what I believed of books as a child – that they’re found objects that washed up on shore that way. If you only ever see a cut of beef wrapped in plastic in the supermarket, the idea that someone had to separate it from a cow is alien. (Tightropegirl)
* Scalzi on the asking of favors from established writers.
When you ask a favor of a writer, you’re asking her to take time from her own work and/or her own life. You are asking her to assume you’re not crazy or won’t turn spiteful or angry when she can’t give you 100% of what you want. You are asking her to assume that 10 years from now you won’t sue her because something she’s written is somewhat tangentially related to something you asked her to read. You’re asking her to assume that continually pestering her own contacts on behalf of people she doesn’t know at all won’t jeopardize her own relationships with those contacts. And so on. (John Scalzi)
* Chris Daly, I Always Knew He Was A Dick:
I want to be a writer so bad that I see words while I sleep but I am going to have to write, write, and write some more. It might happen and if it does I will gladly talk to you about process, how hard it is to get published, all the years of toiling on the side line wondering if I was good enough. How hard it is to work in isolation. I will show you my box of rejection letters and explain what a thick skin you are going to need. I will point you in the direction of good books and web sites but I will never get you published. Only your writing and hard work will get that done. (CSDaly)
* And this made me cry because it is so true. “No surrender!” is a writer’s cry.
Moving on from writing:
* Being a woman is a pre-existing condition.
The moral repugnance of denying care out of pure profit concerns is aggravated by the sheer arbitrariness of insurance rating. In the individual health plans examined by the NWLC, “at age 25, women were charged between 6% and 45% more than men; at 40-years-old, women’s monthly premiums ranged between 4% and 48% higher than men’s monthly premiums”–disparities that reflect just how little private insurance has to do with women’s realities and health needs. (AirAmerica)
* The gap between rich and poor? Bigger even than during the Roaring 20s.
The contrast is even starker for the super-rich. The top 0.01 percent of earners in the US are now taking home six percent of all the income, higher than the 1920s peak of five percent, and a whopping six-fold increase since the start of the Reagan administration, when the top 0.01 percent earned one percent of all the income.
There is no consensus among economists on whether large disparities in income lead to economic disruption, but it is hard to ignore the correlation between rising income inequality and the onset of economic crisis. The last time the US saw similar differences in income was in 1928 and 1929, just before the start of the Great Depression. (Raw Story)
* A silver lining: Al Franken. If it wasn’t creepy, I’d say I wanted to kiss this man.
The last link I’ve got today is for the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Which has got to be one of the weirdest books ever, and that’s saying something. You can find a translation here. Now, doesn’t that massage your brain in odd, almost pleasurable ways? I thought it might.
Happy Monday!
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