Will Books Die Out? Will Apple Destroy the World? Will Publishers Become Extinct?
>> Friday, 3 December 2010 –
ebooks,
ereaders,
Kindle,
publication
You Will Never be Pretty
>> Saturday, 27 November 2010 –
pretty,
the pen is mightier than the pin-up
Word Nerd Gifts. Check Out My Shop!
>> Sunday, 7 November 2010 –
gifts,
Merry Christmas,
Word Nerd Army,
Word Nerds
Only another couple of pay days until Christmas. Can you believe it? Now's the time to buy your pressies, and drop big hints about what you want. To help you with both, I've been a bit busy at my virtual kitchen table building a Word Nerd Gift Shop. Check it out and leave your thoughts below. Hope you like it!
The shop has a home behind the Word Nerd Gift Shop tab above. The UK version is http://zazzle.co.uk/wordnerdarmy* The US version is http://zazzle.com/wordnerdarmy* - and it looks as if the US postal service has approved my stamp!!! The Facebook version is http://bit.ly/wordnerdgifts .
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Stephen Fry, The US Election, and Harmonious Existence
>> Thursday, 4 November 2010 –
#digniFry,
Election,
Stephen Fry,
stephenfry,
usa
The last couple of weeks, I've witnessed so much hatred, and such a lack of sense and dignity. I thought - as a feminist - that I should blog about the issues raised by Stephen Fry's recent comments. Sexuality, social cost, and cultural oppression need to be discussed. But not like this. Not with this venom. Let's work towards harmonious resolution of inequality. No bullying.
I wanted to write about the dear, sweet, person that Stephen Fry is. I wanted to detail all the many ways he has gone above and beyond to help me, and others of my female friends. I wanted to scream out 'THIS IS NOT FAIR! HOW DARE YOU CALL THIS MAN A MISOGYNIST' and go into pages of explanation as to why this is not the case. It would fall on ears that are hungry for salacious gossip. It wouldn't be heard.
I've watched, as the right and left political wings of America tore each other new orifices: the personal attacks of the supporters every bit as gruesome as were the attacks in the run-up to our own recent elections. I watched, too, the added element of religious hatred, and intolerance.
The flip side? My father was dying, and people of all religions prayed for him. Services were held in the religious places of 'opposing' religious tribes. You know what? NOT ONCE did anyone try to convert me, or my family, to their faith. Not once. Atheists sent love, and kind thoughts. They did not lay into the religious people. The religious people did not lay into them. All the different notes of belief merged into one harmony: love. I didn't feel the need to pick out one note and say 'THIS IS THE PERFECT NOTE. ONLY PLAY THIS NOTE.' It was beautiful to hear all of these notes played so freely.
So. What has this to do with Stephen Fry? Sometimes, he hits a wrong note. Sometimes, we all do. We are not, however, creatures of a single note. Each of us contains an orchestra of instruments. Some are in tune with others. Some are not. This is WITHIN ourselves. We hold competing beliefs. We're a bunch of hypocrites. That's not a criticism. It's the nature of the human state. If you look at political questionnaires, it's blindingly obvious. We want free health care, and low taxes. We want governments that handle the big issues and take the tough decisions, yet we punish them when they do. The only way to handle this conflict is to see the bigger picture - hear the whole piece of music. If you focus too hard on just a single note, you miss the beauty of the whole. Aristotle said something about that, I believe. You need to step back. You need, sometimes, to let the music play without trying to control every last thing.
In time, I hope, Stephen Fry will be back. Maybe he will be moved by the extent of the reaction, to study the issues facing women. Maybe he will make a documentary, or series, on persecution faced by women around the world for expressing their sexuality. It says a lot about our own culture that some throw-away comment by him about female sexuality has got more coverage than the imminent execution of a woman (by being stoned to death) for adultery. The blood lust of certain journalists for the hide of someone who dares to be successful and wealthy is sickening in this context.
Before I go into too much detail - not my intention here - I'll end with this thought:
We are all different. We are all human. We all mess up. Religion, gender, sexuality, political beliefs... these are all areas of difference. For this reason, they are areas of battle. They need not be. If we respected difference, valued friendship and kindness over being 'right' the whole time, and looked at the bigger picture, they COULD be areas of harmony.
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NaNo (No! No! No!) WriMo
>> Tuesday, 2 November 2010 –
Creative Writing,
deadline,
NaNoWriMo
I don't do NaNoWriMo. I've watched it since it first started, but didn't jump in until last year. BIG mistake. I am NOT NaNo compliant. It screwed up my whole writing year. No exaggeration. I already had everything I needed to write a novel. I'd done it before. The interference of others during the NaNoWriMo process wrecked it for me. The perfect creative flow established over the previous years jarred into a whole year of chaos.
In a way, this was a good thing. I had a bunch of non-creative stuff to do. The last year has been about the business side of writing:
- Setting things up for publication
- Building a kick-ass platform
- Getting smaller pieces of creative work published
- Getting articles published in print media
- Working out a solid business plan for my writing for the long term
Anyhow... back to NaNoWriMo. It is a great idea - if you're not me - and I plan to support it just as much as ever. Let me know in the comment section if you're taking part, and give me your Twitter name so I can add you to my NaNoWriMo list (the VERY FIRST EVER NaNoWriMo list on Twitter, by the way).
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Is Your Writing As Important As You Think?
>> Wednesday, 27 October 2010 –
authors,
being human,
blogging,
Dad,
Digital Village,
prayer,
sharing
 |
| 'Be someone for somebody' - J Shroeder |
Since May, my father has been fighting for his life. Part of me wanted to abandon social networks. Part of me wanted to abandon friends. Part of me wanted to abandon writing. But I didn't.
Why?
Because others hadn't. I had watched one friend write through the death of her mother, and another through the death of their father. I had watched friends write through illnesses and catastrophes. They didn't go away because things got tough. They kept writing, because it was important.
How Important Is Your Writing?
Very. It turns out that it's important for reasons that are not immediately clear. The part of us as writers that wants to throw in the towel when 'bigger' stuff happens, is the part of us that judges our own work. We forget that others are ALREADY invested in it, whether we've sold it or not.
When I was struggling to pay for heat last year, one thing kept me writing. Obviously, the people who said they wanted to buy my books were a huge motivator but even more so were the aspiring writers who wrote to me saying:
PLEASE keep writing. I watch what you go through and it gives me faith that I can succeed. If you give up, I will give up.I got loads of emails like that. Even more surprisingly, I got loads of emails like this:
PLEASE keep writing. I am [poor/losing a family member/suffering from a chronic illness, etc, etc] and I don't know how to go on. Watching you handling all this stuff gives me faith that I can too. If you give up, I will give up.Now... obviously the responsibility for a person's happiness and choices lies with that person, and threatening writers with emotional blackmail is not a good thing, but the point is that you have no idea who you are touching, or how, or why.
The idea of the hermit writer is fine if you are one. We are not. Even if you never leave your house physically, you do so in spirit and mind every time you connect to the web. Other people use you as a point of reference for their own lives.
To put it another way... if you have been blogging, or on social networks, consistently for more than a few months, you are a landmark. You may be a little well in a village, or you may be the Statue of Liberty or Big Ben. It doesn't matter how big you are as a landmark. If you are a point of reference for someone, you will be missed in ways that have nothing to do with your own personal world if you disappear.
If other people are important to you, and you have become important to them through writing, then your writing is important. It's not as important as YOU think. It is as important as THEY think. With all its imperfections, grammatical tensions, and flaws, it is an expression of the human condition. Whatever life brings, and however insignificant you feel, keep sharing your writing. You never know who you are helping.
In the spirit of sharing... after nearly half a year of operations, a coma, and all sorts of life-and-death drama, Dad came home yesterday. In an hour, I will see him, aneurysm-free for the first time in years. Before I went to see him, I had to write about it and share it with you. It was important.
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Please Pray. Dad Just Rushed into Operating Theatre
Thank you.
Rebecca
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