Vox Popoli

A few weeks ago, I was asked by a science fiction and fantasy publisher to fill in as a short-term replacement for their Senior Editor, who left for another publishing house. As this didn’t cut into my free time – merely the substitution of reading unpublished work intead of published work, really – I agreed to do so. (I thought it would be interesting, and then, the thought of the fear and horror which would strike certain elements in the SFWA crowd amused me too.)

I’ve been focusing on new writers for now, and it has been intriguing to see how the same sort of mistakes seem to permeate their submissions. In case anyone is interested, here’s a few things I’ve noticed:

1. Good and interesting ideas are surprisingly common. This shocked me, since so much of the modern published work I’ve read while doing Nebula duty is formulaic. Far more often than not, however, that good idea is not implemented effectively and the most interesting tangents are not followed.

2. Exposition is a story killer. I recently read – and rejected – a manuscript which devoted seven (7!) chapters to presenting the reader with information about what a place is like. In that seven chapters, the plot is not advanced at all. Imagine if Tolkein devoted seven chapters to simply describing Rivendell. It’s absurd, and yet this happens.

3. Preserving plot over characters ruins the story. It’s been said before, but it’s worth repeating. If your plot hangs on a character behaving uncharacteristically, you’d better have a very good explanation or it’s just not going to work.

4. Pay attention to the publisher’s guidelines. I’ve now read two historical novels, (part of them, anyhow), as well as a conventional thriller, none of which are the least bit appropriate for this publisher. It’s annoying, even insulting, to grandiosely insist that your masterpiece will of course overshadow petty things like the publisher’s wishes and marketing strategies.

5. Writing competence is an surprisingly uneven thing. One writer can do beautiful descriptions but can’t put together a plot or create decent characters to save her life. Another has decent characters, but no idea what to do with them. Try to learn where your strengths are and where your weaknesses are. If you can focus on a story that will play to your strengths while working hard to shore up your weaknesses, your book will be the better for it.

6. Let the reader see the important events. For example, if you’re going to have a protagonist try to off himself because of a failed romance, you might want to consider showing the big breakup scene rather skipping over it right to the ramifications. And you might at least like to explain why the protagonist is so enamoured of the paramour; sure, you can tell us, but without any direct knowledge, we’re unlikely to care or even understand.

7. Try to keep in mind that the editor is likely at least as well read in the genre as you are. The chances that you can do a book about a magician’s school or rabbit society as well as those who’ve done it already are slim, and changing the sex of the protagonist doesn’t make it an entirely different concept. Go write fanfic if you want to play in someone else’s world, otherwise, invent your own.

8. Don’t rush the climax. Write the story out as it should go naturally, then go back and chop out the fat from the middle. A significant percentage of submissions meander to little purpose for 100 pages, then attempt to hurl everything into a bang-up climax in less than 15 pages.

That’s all that occurs to me at the moment. And no, I’m not looking for more material to review, I have 83 more submissions to plow through already. Should the publisher not pile more on the moment I see my way clear, I’ll go ahead and post something here. In the meantime, don’t ask. The answer will be no.

The regular season has come to an end, and while I have some reservations about some daunting matchups in the playoffs, I can’t complain about the results given a team that has been less than imposing on paper throughout the course of the year. I started off with Trent Green at QB – my 3rd pick – and ended up replacing him with Drew Bledsoe in Week 2. Drew’s done well, and balanced with the addition of Brad Johnson managed to lead me to a 11-3, second place finish behind Spacebunny’s team, which is managed by Big Chilly’s little brother, also at 11-3.

Starting Willie Parker in Week 5 cost me the regular season title, as I blew an eight-point lead and lost by half a point when LaDainian and Antonio went off he couldn’t even rush for 50 yards, otherwise I’d have finished 12-2 versus 10-4. Ah well, such is football.

The White Buffalo also made the playoffs despite a late-season fade that saw him go from 8-2 to 8-6. He’s my first-round opponent and it’s really anyone’s game. He’s Seattle heavy, so his fortunes will largely rest on how badly they beat up Tennessee. Go Titans! I’ll be looking for a big game from Bledsoe, Harrison and Davis, and hoping that Ryan Moats can keep his momentum up against a very bad Rams defense. Lamont Jordan has been a workhorse all year, but with Tuiasosopo at quarterback, defenses can stack up against him and shut him down.

In the other bracket, Chokechain might be the favorite despite sneaking into the playoffs at 7-7. He’s riding Larry Johnson and a six-game winning streak, so everything will be riding on SD and LDT versus KC and LJ.

The other little libertarian asserts an all-too-typical Libertarian friendliness towards free speech and the open exchange of ideas:

What is this Christian bullshit ? Whoever asked for your fucking opinion ? This is a LIBERTARIAN blog. You are not desired or wanted here. Aaron has already made all the points needed to refute your champion’s nonsense.

One more Christian comment and I’m closing this comment page. This is not the blog for you. We don’t want to hear from you. We don’t even like you. We want yuo to wither and dissapear from the public square, and from OUR media…. Go back to your blogs and leave us atheists alone, losers.

Actually, all Aaron managed to do, besides demonstrate a complete unfamiliarity with logic, history, theology and empirical fact, was quote Francis as a definitive authority… what was that about going around in circles?

The ironic thing is that there’s no shortage of atheists and agnostics here on this blog. But if those two wish to be left alone in their little sandbox, I see no reason to disrespect their privacy.

Duke begins the grokking:

Ok Vox, I didn’t know you didn’t care much about who read you. I have just read your columns on WND and this is my first time on your blog.

It’s nothing personal, Duke, it’s just that I find it impossible to keep track of precisely who is going to get offended about what, so I simply let my prejudices and idiosyncracies define the limits. There’s no shortage of those who gape for a few seconds in astonished horror and hasten to depart, never to return; fortunately, this is not a commercial enterprise, my readers are not customers and pretty much anyone can stay or go as he pleases.

Never mind the girl rubbing up against you, that’s just Renee and it’s her way of breaking the ice. The two guys drinking in the corner are Jaime and Nate; Nate is the sober one. If a giant blond beast wielding a .50 caliber bursts into the room and starts screaming, it’s only Bane, hit the floor and you’ll be fine, he just likes to hose down hostile intruders every now and then. The talking white horse isn’t drunk, he just sounds like that because he’s off his medication for the nonce, and the two guys flinging monkey feces at each other are Cedarford and Scintan, they’re no trouble as long as you stay out of the crossfire.

Bill’s the guy with the George Bush promise ring, Franger’s the guy in the Che shirt and the little brunette with the introspective look is Crystal Lake. She looks harmless, but don’t mention abortion around her unless you really want to see her werewolf imitation up close and personal. The blonde ice princess is Spacebunny; content yourself with genuflecting before her.

The two guys banging on the tribal drums are MS and Verlch; if you see a pretty redhead laughing at them, whatever you do, do NOT ask her for her life’s story. The guys dancing like it’s 1999 are the Queer Party Friends; the one with no rhythm is Snowdog. As for the three guys with headphones, that’s Chad, St. Paul and JB, they think they’re doing a radio show so humor them and pretend that someone is actually listening.

There’s plenty more characters, should you elect to stick around, you will no doubt encounter them all.

Derb on Dating Hell:

There’s a new columnist in America’s Newspaper of Record: Elizabeth Hayt, author of the book “I’m No Saint,” which sounds to be a sort of dead-tree version of “Desperate Housewives.” In today’s column Ms. Hayt relates an episode from her recent love life. After establishing a satisfactory e-relationship with a poet she refers to only as “Word Guy,” she takes a cab over to his apartment in Brooklyn. One thing leads to another, but then… fails to lead any further. Apparently the guy suffers from performance anxiety. I’ll let Ms. Hayt take up the tale. “‘I’m happy just to talk,’ I said, gritting my teeth. And talk, he did. Word Guy recounted his recent recovery from a sinus abscess that smelled awful whenever he blew his nose. Because he didn’t have health insurance, he couldn’t afford an operation to permanently correct the problem, so the only treatment was daily irrigation of his nasal passages with a saline solution. Naturally, with Word Guy opening up to me, trusting me enough to share his vulnerabilities, I couldn’t just bolt out the door. He needed a merciful shoulder, which I provided for three hours. At 4 a.m., he finally yawned – my cue to say ‘Adieu.'”

This reminds me of the Friends episode when Bruce Willis opens up to Jennifer Aniston, to her surprise and horror. “Chicken? Chickenboy?” Anyhow, the lesson is that you shouldn’t take what women tell you they want too terribly seriously, not if you want them to think of you as something other than a bestest girlfriend.

Some of you have wondered how WND edits my column. Generally speaking, they leave it alone, but I thought you might be interested in seeing an example of how it gets watered down from time to time. I don’t object to this in the slightest, I mean, how can I be upset with the people who let me get away with that Ron Mexico stunt?

Anyhow, here’s the column as it appears today:

Myth of the electable moderate
Exclusive: Vox Day thinks Republicans getting burned by Schwarzenegger

EIGHTH PARAGRAPH In Schwarzenegger’s action movies, he often left his opponents bloodied and burned. It is not difficult to imagine that California Republicans will soon be wondering if Arnold is handling them the same way.

And here’s the original:

The One Man Gang-Bang
Exclusive: Vox Day wonders if Arnold will leave Republicans sore

EIGHTH PARAGRAPH In Governor Schwarzenegger’s famous interview with Oui, he fondly recalled participating in a gang bang at the gym. It is not difficult to imagine that California Republicans will soon be wondering if they were similarly had.

I leave the verdict regarding which version is better to you, gentle reader.

Since Aaron wasn’t even able to grasp the fact that I’ve already responded to his “main argument: that he [Vox] expressed moral ideas that were in direct conflict with libertarianism” and that I am “anti-libertarian”, apparently I’ll have to spell it out.

1. Libertarianism is not a morality or a religion. It is a political philosophy, and as such there are no libertarian morals any more than there are Democratic or Republican morals.
2. OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY: • noun an extreme laissez-faire political philosophy advocating only minimal state intervention in the lives of citizens.
3. Christianity operates outside the state. It is not, in its proper form and place, an ideology or political philosophy. When Christianity is entwined with the state and becomes ideological, it withers and dies, like everything else the state touches. See the Anglican Church or the state churches in Europe for examples.
4. The postulated Christian God, despite possessing ultimate might, refuses to dictate men’s actions. (There are certainly advocates of omniderigence out there, the concept of the Divine Puppet Master, but I am not one of them. Let it be for now, that’s another discussion for another time.) No one is forced to become a Christian, every individual is free to reject Jesus Christ. Thus, the Christian doctrine of the gift of free will and individual responsibility is very much in sync with libertarian ideology.
5. I have repeatedly and consistently advocated minimal state intervention in the lives of the citizenry. If I am not a libertarian, then it is clear that such strange beasts don’t exist. Like conservatives who wish to ban sin, Aaron makes the mistake of confusing morality with legality, conflating religion with ideology, and winds up by clinging to his errant QED in the face of easily observable facts.

As for the embarrasing attempt to define Christian morality as one wherein “might makes right”, Francis manages to get Christian theology backwards as well as omitting the obvious evidence with regards to atheist/agnostic philosophy. Christianity postulates “right makes might”; it is the explicitly anti-Christian philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche that is built upon a foundation of the good being arbitrarily defined by the strong.

It is not as if the question “from whence comes right and wrong?” is a new one. Socrates dealt with it in the Euthypro. As he correctly ascertained, a god-given morality is entirely arbitrary. The only question, then, is if a god has the right to arbitrarily define a universal morality; if one accepts the idea that the Christian God is the Universal Creator, there can be no doubt of his just and lawful right to do so, independent of his ability to enforce it. He that maketh the game altho maketh the ruleth.

Indeed, the argument made by Francis upon which Aaron relies so heavily involves a pernicious and illogical double-think, as he denies God’s existence while simultaneously attempting to claim that Christian morality depends upon this non-existent might. But if God does not exist, then there is no might with which to make right and Christian morality does not exist and the Christian is in the same amoral boat as the atheist. But if God does exist as postulated, then having made man, he would have held a legitimate original claim on the ownership of the created individual, whereas neither Francis nor Aaron has even begun to make a case for why the individual, not having created himself, should enjoy self-ownership in the absence of it being granted to him by his creators.

Again, the Christian libertarian can present a coherent and rational case, the atheist libertarian – however much we may appreciate him – is forced to rely on a naked assertion of something being self-evident which is demonstrably not evident at all.

Methinks the boys are in over their heads here.

Ladies and gentlemen, your Republican president:

Last month, Republican Congressional leaders filed into the Oval Office to meet with President George W. Bush and talk about renewing the controversial USA Patriot Act.

Several provisions of the act, passed in the shell shocked period immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, caused enough anger that liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union had joined forces with prominent conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and Bob Barr to oppose renewal.

GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

“I don’t give a goddamn,” Bush retorted. “I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.”

“Mr. President,” one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.”

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”

It’s a pity Bush didn’t run on that platform instead of Compassionate Conservatism. We hereby await the usual “sure, dismissing the Constitution as a goddamed piece of paper is bad, but we must support that position because the Democratic one is even worse” defense.

Friday box office take:

THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE: $23,900,000.00
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN: $191.543.00

No doubt there will be more gay cowboy movies made in imitation of Brokeback than there will be Christian fantasy epics too. Although Walden Media shows real signs of becoming a powerhouse; I note that they picked up the movie rights to Susan Cooper’s excellent THE DARK IS RISING. If you haven’t read it before, do, especially at this time of year. Don’t worry about OVER SEA, UNDER STONE, read that later.