K.A. Laity's Blog, page 162

December 2, 2010

BitchBuzz: Why are People So Desperate to be Writers?

My column (in haste: NYC bound!):

Why are People so Desperate to be a Writers? Everybody's a writer or wants to be. At least that's what the internet tells me. There are all kinds of ways to help writers or writer wannabes.

For example there is the persistent Twitter spam telling you that writers are needed very badly. There are ways to get paid for this, our urgent friend tells us. As Victoria Strauss writes at the Writer Beware® blog, the link included in that spam tweet leads to a service where you can pay to be told about jobs that will pay you for writing. Gosh!



Never mind that there are plenty of free sites offering the same thing: RealWritingJobs wants to help you out of the goodness of their hearts to find real writing jobs for about $50 a month. What a bargain! If that's not good enough for you, because you're an artist who's already written a magnum opus, why not pay PublishAmerica to enter one of Amazon's fine publishing contests? Wait—what's that? You can enter for free on your own? But what about the fine imprimatur that PublishAmerica gives you? You don't want to do without that, do you? And wait—that script writing contest for Amazon's new crowd-sourced film empire: did you know that they get to hold onto your script's rights for a year and a half even if you don't win anything?

Read the rest: http://life.bitchbuzz.com/why-are-people-so-desperate-to-be-a-writers.html#ixzz16xnp0mKV



UPDATE: I can't believe I forgot to include one of the things that sparked this story -- James Frey's Fiction Factory. Unbelievable.
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Published on December 02, 2010 06:13

BitchBuz: Why are People So Desperate to be Writers?

My column (in haste: NYC bound!):

Why are People so Desperate to be a Writers? Everybody's a writer or wants to be. At least that's what the internet tells me. There are all kinds of ways to help writers or writer wannabes.

For example there is the persistent Twitter spam telling you that writers are needed very badly. There are ways to get paid for this, our urgent friend tells us. As Victoria Strauss writes at the Writer Beware® blog, the link included in that spam tweet leads to a service where you can pay to be told about jobs that will pay you for writing. Gosh!



Never mind that there are plenty of free sites offering the same thing: RealWritingJobs wants to help you out of the goodness of their hearts to find real writing jobs for about $50 a month. What a bargain! If that's not good enough for you, because you're an artist who's already written a magnum opus, why not pay PublishAmerica to enter one of Amazon's fine publishing contests? Wait—what's that? You can enter for free on your own? But what about the fine imprimatur that PublishAmerica gives you? You don't want to do without that, do you? And wait—that script writing contest for Amazon's new crowd-sourced film empire: did you know that they get to hold onto your script's rights for a year and a half even if you don't win anything?

Read the rest: http://life.bitchbuzz.com/why-are-people-so-desperate-to-be-a-writers.html#ixzz16xnp0mKV
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Published on December 02, 2010 06:13

December 1, 2010

World AIDS Day

There's a campaign on to have an AIDS-free generation born by 2015. A lot of work to be done first. It can be done. Commemorate World AIDS Day with something meaningful. These cool Dia de los Muertos t-shirts already sold out but there are many other ways to help raise awareness and help research.



I'm unbelievably busy this week, so let me just pass along some assorted news tidbits: Over at Patti Abbott's blog, you can read the latest installment of La Ronde by Kassandra Kelly. I have a new piece on ritual up over at the Jane Quiet blog. I sent off the revised essay on Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie's Lost Girls; will let you know the details about the collection once I know them. I wouldn't expect it before next autumn, maybe even 2012. Still no word on the latest novel that's waiting for review by my publisher. That's how it goes in the print publishing world. I did get the line edits for Kit Marlowe's The Mangrove Legacy, so I will be busy with those today in hopes of getting it back to my editor to make it for the December 15th release of the e-book. Yay! That's why I love electronic publications.



Off to NYC tomorrow to see Lynda Barry; if the weather's like this again, I think I'll spend the rest of the day at MoMA.
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Published on December 01, 2010 07:34

November 29, 2010

Reviewed: PELZMANTEL @ UnBound

Nice surprise for me this weekend:

K.A.Laity | Peltzmantel When we are small fairy tales being with, 'Once upon a time' and end at 'happily ever after'. As we get older we discover nothing really works like that, life doesn't start at Once Upon or end at Ever After and the only stories that stop there are ones that no one really believes in.



Peltzmantel starts, as much as any story can, towards the end of one life and the start of another, remaining a small part of the storytellers own long years. It ends, as much as any story can, at a point of hope and renewal, as good a point as any to stop. Although then there are snippetts, short stories, windows into episodes of other lives to follow.
..





Read the rest over at UnBound and be sure to check out their wide variety of interviews, reviews, conversations and peeks into the writing life. They're about to announce their new video editions as well. I'm quite pleased that such a comprehensive site gave me a positive review :-) I was chuckling on Twitter about a review I came across of The Sandman Papers that focused particular scorn on my essay for its use of an "obscure radical feminist" theorist. I realise Hélène Cixous may not be a household name, but she's a fairly venerable writer at this point. I guess any feminist is "radical" to some folks and there are the kind of fan boys who won't accept any criticism of Neil Gaiman. It's nonetheless pleasing to have the very first essay I ever wrote on comics getting attention yet (it's better than being ignored). I've learned so much since then. Every writing project teaches me something.
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Published on November 29, 2010 06:05

November 26, 2010

Friday's Forgotten Books: Lord Malquist & Mr Moon

Although a bit late in the day (just got home this afternoon and had to spend some time soothing Kipper's complaints about being abandoned for a whole day and a half), I wanted to try to get back in the habit of writing up a "forgotten" book for Patti's round-up of titles.



"Let it be said of me that I was born appalled, lived disaffected, and died in the height of fashion."



Lord Malquist and Mr Moon is (to date) Tom Stoppard's only novel. Of course he's one of the most celebrated playwrights in the world, but this novel seems to often be forgotten in discussions of his work. Not quite out of print (there's a trade paperback edition from Grove that came out about five years ago), it's seems to have a very low profile. The novel came out in 1966 just before Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead and Stoppard's first real success, although he had been writing short dramatic works for both stage and radio (the collection of his radio plays appears to actually be out of print and is also a wonderful book to pick up). 



In this novel, the Czech-born British knight (by way of Singapore and India) indulges in some of the same obsessions that fill his plays -- peculiarities of class and station, misunderstandings, confusions, sexual entanglements, surreal slapstick humor and an actual ticking bomb. It's by turns hilarious and insightful and always, brilliantly timed. So I'm just going to give a few random quotes to give you the flavor of the story that mixes up the would-be Boswell Mr Moon and the haughty noble (as well as his wife, a cowboy, a lion and more):



"I find crowds extraordinarily lacking," said the ninth earl. "Taken as a whole they have no sense of form or colour. I long to impose some aesthetic discipline on them, rearrange them into art. It would give a point to their existence."



It was all a question of preparing one's material. There was no point in beginning to write before one's material had been prepared. Moon, who had experimented on a number of variations of a first sentence, felt this quite strongly. He found that the vastness of his chosen field reassuring rather than daunting but it did cramp his style; he could not put down a word without suspecting that it might be the wrong one and that if he held back for another day the intermediate experience would provide the right one. There was no end to that, and Moon fearfully glimpsed himself as a pure writer who after a lifetime of absolutely no output whatever, would prepare on his deathbed the single sentence that was the distillation of everything he had saved up, and die before he was able to utter it.



"I got dizzy," he explained.

"I should think you did -- what were you doing?"

"Nothing," said Moon. "I was trying to face one way or the other and I got confused and fell over."

Let that be my epitaph.



For Style is an aesthetic, inbred and disengaged, and in such precarious times these are virtues. We all have an enormous capacity for inflicting harm, and hereto the only moral issue has been the choice of the most deserving recipient..."





"You see, he understood that substance is ephemeral, but style is eternal."



"Be poetic, dear boy, be poetic and take your text from d'Aurevilley -- La verité m'ennuie."





"Idealism is the thin edge of madness -- console yourself, dear boy, with the thought that if life is the pursuit of perfection then imperfection is the nature of life."





As in his plays, Stoppard enjoys creating characters whose opinions oppose diametrically and then setting them at each other. The hapless Moon manages to be both pathetic and hopeful, the imperious earl both infuriating and amusing. Sex has its allure but always seems just out of reach. The randomness of life (as arranged by the writer) creates mad moments of black humor. I'd love to see Stoppard write another novel, but he seems happy with plays (not that I mind). Nonetheless, it would be fun.
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Published on November 26, 2010 14:28

November 24, 2010

Thankful

I'm thankful for many things like the wonderful words of Kurt Vonnegut and about a billion other things that make me laugh, sing, cry and sigh. Far too many to list, though today while I made my chocolate chip cheesecake, I watched this:











I'm always thankful for the Marx Brothers. My column today also features films as my suggested Thanksgiving meal.

6 Courses of Films Perfect for Thanksgiving Day If you need to survive the holiday by distracting yourself from thoughts of murder, what better way to do so than by fixing your glassy stare on the nearest video screen? Here are six "courses" of films to help get you through Thanksgiving.





Appetizer: Home for the HolidaysGet yourself in the right mood with Jodi Foster's film about the horrors of family, which gives a bunch of great actors a chance to play eccentric and loopy.

It's also a very human film that suggests that time heals a lot of wounds....

Read more: http://culture.bitchbuzz.com/6-courses-of-films-perfect-for-thanksgiving-day.html#ixzz16Etbq5GP

Off to Bertie's for a fine fine meal; I'm bringing along a chocolate chip cheesecake for nourishment. I'm sure Robert will cook other things as well. I won't be cooking, although I might be drafted into peeling potatoes. My christmas cactus continues to beat the season:



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Published on November 24, 2010 13:57

November 22, 2010

Carrot & Stick

I have a favor to ask of you: it's not really much and this time of year, you might be spending a lot of time in this particular location anyway. I have a birthday wish. I realise it's a few weeks away yet, but you need some preparation time. The good news is that it costs you nothing but a small amount of time (otherwise I'd be hitting you up for donations to Heifer International or Kiva for micro-loans).



As you know, there are more places than ever to get the word out on your books and products, and even more people trying to do the same. It's hard to get a signal through all the noise. But there are a few things that will help get the word out on my behalf: tags and reviews.



Over at Amazon, it is possible to tag items so people know this book is in the same category as this other one. The more tags -- and the more agreement about the appropriateness of tags -- the better, as people are more likely to find your book in searches ("if you liked X you may also enjoy Y"). So if you have some time on your hands, I'd love more tags for all my books on Amazon.



And reviews! They needn't be elaborate, but they are helpful to have there so people have some idea what the book is like; be creative. Once you're on a roll, consider adding reviews (they could be the same ones) to places like GoodReads and Library Thing. Be sure to friend me there, too. Most of my Library Thing entries have been done by the lovely grad students (thank you!).



Thanks in advance for your help! It's the best birthday present I could get (other than a big lottery win -- I can hope).



Now the carrot: I hope you've all seen the new series Sherlock which revamped Conan Doyle's stories for the 21st Century. Fun stuff! Sherlocking is a fan site for show and they ran a fan fiction contest recently (no, not the naughty kind). I had been poked on Twitter to submit a story but with one thing and another, I nearly forgot until the last day. So, not my best work, I suppose -- and it may not make much sense to someone who's not seen the show -- but the kind of exercise that can be fun in a thousand words or less. So here it is:



"A Charming Situation": Holmes and Watson visit the London Zoo



Enjoy! If you prefer something less linear, drop by my page at the New Absurdist. Or if steampunk is more your style, drop by the serial. I think I finally figured out where I was going off the rails there: I got sidetracked on Helen's father before I developed her enough. That's the thing with first drafts; they seldom stay that way.
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Published on November 22, 2010 06:05

November 19, 2010

Humor: Panopticon? Yes, please!

Yes, when I get obsessed, I get well and truly obsessed. So here's my humor piece for Polite Compan magazine on -- wait for it! -- the panopticon:



Panopticon? Yes, please!Posted by k.a.laity on 11/18/10 • Categorized as Politics



Messieurs and Mesdames,



Inasmuch as your efforts toward gentling the population have not gone unnoticed, I wish to be more forward in encouraging your movements. Yes, we have all adjusted to the latest round of indignities required to meet the threats anxiously imagined in corporate-funded think tanks surrounding Washington. We are prepared to travel in the buff and drink no liquids for the duration of the flight, even if that means standing (eh, Ryanair?).



We've grown accustomed to software that tracks our every click, bosses who control whether we can be Facebook friends or not, and warnings attached to every email that warn it could be scanned for copyrighted content, do not reproduce. We even luxuriate under the motherly eye of CCTV, be we cat molesters or not, safe in knowing that we're not out of sight.



But it's not enough...



[read the rest at Polite Company and be sure to "like" it on Facebook or share it on Twitter -- or just recite it out loud to passers-by]



If I can get things together, I'm going to try to do a Friday Forgotten Book. I'm actually trying to make my schedule more regular as people seem to like consistency. It's not really part of my nature, but I can be accommodating.



Sometimes.
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Published on November 19, 2010 06:05

November 18, 2010

BitchBuzz: Panopticon

Happy Birthday, Alan Moore, who doesn't use the intarwubs, so he'll never see this, but he'll know somehow ;-)



Here's my column for the day which risks disrupting the space/time continuum by discussing French literary theory with a popular audience:

Welcome to the Panopticon! How an 18th century social theorist foresaw the wretched state in which we find ourselves today.

Your every keystroke on the computer is recorded; CCTV follows your progress around the city; you agree to changes without a second thought—or a second read of the license—every time iTunes wants to update, and you squeeze your toiletries into 100ml or 3oz containers in order to board that flight.



And you don't even complain any more.



Welcome to the panopticon. Back in the 18th century, Jeremy Bentham (yes, the man whose dead body still sits in a cabinet of the University College London—sans head—except for the occasional College Council vote) proposed a prison that was a model of efficiency. The watched cannot see the watchers but know they can be under observation at all times. You don't really need to have that many jailers because a few can keep the paranoia at peak.

Read more: http://culture.bitchbuzz.com/welcome-to-the-panopticon.html#ixzz15eLFmW33Yes, a big part of this grows out of the TSA nonsense and the rather gratifying pushback against it. Lazier security does not mean better security: it just means it's easier to implement. But that's how it works: by wearing people down from their resistance. Don't accept it.

Well, my Xmas cactus apparently decided to get a jump on the season already (I think it might actually be a Diwali cactus). I remain a Grinch.

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Published on November 18, 2010 09:01

November 16, 2010

Happy Birthday, Peter Cook!

Whether he's discussing the Great Train Robbery, giving the jury instructions or singing in his inimitable style, I adore him.





















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Published on November 16, 2010 21:01