@hg47's Blog: The Tweet & The TakeAway, page 9

Cliff-Diving

Cliff-diving at the Car Lot. Obama: “I’ll offer you $2000 for that new Ford in the window.” GOP: “I’m flabbergasted! It’s $43,619,808.05!”

No, I am not worried about the fiscal cliff. I'm more worried about the trend in American politics where Republicans and Democrats have fewer and fewer incentives to compromise on anything. Ever. Congress has become Nongress. Without compromise, without meeting "the enemy" part way near the middle, U.S. government stalls: Republican NOs kill any Democratic bill; Democratic Nos kill any Republican bill.

My areas of of expertise are Plastics Extrusion and Writing Novels, in that order. But this blog post is no sillier than a professional tennis player expounding on global warming or a Hollywood actress pleading for an end to starving children in Africa.

President Obama & House Speaker Boehner have each proposed starting points that absolutely NEVER would pass through the Senate and the House of Representatives. All I see are "talking points" and "political maneuvering" (or "political womaneuvering" in my SF novel) and sound-bites. This whole fiscal cliff is just another can that was kicked down the road, because a year ago an agreement could not be reached. It wouldn't surprise me if Nongress finds another way to kick it down the road another year. I'm already reading analysis that Congress—excuse me, Nongress—can retroactively use tax credits and other tools to mitigate during 2013 whatever disaster most people are imagining. You and I won't fall off a cliff and die, we will just both slip down a few yards, getting our skirts and suits all muddy. Don't worry: Nongress will pay for your Dry Cleaning!

It also worries me that in Washington who gets the credit for it is about ten times more important than the essential facts of whatever "it" is. Case in point is ObamaCare. Now, both the Republicans and the Democrats have been trying to get some kind of "mostly universal" Federal Health Care Plan up and running for decades. The first President Bush proposed a Health Care plan very similar to the current iteration of ObamaCare, but the Democrats killed it. "We'll do it right!" Can you say, "First Lady Clinton Boo-Boo?" Many conservatives trash-talk President Barack Obama, but it is clear that he prefers compromise, that he isn't out to kick ass and take names, but that he genuinely wants to achieve a consensus, "where we all get along" so that government actually governs.

What a pipe dream!

Right now, fresh from re-election victory, he's trying to play hard-ball, but I bet he blows it. The GOP has been perfecting their "NO! Ain't Gonna Happen! We Won't Give An Inch!" game for 4 years.

The surviving parts of ObamaCare (circa December 8, 2012; 9:40pm) are essentially conservative ideas initially proposed by the GOP think tank Heritage Foundation. Barack Obama didn't propose a radical left wing health care plan; essentially, he took the Right's ideas. Probably he thought that he could get support from across the aisle for this puppy. WRONG! He only got half-hearted support from Democrats who wanted a more Big Government Makes All The Decisions Plan; and ALL Republicans conformed to vote "NO, No, Hell no, and the horse you rode in on!" Remember that guy who just ran for President? Mitt something? Mitt Romney! You can bitch about the details, but ObamaCare is basically just RomnayCare gone Federal. President Obama went with "free market principles" and "business competition" for his plan.

It always amused me to see, what's that guy's name again, right, Romney, trash-talking ObamaCare because his name wasn't on it. Now that the Tea Party is pulling all Republican's over to the ultra RIGHT, the GOP (Gold Over People?) can almost claim with a straight face that ObamaCare is not their own free market health plan ideas, but some radical socialist agenda that will kill jobs and . . .

Oh, please. @hg47

Target the "Wrong" People

THE TWEET: This Tweet is using all the right words, but sending all the Wrong Signals. That’s OK: There must be a few “Wrong” people out there.

THE TAKEAWAY:

I have up-loaded a good portion of my best writing to AMAZON and SMASHWORDS, but it mostly just sits there. I have no clue how to draw attention to it, no clue how to promote it. Everything I try is the wrong thing.

I don't "get" the whole eBook thing. On my Dark Days it just looks like the Slushpile went online.

I'm actually hoping that I don't find a way to make a living at eBooks, because I'm pretty sure it would involve spending 12-14 hour days doing all the things I hate.

What I really want to do is write the first draft to a new novel.

Historically, my MO has been:
1) write a novel
2) try to sell novel
3) give up
[REPEAT]

Hey, maybe I will win the boobie-prize: success after I am dead.

@hg47

P.S. - Oh, yeah, about "Wrong" People, sorry, I got distracted. The "Right" People are going to be too busy for you, or you're going to need an introduction by a Power Player or a Mafia Don…or you may as well just go on doing your own thing (which is "wrong"), pissing people off right and left, hoping that you accidentally stumble into an insider who "gets" you.

Talking Myself Into It

I had to talk about being a writer for a couple of years before I did much writing.

When I moved into my current apartment, I went through all my writing papers. Boxes and boxes of papers I've saved through the years. These were the survivors.

Most of my early writing, I destroyed. I didn't want to have it lurking around to embarrass me someday. Hey, Plato was a poet before he switched to writing the dialogues involving his version of Socrates, which made him famous: he destroyed all his poetry. I'm not the only one!

I pulled out stacks and stacks of stuff that I thought might have some use to me now. Old poetry that I thought might occasionally be used as tweets. Hip Files: collections of amped-up language that I used to use occasionally to turbo-charge my prose. But I particularly wanted to get my three SAM DUKE novels out for a fresh look. I've always wanted my own Travis McGee, or my own Spenser, or my own Philip Marlowe.

My SAM DUKE novels were worthless, as is; they got better each time I wrote another one, but even the third one was nothing I wanted to now share with the world. I had a fresh idea for a way to take SAM DUKE to a whole new level for the fourth novel, that I thought I might kick out into the world as the "First."

Problem was, when I finished going through all the boxes of papers, I didn't have the second SAM DUKE novel. It was missing. WTF!

I rarely get angry. When I do get angry, I cool down quick, usually within a minute. For about an hour I was in a rage, tearing through boxes that didn't even have paper in them, going through boxes I had already gone through. I was actually glad that I was alone, because I couldn't trust myself to deal with other people in my then state of mind. Not only was the second SAM DUKE novel missing, but all the supporting papers were gone too; and there were not multiple drafts. I might have discarded early draft prints, but never the final version of the novel, never the brainstorming files that I use to write the novel; it's sort of an evolving default plot and compilation of all sorts of things that I might be able to throw into the actual writing.

When the going gets tough, writers get drunk.

After I had calmed down, I tried to think: I realized that I couldn't even recall what the second SAM DUKE novel was about. The basics of SAM DUKE 1 and SAM DUKE 3 were easy to remember. SAM DUKE 2? My mind was blank.

Then a sneaky suspicion crept into my mind. I remembered that initially SAM DUKE 3 had been written in 1st Person, but that near the end I had changed my mind and rewritten the whole thing into 3rd Person. Could it be that I had been counting the 1st Person and the 3rd Person versions as different SAM DUKE novels to inflate my numbers when I talked about my writing to agents and editors and friends?

Right now, I think that's what happened: I told a lie to myself and everyone, and over the years came to believe that lie; so that when I was faced with "proof" I refused to believe that proof. But I'm not absolutely sure.

Pink Floyd has a song: "Careful with that axe, Eugene." My version goes like this: "Careful with that lie, Eugene."

@hg47

Why Do I Trust You?

Why do I trust you? You told me the harsh truth when an easy lie would have fooled me. You kept that difficult promise you could have broken

It's the things we do, when we don't have to do them, that ultimately count the most, that define Who We Are, that Make Other People Love Us.

Eric Hoffer wrote that if you want to judge the intelligence of an American worker that you do it not by listening to her or his words, but by working with her or him. I concur. He wrote it better.

At work, there are guys who call me Sir, that I don't want anywhere near me when I'm doing something "Mission Critical." Other guys, that I've seen "in action" who may not even know my name, are the ones I choose to help me.

Why?

Because in moments when they didn't have to do anything, they moved in to help; because they flat out told me I was doing something the Wrong Way, and then suggested a better way.

I may not always recognize the "better way" the moment someone insults me by TELLING ME I AM WRONG!!!

But I usually calm down. Within a minute or two. Or a day or two.

Or a week.

@hg47

I Tell The Truth (If Only)

I tell the Truth. No impact. So I tell a lie that makes People trip over the Truth & then pick themselves up & look down at the Truth.

Occasionally I have to do that to myself.

My relationship with the Truth is awkward, and I'm probably going to make a mess of this post.

When I use the word "Truth" I mean something like the underlying cause and effect driving the surface appearance of events.

Sometimes I think the Internet has nothing to do with transmitting Truth, but is more about inoculating people against the harmful effects of the Truth. Until we only click on links that appeal to our own personal bias. Until we only join groups that appeal to our own personal bias. Until we [insert ten to ten thousand other examples separating the US from the THEM].

The Internet: many tiny islands of shared interests and beliefs that occasionally grow to become continents of isolation.

Any communication involving two or more people is SOCIAL. The social strategy of hiding the truth, and instead using rhetoric to push the "Hot Buttons" of those receiving the information (or disinformation) to provoke desired emotional reactions can have huge pay-offs. Bluntly voicing a perceived "truth" often achieves less than nothing: it can turn potential friends into lifelong enemies; it can fall flat, achieving only an awkward pause.

<spoiler>Artists with their multiple points-of-view that give them additional perspective on their subjects; Neurotics unable to constructively utilize their disruptive multiple points-of-view; Psychotics with actual multiple personalities; so-called Normal People who try not to listen to the crazy thoughts that spring up unasked in their internal dialogue: Telling the best lie to ourselves may appear the best strategy.</spoiler>

Communicating the Truth isn't about prettying-it-up for your target audience but about flying under the radar, bypassing the spam filters, tricking the internal censor that lives inside of each of us.

Spin

Sometimes all I see is spin. The original raw "message" gets so cropped and air-brushed and re-framed and prefaced that it gets devalued in my mind.

Take for example, Fox News. I don't particularly object to a RIGHT slant on news, but Fox is so blatant about it, that I no longer believe anything they write or say. The moment I see the Fox logo, I close the tab.

Pick your issue, and there are Image Consultants to reposition whichever side you want to land down on, so that polling numbers are on your side or religious groups will back you or it is obvious to ANYONE that only serial killers and rapists would disagree with you.

Nine Lines High

Sometimes I just like tweeting a pattern that displays 9-lines high that has embedded functional hashtags.

On Twitter WTF usually trumps KISS.

The whole #TwitterArt thing is slightly silly, like those guys who create art so small it will fit on the head of a pin. So what?

@hg47

The Clouds Of My Mind

Ａ ｄｅｃｉｓｉｖｅ ｄｅｆｅａｔ ｗｉｌｌ ｑｕａｓｈ ａｌｌ ｔｈｅ ｓｉｌｌｙ ａｓｐｉｒａｔｉｏｎｓ ｆｒｏｍ ｔｈｅ ｃｌｏｕｄｓ ｏｆ ｍｙ ｍｉｎｄ, ａｎｄ ｇｒｏｕｎｄ ｍｙ ｆｕｔｕｒｅ ｉｎ ｔｈｅ ｐｒｏｓａｉｃ.

Am I the only eBook author who thinks that somehow, just maybe, I might be able to make a living at this Electronic Book thing? Don't think so.

I am one among more than 50,000 authors officially granted Author Accounts on GoodReads. I wonder how many of my GoodReads Peers are making a living at this? My silly aspirations are leading me to compromise my career in Plastics Extrusion, study and engage in disgusting behaviors like Networking, Marketing, Promotion, when all I really want to do is start writing a new novel and completely lose myself in a new First Draft.

Hey, a New Novel's First Draft is my drug of choice.

What is really scary is: What if I find a way to win at eBooks, but it takes almost all of my time doing all the things I hate to do, leaving me no time for the things I enjoy? First Draft, Baby!

@hg47

Going Too Far

Going too far is my signature move.

Like spending 2.5 years writing the first draft to a high-tech science fiction novel about women in space in a future where the male sex is extinct.

Like sending out emails to 100 science fiction authors trying to make contact; crashing and burning in 95 of the encounters. Tried a bunch of different approaches. One reaction dropped me into a flame war.

http://www.velcro-city.co.uk/an-open-...

In 2009 I started vertically aligning some of my tweets. Going Too Far Squared.

Writing novels has never paid any bills. I do it because I can't not do it. I see an eBook "revolution" happening, but I have no clue how to take advantage of it. I pay the bills by working in Plastics Extrusion; I'm in Profile Extrusion now. When the parts are good, I am very timid about making adjustments. But the moment a part can no longer be saved, I go into TOO FAR mode; I'll make 3 or 5 drastic changes to the line at once. I almost always find a quick fix back to good parts; but often I have no clue which of my adjustments dealt with the problem.

With respect to eBooks, I see the Author database expanding and the Reader database contracting. I applaud GoodReads, for providing a place for readers to gather together. This is my first GoodReads blog post. I'm probably already going too far.

Cheers!

@hg47