Staying with a simple theme – it’s a cold morning but the rain has passed me by…for the mo’. All this brings to mind the ‘Sweet Child of Mine’. It was Guns N’ Roses only #1 hit in America and a rousing tune for a cold morn.
A Writing Cat’s Advice
Choose the place for you
You don’t need to remain there
but make it your choice
The Renewal
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: “Be sure to read the fine print.”
I must have heard or read it a hundred thousand times in my lifetime. (Yes, that could be an exaggeration.) It’s often flashed up during television commercials but the five plus lines of tiny print shoot by faster than you can say, “What?” Small print has become a joke in our society. The joke is on the consumer. It certainly was on me and my wife.
We were subscribing to our local newspaper . It’s not as easy to decide as you think. We’re a small town. It’s a small paper. To fill the paper, they publish some news articles from other towns and countries. It’s not greatly valuable to us in this Internet era. Most of our friends don’t take the local daily, the ‘Ashland Daily Tidings’. They take the newspaper from our larger neighbor, Medford. Medford’s paper is ‘The Medford Mail-Tribune’. Editorially, both papers are conservative, and they share owners and publishers.
ADT is published Monday through Saturday, except for the big holidays. You can guess them. For Sunday, we received ‘The Medford Mail-Tribune’.
We liked receiving the paper despite its paucity of local news. So after a brief debate last December, we renewed, paying for a year’s subscription, $124. Cool. Done.
October comes. Notices arrive. Our newspaper subscription is about to expire. My wife pulls out the paperwork. No, they’re wrong: we renewed in December, 2015, for fifty-two weeks. They’re probably just trying to get us to renew early, we reasoned. Periodicals are always following that practice.
But no. Last Sunday came a notice with the delivery: “Your subscription has expired.”
Nah-uh, we answered. Pulling out the paperwork with new fury, my wife re-affirmed her earlier understanding. Then she saw the small print. Here is the actual small print, copied from their website:
“Up to $3 is charged to all subscriptions for each premium edition. Premium editions are not included in the subscription price and your expiration date will be accelerated and adjusted accordingly. There will be no more than 16 premium editions per calendar year.”
What is a ‘premium edition’? It seems to be the normal paper enlarged by extra advertising inserts. That means we’ve paid an extra $48 for our paper for the ‘year’, which, because of the ‘premium editions’, has been truncated to about ten and a half months. And it’s curious, because even if you select online only, to save paper, you still pay $3.00 for each premium edition. You pay for it regardless of your subscription term – year, month, quarter, whatever.
(Paperless, BTW, is another burgeoning joke in our society. We get more paper in our mail than ever before, usually stuff we don’t want but that we must recycle – which we pay to have done. How many ‘special offers’ are received each week by wireless service providers, ISPs, Dish and other satellite providers, followed by insurance, cleaning, and credit cards offers…and let us then begin to talk about the Explanation of Benefits and bills that accompany every doctor appointment and prescription.)
We were floored.
We were angry.
We wondered…does this apply to its sister paper?
You betcha.
We wondered: do our friends know this about this their subscriptions?
No, they didn’t. They were sure we were wrong so we printed out a website screenshot to show them.
They were floored.
But here is the kicker that prompted me to post: yesterday, a plastic bag was delivered to our house from ‘The Medford Mail-Tribune’. There wasn’t any newspaper; just the advertisement inserts. Which, to us, means that we’re subsidizing the newspaper’s advertisement revenue by paying for these circulars to be delivered to non-subscribers.
We could be wrong about that. It was our snap insight, and they’re not always right. Regardless, we’re angry, and we’re not renewing.
A Writing Cat’s Advice
Careful with your words
The claws aren’t always needed
There are other ways
Today’s Theme Music
Thought I’d go with something simple today, that makes me smile. Here is ‘Blister in the Sun’ from the Violent Femmes.
Authors Answer 104 – Best Advice for Authors
There’s a truth that’s uncovered, that if you want to write, you keep working at it, you keep writing. Not everything you write is fantastic, or even good. Many great lines or scenes are cut away because they no longer fit the story or they impede the pacing, or they’re out of character. Whatever. You learn from it, you face ugly truths, you think it through, whatever problem it is, and you sit down and you write again. And again. And again.
Welcome to a very special Authors Answer! This is our 104th edition, which means it’s the end of our second year. And just like last year, we have some guest authors giving their answer to this very important question. I’d like to thank authors Mark Lawrence, Michael J. Sullivan, Django Wexler, and Andrew Rowe for agreeing to participate. They were very gracious when I asked them to participate. And thank you to Jacqueline Carey for her response. Unfortunately, she has her hands full at the moment, so was unable to participate. I love authors who take the time to respond when they can!
This week’s topic is an important one. Authors sometimes need a bit of help, so we’re talking about the best advice we have received in our quest for being published.
Celebrating our 2nd anniversary!
Question 104 – What is the most important piece of writing advice anyone…
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The Omens
A $20 check in the mail for some class action suit settlement.
Making seven of eight shots to the sock drawer from the three point line (the bathroom door).
Going by and scratching each cat’s head as they sleep and hearing deep purrs in response.
A hot, fresh cup of coffee and a good view of a rainy autumn day outside.
All the signs point to a good day.
The Progress Reports
“How’s the writing going?” I’m asked after a session.
“Did you have a good writing session?” another asks later.
“How’s the book coming along?” a companion queries me when I meet.
And I want to respond with a lot of information. I’ve written sixty thousand plus words. The book excites me. The ideas, characters and settings are all lively, energizing me when I sit down with it. That’s how it is on most days.
But some days, my writing sessions aren’t about the laptop’s clicking keys. Some days, I sit and talk to myself, or I’m walk and talk to myself. (Walking is a great way to write.) “Why did this happen? Because that happened. What did he do? What did she do? So what happens next with her?”
On those days, I’m likely to do a lot of spot editing and polishing, re-reading what was written about one of the story lines to find the path and generate enough light to look ahead to ‘what’s next’. Paradoxically, these are often the most exciting and enjoyable sessions because I’m solving a problem, and I also see clear progress of the novel being written. It’s all coming together. I’m assembling the puzzle, I’m learning the fuller story, and gaining greater understanding of my characters and the setting. I’m fortunate to write another 800-1,000 words on those days.
These sort of days prove, it’s not about the word count.
On all writing days (which is about three hundred sixty-one days of the year), though, I answer the questions with the same non-committal, almost laconic manner, “It’s going good.” I know they’re being polite and supportive. It’s like asking, “How is your day?” A full report isn’t expected, just a general summary, brief, if you please. We’re all just being polite. I hold back for the blog posts to wax more enthusiastically, but even there, I restrain myself. I’m just one of seven hundred gazillion writers posting and writing, gluing my sanity back together and casting the tea leaves, trying to make something out of the voices in my head who urge, “Write this down.”
But sometimes, when I’m writing, I can’t help myself, and I laugh out loud at what I thought or wrote. Nobody looks up, because, you know, I may look harmless, but I might be crazy. You can never tell.
They don’t know that I’m just a writer. I leave my badge at home.
Today’s Theme Music
Today’s rousing little ditty comes via ‘Raised by Wolves’. As I was closing down the day, I watched a couple episodes again (via Acorn) yesterday. This song, ‘Don’t Mess with Me’ by Brody Dalle, was featured on the second episode watched, in which Yoko gets her first bra and Germaine is treated to new underwear. Don’t think much of the video but enjoy the lyrics and the beat. Hope you get something out of it.
Sex, Memory & Imagination
You’re living a long time. One hundred and five is now the average age of a human. That average is creeping up. We’re all living longer as medical technology monitors and addresses issues 24/7. People aren’t being born, and some children are being kept as children.
Thereby is an argument: if a child is kept physically, emotionally and intellectually at six years old because that’s the age their parent(s) prefer them, but they’ve been alive for forty years, how old are they? Most planets, corporations and governments hold that if they’re maintained at an age, they count at that age if it’s an age whereby they’re somebody’s wards or in a protected status. So, for example, some are adults (which varies mightily in the future) but look like they’re twelve, because they liked how they looked then, so they’re counted as their true age. But if they’re twelve and are treated as twelve years old even though they’re fifty, they’re treated as twelve.
Civilization is more complicated in the future.
One decision many face is what to embody. As memory is augmented to provide greater storage and enhance recall abilities because people are living longer, people typically embody their memories as an avatar that can be compiled as a physical presence. That way, instead of just engaging in internal dialogue with themselves, they can call out their memory and invite them to have a drink or share a meal while they discuss their recollections. Brett’s memory is a tanned blonde woman in a red dress (who doesn’t have a name) and Handley’s memory is a pirate named Grutte Piers, based on the real Piers Gerlofs Donia. These aren’t their first memories but they’re their current memories in ‘Long Summer’.
Something similar has evolved for sex. Many people have decided that fake sex with an avatar of their design is more enjoyable than having sex with another actual person. People have foibles. Foibles can be very irritating. The foibles can be mitigated to some degree but people are a bit unpredictable. Many people have learned that they don’t like their sex partners to be unpredictable.
To solve these issues, people often create one (0r more) sex avatars (sexatars?). Like the memory, it’s an embodiment that’s compiled to exist for a period. People can decide exactly who they resemble and how they’ll act. If they want, they can create animal avatars and have sex with animals as a human or compile or modify themselves to be animals and enjoy their sex. Whatever creepy depravities humanity enjoys can be indulged by creating sex avatars. A few people have married their sex avatars. Avatars are people, too, my friends, except they have different rights.
Sex and memory are the two main items people have embodied as avatars but a few people create others. Some have their intelligence or imagination embodied as an avatar that they can call out for visits. Brett has created an embodiment of his personal computer and communications systems, and calls it Carl. Others have gone the good and evil routes, creating twins of the opposite end of their moral spectrum (as they see it). A few enjoy themselves so much that their have avatars that are exactly like themselves created so they have themselves as company. Most find this doesn’t work well, that as people, they’re not the wonderful companions they thought they are.
All of the avatars are as that as anything humans create. Maintenance is needed or the avatars break down and cease functioning.
With all these facets acting in parallel, the population of humanity is slowly cresting, and the average age is creeping up. The oldest humans are upward of three hundred years old. Despite proliferation of new communication technologies and people living longer, people are living more and more in isolation, with only their memories, sex and other embodiments as avatar companions. Sometimes, they miss family or friends and have ideal avatars of them created, too. It makes for happier holiday meals. Meanwhile, Mom, Dad and Sis are alive on other worlds but never hear from Bro.
Yes, it’s an interesting and complex civilization, in the future. Another day of writing like crazy is in the books (ha, ha).
This post has been brought to you by coffee. Coffee: it’s good for thinking (and bowel movements).
Michael Seidel, writer 