Check out the first stuffafizing Post which links to this medium article,
it is official culture night after all…
Stuffafizing on Culture Night 2023
Stuffafizing:
Is that more or less moulding or blue molding our means of expression in contemporary online talking shops ?
While both ‘The Association of Internet Researchers’ and ‘Kilkenomics‘ – the world’s first economics festival, are in mid full swing in Ireland today, global social media and even the main evening BBC news still riffs on about Muskrat buying / slashing / controlling twitter. However please allow me to invoke archaic Northern Ireland ‘comedian’ Jimmy Cricket’s best known and thankfully long forgotten catch phrase: “and there’s more.”
Yes we’ve seen multiple tweets, ideological articles, institutional opinion posts about all that stuff, lots of them basically bemoaning the fact that Musk may:
A: Charge money for a blue tick.
B: Utterly destroy the nature of ‘discourse’ on that platform.
But…
Anyone without a twitter account claims not to care about that little blue bird, others like me, having spent time on twitter over the last 14+ years treating it as the light weight internet toy it was supposed to be, just followed people making and sharing stuff, like an early form of ‘stuffafizing’ maybe, many of us now wonder why would we continue to give that blue mold platform thee one single and most important human commodity we each possess: our time ?
I for one no longer want to dip my brain into its increasingly corrosive stream, there was once a real sense of fun or playfulness about Twitter, that’s gone, and certainly when we learned that the new CEO just cut 50% of it’s workforce, you gotta ask where will it all lead and am I really that interested or invested in any of it..
Over the years with influencer influxes, brands landing, blue ticks etc, the use of account data as advertising fodder, behavioral modelling, golden graph guff, the once relatively unique characteristic brevity of the place simply blue molded into just another mainstream media tool, a tool I was compelled to teach to MSc and MBA students as part of their Digital Marketing Tools Strategies…. for that I am still doing penance in my nightmares where CRM and User Funnels chase me naked through the long room library shelves full of bright meaningless icons instead of fine classic books, all the while a trail of American ladies with bad make-up keep stopping me asking for directions to Hari Seldom’s foundation room .
Regular readers, I thank you each sincerely, the exclusive few souls generous and kind enough to use your precious time reading stuff here. You each already know that up until this point I haven’t really treated this webspace as anything other than a thinking out loud or writey waffling opinion space, most often writing across what would traditionally be known in academic terms as ‘disciplinary boundaries’ with often my own comedic unfocused spattergun satire anti-techniques. I would like to thank particularly those of you who have already signed up for my irregular newsletter… so irregular in fact you haven’t got one yet.
So please allow me to announce that my stuffafizing newsletter [ sign up on the right there -> ] has actually reached a critical number of subscribers (double double digits surprisingly) so in all conscience I must now devote focused time and energy into repaying your attention and kindness there.
I will also be accepting submissions for inclusion in what will now be my monthly(ish) newsletter after December 2022 onwards. So the first one in 2023 will contain a return email to which you can send stuff you might want included or discussed or shared in the next or later ones. I will share that sort of information every couple of months so as to allow longer subscribed readers / participants a kinda first come first served sharing basis of your stuff. You can let me know in the comments if any of this is a really mad or bad idea or if there is a better way to do it while keeping everything free and free flowing.
So going forward I’d like you folks to mould what the stuffafizing newsletter might become, obviously it won’t be about one single avenue of creative endeavour or just one topic but my head will be responsible for editing it into something coherent and hopefully relevant to what you the actual readers might want. So please spread the word to those who might care if you can.
Back to this post about the current technological fundamentalism underlying the capitalist seizure of other means of expression.
Those two current events in Ireland, AOIR and Kilkenomics have three broad intersections of audience profiles: people with enough money, motivation, and time to attend, those with a desire to network, and those who specialize in something valuable to the capitalist worldview.
Academics interested in the internet and networking in that community intersect with those who can afford to pay money to watch comedians and economists trying to out amuse each other in Kilkenny.
A single unifying thread is the accumulated or sunk costs of attending either of these events, which in the current cost of living crisis is simply beyond a significant portion of the general Irish and probably European, if not global population. My old bug bear Mark Fisher’s Capitalist realism peers over the firewall at this point to tell me this is just the way it is.
Each audience itself must be specialized… and the agendas driven by organizers and committees, not those sitting in the various types of what my dear departed working class mother would call ‘talking shops’ but the ideologues behind the organizations would no doubt categorize as world class events.
To become a successful third level academic in Ireland requires about a minimum investment of ten years in a university , and even then there are no actual guarantees, you may already even have the inside career track, since many offspring of academics, like other professions follow in their parent’s footsteps, it will still cost a significant amount of money, time, energy, and connections to establish yourself as said academic, and of course you will, like both the economists and comedians need to be highly specialized.
The above blurb is interesting, it does say and ask: “They use behavior modifying algorithms, mass data capture and surveillance to sell behavioural information to the highest bidder and spend billions avoiding oversight and regulation. How do we fix this ? “
Well as one of the individuals without the means to swan up and down and around kilkenny, I might start by simply buying a book at one third the cost of entry to the session discussing it. But then is this economics or the business of show, more likely its just more media business.
One of the articles in the latest edition of the journal of media business studies contains the wonderful keyword “Bandwagon Heuristics’.
Obviously heuristics are mental short-cuts, rules of thumb, anyone who has studied interaction will probably have encountered these specific ones. Jumping on a bandwagon means mimicking or piggybacking the actions or opinions of others, one of the major issues I have with how the internet has developed in these last 14 twitter years is that, despite the shift to mobile and A.I. etc it is no longer a truly unique medium, it has, as all media do, subsumed the worse of old media and all the capitalist implications that brings, the monetization of the internet has seen the same age old techniques again replicated, just in an online environment, do what your competition does, set up right next to them if you can, offer what they offer only try to add value or reduce costs, the build it and they will come is replaced with build it for free, hook them and then monetize it..
The internet is no longer economically flat, nor has there been the proliferation of unique nodes once envisaged, the influx of money has ensured sameness, the inventor of the capitalist production line Irish American Henry Ford you can have it in any colour once its black remains the bedrock of consumerist choice, on and off the internet, the fallacy of personalization and choice is still smoke and mirrors over the old media business models, there is no longer equal access or the encouragement of a critical mass of polymaths, only specialized media paywalls and gateways being erected for specialized people, the promise of the long tail broken as each potential node becomes monetized and controlled by capital in its various forms, the latest twitter stuff is just an overt example of it and it is now far from the original.
The means of production is owned by capitalists, the academy is also owned and run by capitalists, society has never been this in thrall to finance and the markets in it’s history. The 2008 crash which saw capital and finance become embedded in almost every modern state apparatus has continued to skew and pollute society as a whole. In my view now the only real way to discuss these matters is to take back the means of expression from the capitalists and refuse to buy those tickets or stay in those specialized lanes. Knowledge should be free to all at this point in human development, everyone should have the opportunity to express themselves freely, for free… without the fear that the money men will intrude and buy everything up to control it.. I am reminded of the conversation between Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut where Heller tells Kurt that he has something the rich don’t have… enough.
TAKE BACK THE MEANS OF EXPRESSION.
Thunder Flutter..
You will surely love the (possibly entirely apocryphal – or he himself might have told it) brilliant story about Professor Paul Muldoon returning to Norn Iron to judge a poetry competition. Paul decides, among reliable reams of epic and lyric, streams of Spenserian sonnets, vast vats of villanelles, buckets of blank verse and at least one hillock with a pastoral, that a single young bright kid actually won the competition outright with his poem called: ‘The Tortoise’, a short poem with the central image of a struggling Tortoise, with the magical line:
“the tortoise goes.. movey movey”
Cue, near riotous uproar among the adult educated intellect of assembled applicants if true. And I really want that story to be true. The story of a renowned poet who refused to crush a child’s sense of wonder and possibility, and not appease convention. I won second prize as an 11 year old with my poem, ‘Peace’ with the opening line: ‘Peace is but a flower among the weeds’ back in the dark 1970s, yes… but it was all downhill after that first line although in truth it was all my own work, almost winning up against other kids and their ambitious mammies work.
The poetry society in the UK, of which Chris Meade (RIP) was once director have opened their national poetry competition to everyone. If that’s your thing the application is here.
At 12, an entire school copybook full of my very first story ‘Frosty the Snowman’ prompted my primary school teacher to tell me I could possibly be a writer ‘WHEN I GREW UP’ This was actually the first of many times I heard that said, sometimes as an If rather than When statement…
At 17, the local newspaper editors typed reply to my rejected poem submission simply said: “These are unsuitable sentiments for a 17 year old.” Among the 40 plus poems within the creative sections of my Doctoral thesis lies one called ‘unsuitable sentiments’ It appears under the pseudonym of the imaginary Achill based poet John Pat McNamara. Yes let the sun shine upon us for I remain alive, and inspired by the muses.
I utterly abandoned poetry competitions, although I previously wrote funny verse (as opposed to what I consider actual or authentic poetry) about poetry competitions in the past, it got about 20,000 page views on my previous, spammed to death, old Drupel version of this website. (Which you may now notice has new SSL technology protecting you, with new back-up infrastructure behind it protecting me). The first post on that old banjaxed version was around 2006 and was a piece about a lack of a muse for technology… doah… and since I was working on my cameltext.net ludic poems then, why can’t technology be spiritual in that traditional sort of (non)sense ?
Anyway just like my friend Professor Leo Flores now former president of the ELO, I love epoetry, while still loving much traditional poetry. I enjoy creating and making poetry, enjoy reading it, learning about it, experimenting with all aspects of it, primarily as a philosophical, spiritual and textual exercise, an exploration of otherness, subconsciousness, technical mastery, as process that provides beginnings, foundations, filaments, fodder that frequently feeds other forms of writing.
And in the very same vein in which I understand and accept I will never win an All Ireland medal of any description, a seat in Dail Eireann nor any popularity contest on social media, I am certain I will never judge nor win a poetry competition, despite writing literally thousands of poems in the intervening forty years from that terse rejection, I haven’t entered any competitions since I was that rejected 17 year old would be Poet.
The very idea that there is a winning poem among thousands of potential personal already winning poems, for surely as a poet you win if you really believe you have successfully made or completed a true poem, faithfully expressed and finished it, rather than simply abandoning it as done. And if you are prepared to risk actually putting it into public view then it surely is a winner, of some sort, at least to you.
Poets may be the charlie sheen of writers, making it makes it so, the work is done, the juvenilia, silly sentimental satires, structured poetic effluent, true luminescence, and utter versified rubbish, short shape shrapnel, is it all or any of those things ? remains a creative and artistic if not human personal judgement, you have made a thing of which you are rightly proud and therefore you win. Who is the loser in that situation other than people who have no actual industrial or electrical machinery in sight or even in storage and yet specialize in charging you and others for the wisdom of their workshops in which you do the actual work ?
The concept of a winning poem reinforces hierarchical elitist thinking of twenty centuries ago . Unless it’s been written by Vogons, I’m up for reading it and making each one of them the winner, tradition, individual talents, or just a mates mate from her wife’s golf club, the cruel truth is a poet only really wins when… death decides.
So specifically for those amateur critics and poets whose magnum opus will be an overpriced lump of Ice cream on a stick, below is yet another one of my own personal winning poems. I awarded it the ultimate 0 Prize, since that logically comes before one in a descending numerical value sequence.. as yet A.I. can’t really handle ‘nothing’.
I have wanted to write this poem for a long time, inspired to do a bit more research, finally did today during a rare completely quite three hour period, to paraphrase a Kenny Everett Character… but am telling ya the plot…
(ab)normal screenwriting and digital service will resume in due course.
Dangerous Interior Dialogues
“Basic Income for the Arts…. it’s a gift.”
“Are you having a laugh, and on Sept 11th ? Don’t be obnoxious.”
While areas of the UK and Ireland began mourning a monarch or ‘brushing up’ on their singalonga country cowboy star skills, Thursday September 8th 2022 saw 2000 artists and arts workers across the republic of Ireland awarded an individual grant from our government to enable us to sustain and hopefully nurture our practice and artistic activity for the next three years. In my own view this is a measure that begins to recognize the genuine human value of the arts to our Irish society. What might it mean to an individual concerned ?
Well I’d be concerned that from over 9,000 applications made under the scheme, 8,200 were assessed as eligible and included in the randomised anonymous selection process. Yes you read that correctly ‘randomized selection process’. I previously wrote a submission when the department were first canvasing opinion and artists’ views on their proposed process and the only aspect of it I considered in any way flawed was that very idea that final selection would be basically down to chance.
The 2,000 grant awardees include all art forms, age groups, ethnicities from all counties in the republic. This includes 707 visual artists, 584 musicians, 204 artists working in film, 184 writers, 173 actors and artists working in theatre, 32 dancers and choreographers, 13 circus artists and 10 architects.
I got the above breakdown from Visual Artists Ireland press release here.
As one of the 184 writers one of my own early heroes the legendary Liverpudlian comedian and family entertainer Ken Dodd was not merely an amazing comic, singer, gag writer, ventriloquist but also a lifelong student of comedy itself, he maintained that the greatest gift we humans have is the gift of laughter, the gift of humour. He spent his long lifetime studying comedy yet few thought to take him seriously enough as to really drill down into his expert knowledge and opinion.
“When you start out as a comic, you must learn to let people laugh at you.”
Ken Dodd.
Encouraging audiences to laugh with us, or at us, was something I preached to every live comedy cast I’ve worked with, from amateur pub dramas in the 80s to various shows to TV pilots in the noughties, it’s not a matter of choice or taste, if you want to play a funny part in my funny script or be funny in our funny performance then please don’t bring some obtuse ego preservation idea about personal exclusive theatrical artistry as an artificial barrier to you being laughed at. If you harbour thoughts of being a writer yourself someday get used to being laughed at.
For some that is an understandably incredibly difficult place to be, specifically considering some of the insecurity journeys actors, writers, and artists must take to ‘make it’. I just remembered that very old cartoon with two cannibals eating a clown and one asks the other: ‘Does this taste funny to you ?” Being laughed at because you are being funny is a reward, being laughed at because others don’t or can’t understand you can feel like attempts by those others to steal your self worth, and feels so far from funny as is humanly possible to be. So when someone decides to satirize or laugh at some person, place, thing, or event there is always serious potential for damaging or hurting that someone, there is a line, and comedy writers in my view who funny walk it are usually the funniest.
Lines, walks, and cannibals aside, to paraphrase Doddy as purveyors of comedy we do steal people’s chuckle muscle and tickle it. Here Ken’s well-known joke: ‘I suffer from acute kleptomania. But when it gets bad, I take something for it’. In Ireland if an individual isn’t very good at their job wits observe: “He’s stealing a living” or in the specific case of highly over remunerated premiere league footballers, the oft heard recently: “That Maguire’s stealing a wage.”
But such observations are not reserved for far off, off form, sports stars or incompetent employees, and we can all assume that certain laughter itself is sometimes used not only as a weapon but also as a shield for perhaps more acerbic intentions, ‘insecurity’ for some is not a passive one way street nor that poorly texted limbo before an Aer Lingus Dublin departure.
Trying to ‘make it’ in whatever field of the arts in Ireland is rooted in insecurity and precarity, unless of course you are part of those beloved golden circles of awfully nice friends, know the good guys in Oar Tea Eeeeee, have a few bob, or attend exclusive tent, marquee, or similar hotel gatherings in Galway, trying to ‘make it’ independently without incurring financial ruin or accruing debts to others generosity means the business of show can indeed be a very funny old game to navigate successfully without causing (self)harm.
I saw yesterday the south Dublin Gazette piece about John Boyne ringing up his IT interviewer post the interview and post haste to say something like, I didn’t mean Sally Rooney when I said all the young Irish writers were writing the same stupid campus novel about nothing. He could ask Rosemary Jenkins what happens in Ireland if you observe the truth that there exist large swaths of published or lauded writers on the island of Ireland that are enthusiastically promoted by their own symbiotic circles without genuine literary analysis, impartial review, or honest critique. All great art may be parochial but the parish supporting their own brings with it reciprocated responsibility if not loyalty, to the central parochial value of solidarity under all circumstances and conditions to that parish and it’s members. The introduction of the concept of ‘conflict of Interest’ to Ireland’s small literary circles would cause more commotion than shamrock rovers fans at an English regal event.
“ All comedy, is tragedy, if you only look deep enough into it.”
English Novelist and Poet Thomas Hardy
There was something wholly tragic and not at all funny for the 6028 Artists and arts workers who applied and then waited months for the department’s decision on a scheme that opened for applications from 12th April – 12th May 2022. Some waiting almost four months only to be told: apologies you were not selected in the randomized final stages and will not receive the grant. To a younger more insecure me that could also suggest, I will not be seen, not be acknowledged, I will never be helped nor realize any of my ambitions. So understandably my own heart sinks and genuinely goes out to those individuals so close and yet so far, David Walliams ‘computer says no’ as genuine human tragedy. The linguistic ‘luck of the draw’ for so many talented artists a line even this irreverent writer struggles with.
Yet open minded writers, if they have been around for as long as I have, are already intimately acquainted with rejection, actors and artists similarly so. I was genuinely shocked and surprised to be awarded a place on the scheme, I obviously fulfill the professional criteria and passed the eligibility tests, it’s just (as you may know if you’ve read any of my other posts here) As a working class writer from a border town I have long-standing ideological issues with the arts council, and similar organizations like Create Ireland, etc, specifically in a similar vein to that of the monarchy in England with their endowed soft power of their role in shaping society in their own image. So with this scheme coming directly from the Government Department itself directly responsible for the arts, it efficiently cuts out that entire administrative layer of time wasting middle management data obsessed quangos that often make offers of friendly guidance while usually demanding their logo must be seen on everything you do. uncertain and unnamed entities that associate with the wins yet are rarely seen in the vicinity of personal losses, those that want the associated comedy without any of the underlining independent sorrow of the tragedy.
From the age of 18 I was completely self-funded as a writer, theatre maker and game developer until our then local arts officer Mary Cloake gifted me a year as a paid writer in residence with the UDC (Urban District Council). It was the equivalent of a dole payment but it was briefly being paid to write full time for the first time in my life, so I got to write and produce my first semi-professional two act play called Issac’s Legacy. Alas the UDC is no more and Mary Cloake joined the Arts Council as Regions Officer in 1993, was appointed Development Director in 1997 and ascended to Director in 2004, eventually leaving in 2011.
In the years between writing and performing my first comedy scripts in 1982 and before Mary’s various elevations I applied to the arts council for numerous grants for playwrighting and theatre without success. During the early 1990s there was little analogue artwork being done let alone any digital or interactive artifacts being created. Windows 95 really started the PC revolution but I made my first game in 1983 on a C64, I already had qualifications and practical experience working in electronics when I married in 1988 aged 23 with a 1000 pound bill for my first electronic word processor, it took me a couple of years to pay that off but I was rewarded when my comedy writing work saw me invited to the BBC young scriptwriter of the year competition finals in Belfast.
I joined various Irish based writer societies and groups, I spent a half a year designing a theatre based training course with the generous help of Abbey Theatre and École Internationale de Mimodrame de Paris Marcel Marceau personnel but ultimately found myself usurped by parochial apparatchiks from FAS. Despite attempted oppression by various closed minded philistines, I eventually got some professional work going, raised the money to establish a travelling theatre company, wrote and toured my multimedia one man play ‘Ham Let Loose’, applied again to the arts council for various grants, received nothing other than rejection after rejection. So I went to study theatre part-time in Maynooth, thumbing lifts from Dundalk to Maynooth and back at all hours of the day and night for a couple of years.
When Mary Cloake was appointed development director of the arts council I had already stopped applying, the fact that we had a very basic prior funding history I felt would create more spurious questions than answers if I ever did actually manage to get any type of grant, and up to that point, among all the wasted hours and crumbled paper, I had zero evidence to support the idea that the Arts Council would ever encourage me to apply for any grants, despite putting all my eggs into the national arts basket. Consequently since I was already highly PC and Mac literate I channeled my energies and expertise into founding Ireland’s only SCEE Licensed game development studio Taintech Creative Studios, I was using primitive 3D modelling software and state of the then art desktop printing QuarkXPress to visual ideas and designs I had already begun making digital work under the moniker clevercelt and made my first version of that ‘digital text art’ website in 1996.
Meeting internationally renowned developers across the world at various game developer events and being invited to Japan in 1999 by the Head of Development of Sony Computer Entertainment based purely on my various game designs, design documents and game bibles for SONY Playstation, that specific trip to Japan changed my own perception of my actual potential talent, of my imaginative story making gifts, the length of the road already traveled at that point seemed long, it changed my understanding of a then emerging and morphing craft.
During those previous years basically 1982 to 1996 I also wrote assorted television and theatre scripts, RTE accepted my ‘Friends’ script for the Access Community Drama Series and cameras were all set to roll in Dundalk until the equity union objected to amateur involvement in professional television, when so many actors were unemployed (or resting) thus the entire series was unceremoniously shelved. After that RTE television rejected outright every single script I sent them, telling me I needed an agent if I wanted them to read my work, yet jokes I’d written popped in here and there unacknowledged, that’s what really put a stop to my unsolicited submissions. So obviously while working professionally in other places, interacting with various professional bodies my career was progressing on certain artistic fronts but failing miserably on the financial or traditional creative industries inroads front and I received zero support from anyone other than my immediate family. That journey becomes an even harder road when there is no sustenance to be found.
The story of Taintech is something I am writing in detail about elsewhere thus I won’t rehash it here, but suffice to say that in March 2001 post Taintech and a 50K research project I conceived and managed, I joined Microsoft’s Xbox and PC games Division. Within Microsoft I had Dublin program management responsibility for the Xbox Launch Title Rallisport Challenge and also the EMEA editions of Microsoft’s then flagship PC entertainment product Flight Simulator. We were nearing RTM and preparing for the October launch of tens of millions of dollars of Flight Simulator product and promotion when the Twin Towers tragedy began to unfold. In the initial speculation about flying into the towers our product was all over American media, it was said the hijackers had trained to fly the planes using the MS FS product, there was a series of calls and meeting hurriedly arranged, again that specific time, Microsoft, media lab, IGDA, Havok, etc are some things I am writing about in more detail but I offer it just as a snapshot of the fact that from the first moment that the news that a plane may have hit the world trade centre went out on the wires our entire team became transfixed to the unfolding human tragedy, then our full floor of staff, soon the entire office, the whole site, then the country, then the world, a horrendous tragedy on a scale never before witnessed by so many, it was, and remains, a societal traumatic event, much like the thirty years of terrorism by the IRA, the UVF, various paramilitaries and the state sponsored terrorism of the British state itself during my own lifetime. And as Yeats observed in his Easter 1916: “Too long a sacrifice, Can make a stone of the heart.”
Living through the 1981 hunger strikes and another economic recession that saw further waves of emigration, twenty years earlier amid weeping thronged streets of black flag protest marches, mourning and anger, injustice, powerlessness and general malaise, it was a world away from warm International Television conferences, brightly lit Networking events, foreign food, exotic sights, the various and numerous invitations to parties which I readily accepted twenty years later when I decided to leave Microsoft and later again after leaving the Midas Media Cluster, a time when I also went back to school to do an MA in Creative Writing and New Media in DMU in the UK in 2006, it was thee only one of it’s kind in the British isles at that time. Again like my return to theatre education in Maynooth, it was part-time and required a couple of trips to the UK but entirely worth the considerable effort and expense as it was truly and highly innovative, it was mostly online, so I could do what most working class artists, writers, and students must do, which is to work while you study. I may therefore consider myself to be more than simply lucky to have received this grant, I may be fortunate, blessed, steeped in luck..
Nothing is as obnoxious as other people’s luck
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Sadly Chris Meade (RIP) a unique talent, also the other male from our initial DMU course cohort, passed away recently, and Chris a few years after finishing his MA, like me, decided to pursue a PhD in Creative Writing. I went to UCD and that is a book in itself, for another day, I finished writing up its 120K words of poetry, code, prose, video, commentary, analysis in 2013. I thereafter got sucked back into doing some consulting and teaching. Which I did up until my dear mother became really ill in September 2019 at a time when I was working 60+ hours a week as a head of department, course and programme leader, lecturer, until the very weekend my dear departed mother went into a care home on Thursday I wrote this article on linkedin late on the following Saturday evening, an article which ultimately resulted in my parting company with my then employer. I wrote it as a funny article but institutions do not have a sense of humor and many insecure people mistakenly interpreted the well worn memes as something I specifically created to be about them, have I mentioned insecurity yet?
Since that time the covid pandemic curtailed a world of plans and ambitions for so may creative people, not just me, as I became unemployed just as the pandemic hit, I got only basic dole payments as opposed to my 70K+ per year. So nearly two years later when the opportunity to apply for this grant arose, I applied throwing my hat in the ring with zero expectation, the financial worth of the grant to me is less than 25% of my pre pandemic income, but as outlined I have been writing on and off for almost forty years, now at this vital juncture it’s again a choice between commercial magnetism and three years of the creative life; lived. I have an Ikigai diagram somewhere about this stuff..
As my previous entry states I lost a second uniquely creative friend when Jeremy Height shuffled off his mortal coil and evaporated into a cloud of interstellar mimetic intelligence merely a month ago now. If not now ? when ? is my question with regard to full time writing… What this grant does for me personally is exactly as promised on the tin, it gives me basic income security to follow my creative vision without constantly worrying about where I will get the money to pay my mortgage.. it enables me to write full time.
For me, and perhaps only me, it also places a responsibility on me to produce work that justifies my selection for this grant, this luck, this gift that I have been given, approximately 40 years after first hoping I might get one, is more than welcome, and I am grateful for it.
peace out… more to follow…
In Memory of Jeremy Hight.
In pre-covid pandemic 2019 I tried to do something that’s ingrained in all my creative endeavors, I tried to do something unique, something new, ‘something outside the norm’. I was given the opportunity to deliver an ELO keynote in UCC in 2019, for me that became about bringing the unique voices of other members of the electronic literature organization, those physically outside the conference itself, unable to attend for whatever reason, into very center stage, to put their (remote) views on offer.
I first spoke a bit about why I was on the stage and how the auditorium audience would get to chose from sixteen authors/ topics to create the second half of that keynote.
The first elit creator chosen by the audience was Jeremy Hight. When I had previously asked Jeremy to send me something he’d like to say in my keynote if chosen, he wrote the following, (Which is unedited from his original reply) the audience responded first by a very short silence, followed by applause:
“Electronic literature honestly saved my life. I as a kid studied philosophy, meteorology , etymology, writing and anything on odd science and nature I could get my little hands on. I was tested in third grade and moved to a school that had Nasa visit us and give us space ice cream (a treasure of treasures even if freeze dried basically) and voyager photos. We were little calculators given mass amounts of data and mostly memorization tasks. My parents got a call when I got a B in fifth grade. It led to boredom and tuning out and eventually burn out in 9th grade to the highest degree. A teacher in honors English even snuck me out to Burger King at lunch to give me a pep talk as she felt bad watching this tall shy kid evaporate and fail.“
“High school saw math hit me head on at 100 mph and the PHD in experimental meteorology software development become impossible. I still loved words and writing and a teacher jumped out like a bat after graduation from a shadowy bush to tell me to keep writing (thank you) and won some teen awards but still felt it was all incomplete. In college I had ideas for poems made of soil types in deserts and by rivers, to be projected on fog, to be novels composed of seeming junk in drawers in old furniture. My first published poem outside of school was a poem made mostly of numbers published in Prakalpana in India. It was comparing the sun to zero on a number line. It was closer but still it was painful how the science and philosophy lied dormant and experimental writing was depositing into familiar tropes and fields.”
“After my MFA in writing at Calarts it seemed for a time that all was to be echoes, to be encased and calcified in forms and functions. It was massively depressing and deflating to be honest. Then a friend called and we made a gps driven narrative. It hit me first that text could skin the world with signal. It then came clear that much more importantly technology and creativity could give place a voice.”
“Since then I have worked in anti-blogs, ar poetics laid out with semantics based on location and elevation, netprovs, poetry edited by earthquakes and now artificial intelligence infused prose and poetry that reacts to how it is read and grows or shrinks and has a bit of sentience.”
“E-lit to me is almost quantum (made a quantum mechanics narrative years back but it was obnoxious to read..lol ) in its range and possible attempts at core defining characteristics or parameters. The field is ever growing and the future is about to open doors never before possible to explore. It also to me is a family even as we are spread out across the globe. I am thankful daily for this.”
“If I had to attempt a specific definition it would be a fog of words but basically writing made possible and permutations of textuality made possible by technology.”
“For me it is home.”
Jeremy and I knew each other for perhaps ten years, we never got to meet in person but we exchanged many many emails, calls, drafts, and works, we both shared a common attitude about writing and art, that it should be different, new, something challenging, something maybe not so serious at times. A contributor to his Nibus Face-sine, shut down by Facebook, eventually the effect of the pandemic took its toll on the mental health of many people, my own included, added to that were parental bereavements on both sides, my own mother and Jeremy’s father. The pay and conditions for writing teachers are not ideal on either side of the Atlantic but as Jeremy and I discussed more than once, it can be particularly challenging when you don’t easily fit into the standard definitions or modes of creation used by universities to employ their friends’ friends. I will miss Jeremy, for more reasons than can be written here. My heart goes out to his partner Lisa and all who had the privilege of knowing Jeremy.
The fundraiser for Jeremy’s funeral is here:
To writers failing to scale their own ironic mountain.
Many applaud ‘go easy on yourself’ writing advice. More embrace the ‘keep it simple’ or ‘read Hemingway and try to do what he has done’ suggestions. Whatever else you decide to do as a writer do not try to be a perfectionist, has ironically proved popular elsewhere.
Don’t try to make a cold mountain out of your creative molehill as that creates more questions than answers for a writer.
What prompted me to write this blog post was a medium story about the topic of avoiding the perceived pitfalls of perfection, a very popular post that popped up on my screen over the weekend, it had received sixteen thousand claps of endorsement and over 150 glowing comments of approval on Medium since being published there in October 2020. I just paid to become a full member of Medium last weekend so I was exploring the platform further than I had previously, despite initially joining it around the time I finished writing up my PhD (2013/14) I only now forked out the annual 50 yoyos fee to get greater access as a medium member.
The particular medium story advocated against perfectionism but also stressed that smart people should beware of their fear of success. It claimed sometimes smart writers write and write and write because they simply can’t bring themselves to stop.
They just love writing.
There also seemed to be a kind of undercurrent running through that story that smart people (or at least the ‘too smart’ friends of the author) aren’t really that smart because they hone, perfect, fundamentally overwork, over complicate, maybe even actually overwrite, and thus the implication is that if that is smart reading you on medium then you as a writer are ultimately doomed to fail to live up to your own obviously ridiculous high standards.
do you know him ?
From the positive responses to that post the writer herself rightly should be applauded, she had obviously and successfully persuaded readers that her ‘cold mountain’ theory is not only acceptable, but it is also completely true, and thus utterly valid as a method or approach for any would be smart writer seeking or reading writing advice on Medium.
Medium has ‘Disqualifying story types’ that it regards as in breach of their internal distribution standards. The first of which is, no stories about medium. Thus while I would have liked to write this piece over on Medium their other rules also clearly state I am prohibited from writing a medium story as a response or rebuttal to another medium story.
Despite in my view it being completely obvious that the very popular post I had just read demanded a response, just as obviously justified by their own rules, just not a response on medium. Fair enough, here we go.
The post began with the Author’s story of ‘a too smart friend’ who couldn’t finish her PhD, however the writer came to her aid by explaining her own ‘cold mountain principle’ which proved with certainty that sometimes smart people need ordinary friends to tell them to stop being that perfectionist, and/or to take their work and give it to literary agents, since that is what had happened with cold mountain author Charles Frazier apparently, when he wouldn’t stop writing his book, a friend just gave it to an agent. And then the book went on to become the blockbuster I was just about to order. Which is all again even more fair enough one must suppose, I hadn’t previously read cold mountain, so me being me, I tabbed over, ordered it there and then, had a faint memory of reading that the Oxford educated author Rachel Cusk had said or written something similar about a friend suggesting and then insisting she publish a book, and then I went back to reading the cold mountain post on Medium.
“You’ve probably heard of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which explains why incompetent people think they’re so smart. It’s where we get that saying, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
A direct quote above from the much applauded Medium post.
I was really thrown by that statement, but continued to try to get through the article, the rest was reasonably well written in a grammatical sense, but that quote stuck, supposedly from Dunning-kruger, it began itching at me, the rest of the article seemed to try to speak to any readers who wished to be told: it is alright to be smart you, but it is better to be smart you as a non perfectionist, your work only has to be okay because as the bottom line (of the article itself) even said, ‘your version of okay is already mind-blowing.’
The just okay medium post is very successful, psychologically subtle in respect of supporting the aspirations and ambitions of would be smart writers who can’t or now won’t do perfection. However in my own personal view the article is so obviously flawed and really unhelpful specifically to any smart writers who are currently stuck in their own version of perfectionist nirvana, specifically those writers without a not so smart friend to take their perfectionist book to an agent.
As I’m sure you know the studies conducted by Dunning and Kruger were only completed and popularized in the early 21st century, specifically when they became available online in the academic journal ‘Advances in Experimental Social Psychology’ in June of 2011. Chapter five – The Dunning–Kruger Effect: On Being Ignorant of One’s Own Ignorance.
My picture of the writer above is one of my early writing heroes Alexander Pope, born in 1688 who died 278 years ago in 1744, he was a master of the heroic couplet, the son of a draper who produced mock epics, satires, and perfectionist pastorals, all in the early eighteenth century.
His great work ‘The Dunicad’ was a satirical assault on the shallowness of his contemporary literary foes, however it is from his poem ‘essay on criticism’ we receive these lines:
“A little learning is a dang’rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.“
It is obvious these 18th century lines are a direct appeal for thinking writers or poets or writers on medium to drink deep of their subject, meaning at very least know what it is you are writing about and what might have nothing to do with two twenty first century social scientists.
As someone who successfully completed my own PhD I was blessed by first doing an MA. The MA as a post graduate research degree had an entire semester of research methods, that is generally how writers within academia are trained, you are exposed to methods that allow you to trace the sources of specific elements of knowledge, to ensure truth, veracity, it prevents you from proffering an opinion that is not factually nor academically valid and getting likes that are an insult to anyone who has actually done a research degree.
So if you are a smart PhD student (like that story author’s friend at the beginning) yes you will be thrown into a deep web of facts and references, within a matrix of knowledge and information that could theoretically see you spend the rest of your reading life lovingly researching, unbinding, weaving and pulling at those threads and connections to create a valid, informed opinion, like an eighteenth century, Scottish tartan weaver, near blind from the light of privilege blinding your every thread.
So yes theoretically you might never get around to finishing the writing up of your thesis. That fairly remote possibility is just one reason of many reasons why at least one intramural supervisor is appointed to each PhD or MA candidate, to offer professional supervision.
Institutionally there is a limit of ten years placed on PhD students. Academia is all too aware that you can fall down a rabbit hole of PhD (or even MA/MSc/MBA) perfection very easily.
Now I can read an author like Malcom Gladwell or similar who successfully combines popular psychology and contemporary storytelling in their non-fiction. I can also sit here overweight watching the utterly mesmerizing consummate ease with which many elite athletes balletically exert themselves physically within a field or on a pitch.
What is clearly visible to me in their exquisite movement is the result of many invisible years of training, dedication, practice, knowledge, perfectionism, failure, strain, injury, recovery, and focus. It is that very hidden from view perfectionism that gives rise to truly exceptional human performances, on track, field, or on the page.
In a similar vain to Pope, the American Vince Lomardi is often famously quoted as saying “show me a good loser and I will show you a loser.” but the second half of his quote is also rarely offered: “But show me a gracious loser and I’ll show you someone who will always be a winner.”
Perfectionists from my limited knowledge of them, and I have the utter privilege of knowing a few, are simply not adverse to that proverbial losing, they are in fact gracious losers, many of whom become those unseen always winners of Vince Lomardi.
To my knowledge perfectionists seek to create something that reflects their true level of practiced ability, they know and understand that they can create something ‘exceptional’ and that is why, the very idea of someone else’s just good enough, is never ever going to be good enough for them or me, even though I haven’t had a clap anywhere thank God.
Because the author brought up their ‘effect’ theory I will include another actual quote from the author David Dunning describing it:
“Their deficits leave them with a double burden—not only does their incomplete and misguided knowledge lead them to make mistakes but those exact same deficits also prevent them from recognizing when they are making mistakes and other people choosing more wisely.”
David Dunning..
Here I pause simply to wonder what might have happened if both Charles Frazier and the author’s PhD friend had each been left alone, to their own individual perfectionist devices and not subjected to interventions ?
It is an absolute truism that talent alone will not see you through. We live in an era of a multitude of incredibly erudite and clever writers brimming with talent, sadly many of whom are still flipping burgers, teaching, or writing marketing copy while yes lesser talents manage to prosper in the market and online. The writing market is still supersaturated, ‘okay’ will simply never cut it, unless you are already independently wealthy, very well connected in some manner or already supremely content in your own okay Dunning-kruger medium sized skin.
It is a fact that most professionals prefer to work with actual talent, they also want to work with actual talent that will work as hard or even harder than they will.
Most professionals I know presume that if you are a fellow professional with talent, then you will also put in the additional required hard work too. Here again despite the high quality bar of required humility and work ethic there is an oversupply in the commercial market, there are thousands of already talented writers who are fully prepared to work harder than anyone else, a truth that is simply a given within certain parts of the writing industries.
Certainly with respect to screenwriting what differentiates those who get the gig and those who don’t is: the smart hard worker is also real, and by real I mean that the hardworking actual talent also lives in the real world, knows those quotes and their ramifications in their entirety, and then some.
“Don’t ever confuse genuinely smart or incredibly talented people with ‘voraciously ambitious‘ people.”
I made my opinion above a pullquote to emphasize it.
Lots of would-be writers make that mistake, they see writers working, working, while they merely work on the assumption that it is their talent that is driving that other writer.
Incredibly ambitious people seem to always succeed, many often do as some level, ambition will certainly bring you to places, both high and low, if it is your main motive force.
Being in the right place at the right time can be all the opportunity an ambitious person requires, luck, brass neck, or simply the powers of persuasion that arise from unbridled ambition may do the rest. But can such success on someone else’s terms really constitute success for an ambitious person?
“Incredibly talented people are secretly terrified of this, too. They think if they sink an enormous amount of time and energy into something and it doesn’t pay off with early retirement or a Nobel Prize, then their life is over, and they’ll never make anything again.”
Above is my second and final quote from the medium article.
We have all encountered smart individuals whose ambition is much larger than their actual ability. Again the above assertion from the story is simply not supported by my own experience of highly talented people, first attempt in learning (fail) is often how rejections or revisions are framed, all writing is rewriting, failure is a paradigm of progress in all software development, you must break things apart to really understand them, that allows you to move forward, incredibly talented people whom I know accept that drafts, rejections, failures, set-backs, are all part of the overall process of learning about and perfecting their chosen craft.
If you are serious about acquiring the skills needed to succeed in your chosen profession then failure must become your friend too, in that second half sense of the Lombardi quote I used above. You need to become an occasional gracious loser to ensure that you are always a winner, specifically with regard to your own writing life, never straying close to the sun ensures you will never be burned.
I would tentatively suggest that, if at all feasible, writers should take a short professional pottery course if they want to understand the difference between overwork and perfection. Perfection like pottery making itself, has several stages, with most of the initial ones involving complete immersion in the art itself.
Ambitious people will often see skills or mastering the craft as merely a vehicle to get them to a destination called success.
It is a truism in my life that I personally learn more from failure than I do from success, (you must have learned a hullava lot by now then I hear any remaining reading cynics among you say) if we succeed we sit back and feel good about that success, perhaps begin to see or dream of further or future success.
When I fail, as I inevitably do, I must conduct reviews, autopsies, if it’s a project we pull apart what happened, what exactly I did, to discover what didn’t work or why it didn’t work.
Screenwriters and Video game writers know this process more than most I feel. Seeing what you consider to be perfection fail, be shot down unceremoniously, has a whole different quality of learning to it, when compared to the advocated ‘just good enough’. The scale of learning is disproportionate since we must learn at level of psyche (or soul). That Dunning-Kruger Pope conflation feels like a supreme learning moment that simply passed the non perfectionist just okay medium author by.
From my perspective the story of Charles Frazier can also be summarized as: Charles wrote four published books one of which became an astounding commercial success. If he had been left alone by his agent knowing friend, how many successful books might he have written without the consequent external commercial pressures brought upon him by the early phenomenal success of that first one. I also wonder just how different that final PhD thesis destination would have been, and how the consequent Doctor might have felt, if all that Dunning-kruger mountain stuff had been left out entirely of her academic journey.
For me it is that creative writers journey not the destination nor output that brings joy for a writer in love with writing. Those who don’t have that writing gra are simply not yet equipped to understand that.
The more sophisticated and complex, the deeper and richer the internal creative landscape for this writer. I welcome readers, they are rare and I completely cherish each one that gives of their time to read what I write, but obviously the writing must come first, otherwise what’s to read ?
It was one of the smartest people this planet has ever seen, Albert Einstein who coined one of my favorites: “Things should be made simple, but never simpler.”
We would never presume to tell a nuclear scientist nor a neurosurgeon that their work, if they think it is okay, is obviously good enough.
Why would anyone consider offering that kind of advice to a writer ?
And why would sixteen thousand readers applaud it ?
Leave that cold mountain for the valleys of perfection, be the best you can be, and then be better, strive for perfection if you can.
Ode to C…
I hope to write a proper review of Annette Vee’s ‘Coding Literacy’ book (below) soon. It is among a raft of books I read again in an attempt to garner the current state of contemporary literary practice but more specifically the teaching of contemporary creative writing practices across the globe in the context of our current technological milieu.
Obviously there are not many Irish Writers of ‘Digital Literature’ nor numerous creative writers who eschew print, the print establishment or it’s feeder network of educational institutions in Ireland.
Ireland is still a relatively small place with 5.1 Million people (in the republic) and merely 7 Million on the Island as a whole (N.I. has 1.9 million). To put that in context there are 55 cities in the world with a larger population than our entire island landmass, so when we consider the impact of Irish writers worldwide it is quite remarkable that we still enjoy such a positive reputation for being poets, novelists, masters of language and spinners of yarns.
Perhaps because of our acknowledged ‘soft power‘ and our legacy of waves of emigration, past associations with missionaries, generation after generation of poor Irish people travelling across the world and bringing aspects of their culture with them, we have spread the stories of our little home. A home that has since become a lot more technologically sophisticated.
In recent decades the Irish Development Authority (IDA) have done a magnificent job marketing our country abroad to attract further technology companies to set up EMEA headquarters here. All major tech companies are here in one guise or another and there is genuine FOMO if you don’t have an Irish Office. Since the british car crash that is Brexit Ireland is now also the sole English speaking gateway to Europe for other western nations.
Two major currents are flowing here right now, high levels of both traditional and digital literacy. The latest wave of innovation to hit the tech sector here is focused on A.I. and various alternative reality, and Web3 technologies, specifically DLT and blockchain.
I wrote a short essay on medium called ‘Why A.I. Write’ about some intersections, specifically with regard to creative writing and A.I. If you do have about twenty minutes read it (or have it read by pressing the listen button there), then please leave a comment either below or over on medium.
I am currently writing a longer work that also examines some of the poetic aspects of Coding C, C++ and C#. As with the post title here I am planning to call that work: Ode to C.
Reduced to Clear………..
Special Agent Alert… No Time to… try ?
“The name is Bond… Basildon Bond”…
Said the UK comic actor Russ Abbot back in the 90s referring to a highly reputable stationary brand, and his character, the said comedic TV secret agent.
With double ohhh Daniel saving the post covid box office with no time to die, conversely there’s never been a better time for Irish Writers to grab some real agents to figure out what to try.
Writers tell stories, especially from our own experience, it’s who we are and what we do.
Creative artists and narcissists are also top of our talking self / tellin’ ya tree while queued along branches we can find actors, musicians, producers, directors, screenwriters, playwrights, with the would be barefaced poets hanging onto the very bottom leaves.
Although as Friel so expertly observed there is usually a private and public personae involved with writing, waiting, and wanting. Show the one you need to show.
Yes we all agree that this is completely appropriate behavior for those working their way upwards within a hits based industry that is known itself as “Show” business.
Our show business has a long established Venn diagram intersection with our tech biz or technology industry, an intersection growing larger each year. Thus along with ‘traditional’ show business professionals listed above, excellent contemporary VFX supervisors, sound designers, game developers, narrative designers, coders, digital producers, VR, XR, platform executives and digital rights holders are among those offering their show n tell, interviews, or those of us partaking in ubiquitous zoom seminars or group meetings.
While compelled by life to multitask I virtually attended the aforementioned online event this morning, organized by The Writers Guild of Ireland and the BAI, in the sound company of that most rarely spotted species: Professional Working Agents.
The key takeaway from listening to all three professional agents, and it is the core of any success in any industry really, is that relationship building is paramount.
Among many years ago I supervised an MBA thesis on remote teamwork and newly developed tools being used to facilitate it. Anyone like me who has worked in theatre or computer games development, let alone TV development or education, understands the true value of cohesive and coherent teams and the truism that relationships are at the core of all truly successful collaborations. Having key relationships are…… key, yes that’s true.
Thus as espoused today, for many writers their first key relationship is with their agent.
Kelly, Giles, and Peter, offered clear insights into the agent – writer relationship today, and attendance was certainly worthwhile for their good humored and professional candor, their sharing of proven experience and opinion. I underlined and offered that hypertext link in my text above to contemporary VFX supervisors, as it offers a link to an excellent article on the real life experiences of Chris MacLean & Mike Enriquez both VFX supervisors, while making their amazeballs AppleTV series ‘Foundation’.
The main overlap in both these professional success narratives is the importance of genuine professional connection.
What we’ve already known in Ireland for years: it is whom you know not what you know (i.e. once you have also attained the requisite levels of professionalism and skills) that gets you in the room. You almost must have already earned (or paid for) the right to be there, to be there. (Is there an echo – have you left your speakers on while you’re trying to use your mic ?)
Writers must also have earned the trust of those who guided you to, or allowed/invited you into, that room, that is if you are to have an actual career in writing or show business. The best way to earn trust is not only be that good person, a hardworking nice person, but the one that delivers. Being able to type and use a computer may also help too.
Thus obviously it can be very risky using a term like ‘digital writer or artist’ to introduce yourself.
Part of some modern difficulties in early dealings with certain contemporary producers (apart from their refusal to show me their bank balances) is most know sort of what they don’t want, although every single one does want the next big thing. That dilemma for the writer can be solved with the spec script, for all the reasons insiders already know. Although among my highly classified experimental WIP at present is a very traditional screen adaptation of a biography, could just be easier to mash together a whole new format of screenplay and label it novelty, who apart from those french loopo writers seriously considers restraints are really creatives releases ?
In terms of any such writers’ novelty, the new, or innovation, a slack novel is no longer a surprise, I’ve historically created various stories in Basic, Excel, Tiddlywiki, Twine, Flash, C, Javascript, Bulletin Boards, various social media platforms, tools, watched the 1 million penguins from the inside out while doing a formal MA in Creative Writing & New Media, prior to earning my PhD in Creative Writing & Digital Literature, creating highly innovative pathfinding works that no one ever sees anymore unless there’s some far off obscure exhibition. New technology won’t pay a writer’s bills unless you are being paid to teach those experimental aspects of our ever evolving craft, a craft seemingly broadening and deepening into the future as more and more people convince themselves they can be brilliant writers just by doing a six week course ?
Alvin Toffler wouldn’t make a good agent, as most new technological writing formats or literary forms are to the current mainstream publishing industry as haute couture is to high street (second hand) mass market clothes shops. While there may always be some academic venues and literary aficionados supporting a small amount of cutting or bleeding edge work, few can make a living from creating it. The book industry is an international industry like the meat industry.
That second mouse’s cheese is not all the sweeter were a writer to assume they could learn from the technological mistakes of others, but erm nope, simply not true, but you’ll have to buy my next book to find out exactly why and what this sentence really means. Now.. enough with the humor already, seriously….
The core of any work is the work itself, and the work itself must always be it’s own reward.
If people ask you to do work ,and you trust them, enough to build a relationship, then there is potentially some kind of more there beyond the work, but it begins and ends with the work in the first and every instance.
For serious fully committed writers, before agents, producers, publishers, deals, or any kind of show or business the work comes first. For this writer the first key relationship is with the work. All other relationships are business and thus are negotiable.
The modern WGI, which was once upon a time ‘The Irish Screenwriters and Playwrights Guild’ when I first joined many many years ago, will be making today’s meeting available to members in due course, I hope you all find the time to have a look and listen to the three agents from the UK.
All writers Are readers – publishing is not writing.
Welcome again to my little wholly independent corner of the writing, and therefore reading, world.
On this really sunny day here in Ireland, I re-read this illuminating interview with the amazing Margaret Randall and was compelled to share it with friends, readers, fellow writers, website visitors and (later) students.
In my view, the print books business here in Ireland often short-changes many of it’s customers or ‘real life readers‘ by really pushing and promoting that whole ’emerging’ and ‘up and coming’ writers paradigm, it feels like it may often be more about securing and promoting contracted (owned) talent than actually curating careers or offering genuine diversity to a reading public.
Current commercial strategies also sell these fixed agendas within an industry of cultural gatekeepers to the aspirants facing the very barriers to entry that industry erected. As I write here often, (or did for 20 years before the site got spammed out of existence) the book publishing and distribution industry is simply not ‘the writing life’ it is only (with a few rare and valuable exceptions) about commerce, money, and profit.
I don’t want to offer spoilers here to Margaret’s interview so the links here should be enough for now, suffice to say I will be including some of Margaret’s work in my up and coming playshop sessions and I will be asking participants to read this interview as part of our discussions around memoir and technology, and the contemporary writer’s online life.
Stuffafizing should be up and running soon.. thanks to those who have already signed up.