Spontaneity Is Overrated

Happy Independence Day to our American readers!

I sometimes involuntarily overhear snippets of podcasts by Ben Shapiro, a lawyer, columnist, and author on the political right. He impresses me as relatively rational and less inclined to sarcasm and name-calling than many partisan podcasters. Don't worry, this isn't a political post; my emphasis will be linguistic and philosophical. I was dismayed by one of his recent comments because it seems like a symptom of a much larger problem. After the Democratic presidential hopefuls' debates, I was surprised to hear Shapiro, a staunch champion of classical and Enlightenment values, flippantly dismiss a particular candidate's "food fight" zinger as blatantly "rehearsed."

So a remark carefully prepared in advance is somehow suspect and prima facie inferior to one blurted out on the spur of the moment? An impulsive comment is automatically assumed to be a more reliable indication of the speaker's true feelings or beliefs than one that she thought over and shaped to express her opinions in a coherent, articulate style? I'm reminded, tangentially, of a past presidential candidate who was challenged on the subject of criminal justice and asked what punishment he'd want for someone who'd raped his wife. The aspiring candidate fell out of public favor partly because he gave a rational, ethical response to that hypothetical scenario instead of an emotional one.

This faith in the value of spontaneity is relatively modern and would have sounded absurd before the Romantic era. C. S. Lewis addresses the subject in a chapter of his book A PREFACE TO PARADISE LOST, where he defends Milton's style and tackles the charge of "stock responses" in traditional poetry. Lewis frames the issue so well that I'll quote him at length rather than trying to paraphrase:

"By a Stock Response Dr. I. A. Richards [a distinguished literary critic contemporary with Lewis] means a deliberately organized attitude which is substituted for ‘the direct free play of experience.’ In my opinion such deliberate organization is one of the first necessities of human life, and one of the main functions of art is to assist it. All that we describe as constancy in love or friendship, as loyalty in political life, or, in general, as perseverance—all solid virtue and stable pleasure—depends on organizing chosen attitudes and maintaining them against the eternal flux (or ‘direct free play’) of mere immediate experience…."

He observes that our culture has suffered "a loss of the old conviction (once shared by Hindoo, Platonist, Stoic, Christian, and ‘humanist’ alike) that simple ‘experience,’ so far from being something venerable, is in itself mere raw material, to be mastered, shaped, and worked up by the will…."

The modern tendency to mistake any well-crafted statement of opinion or emotion for insincerity, Lewis attributes to "confusion (arising from the fact that both are voluntary) between the organization of a response and the pretence of a response."

The old saying "in vino veritas" (truth in wine) expresses the same kind of attitude. It's taken for granted that the character, manners, and opinions a person displays when alcohol has destroyed his inhibitions are more authentic signs of his "real" self than the reflective, carefully considered speech and behavior of his sober periods. Why do we tend to assume that an individual's lower nature shows what he's "really like" and his higher nature doesn't?

The prioritizing of emotion and spontaneity over reason probably springs from the philosophical shift generated by the Romantic movement in the early 19th century. I suspect the current prevalence of the idea that reduced inhibitions reveal a person's "real" self comes (at least in part) from the popular influence of Freud's theories of the unconscious and the id.

This issue, by the way, contributes to my preference for e-mail over oral conversations—whether by phone or face-to-face—on serious subjects. When I talk off the top of my head, half the things I say come out awkwardly phrased and easily misunderstood, or I impulsively blurt out remarks I regret later (sometimes only seconds later). With e-mail or an old-fashioned letter, I can think over what I want to say and deliberately craft sentences to express it accurately and clearly. This kind of forethought doesn't mean my remarks are insincere, but just the opposite.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

How Do You Know If You've Written A Classic Part 3 - Podcast Interview With Jacqueline Lichtenberg

How Do You Know If You've Written A Classic

Part 3

Podcast Interview With Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts in "How do you know if you've written a classic?" series are:

Part 1 in this Series is about writing a "classic" illustrating the long time fan discovering new entries in a series.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-do-you-know-if-youve-written.html

Part 2, Spock's Katra, is a long answer to a request for material for an online blog.  My answer focused on Theodore Bikel and his roles in Star Trek. 

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/10/how-do-you-know-if-youve-written.html

And here is Part 3, answers to very insightful interview questions from a Podcast host.  The verbal podcast interview is very different, but here are answers done with some time to think of how to explain the invisible connections between Star Trek, my deep study of the fan dynamics of the TV Series, and my own original universe Sime~Gen novels.

It's all about the connections.

Here is the initial query on whether I'd do the podcast.

---------quote----------

Hi Jacqueline,

My name is Sue, and I'm one of the hosts of Women at Warp, on the Roddenberry Network.  We're a podcast and associated blog that focused on the women of Star Trek - on screen, behind the scenes, and in fandom.

I'm writing because Women at Warp has an ongoing series where we talk about women in Star Trek fandom.  So far, we've interviewed Bjo and John Trimble about the Save Star Trek campaign, spoken to Devra Langsam and Lynn Koehler about organizing the first conventions (and a little bit about Spockanalia, of course), and chatted with a grad student studying the Trek zines of the 60s and 70s, plus B.A. Lopez, a fanfic writer from the early days of ASC.

I'm wondering if you might be interested in joining us to talk about your experiences in Star Trek fandom?  I would love to talk about the Welcommittee, the Kraith series, Star Trek Lives, and anything else you'd like to share.

Live Long and Prosper,
Sue Kisenwether

Women at Warp:  A Roddenberry Star Trek Podcast
womenatwarp.com | podcasts.roddenberry.com
Twitter/Instagram/Facebook:  @womenatwarp

-----end quote----

Sunday, May 5 - 10:00 AM Arizona Time

Sue posted a set of questions to me via Google Docs.  I copied them into an email and answered as follows.

______________________________


QUESTION: Before you became to so fully immersed in the fandom, what was the think that drew you to Star Trek?

The fact is that I've been FULLY IMMERSED in fandom since 1950, long-long before GR even thought of Star Trek.

I wrote a letter to a science fiction magazine, WORLDS OF IF, edited by Fred Pohl.  He published the letter, and in those days addresses could be published without fear. So members of the N3F Welcommittee wrote me (lots of letters), and I joined N3F and took my first writing lessons from a professional writer, Alma Hill. I participated in the fiction Round Robin (an early form of RPG, on paper, by snailmail), and I grew up in Fandom.

So the premise of your question is a bit off target.

What drew me to Star Trek (before ever seeing an episode) was Bjo Trimble's letter writing campaign (the first one).  Here I am with Bjo Trimble at a recent con:

I knew her, and her judgement in science fiction, many many, years before Star Trek, and trusted her judgement. I was living in Israel at the time, planning to move to New Jersey, so I wrote an air mail letter to Paramount (in fact several), to keep it on the air until I could get back.  At that time, there was no way to see old shows.

I LOVE NETFLIX! But I wish Netflix would archive, and never delete anything.


QUESTION: In addition to being a science-fiction fan, you’re a professional author.  For our listeners who may not know, can you tell us about your work and the Sime~Gen Universe?

Again there's an issue with the premise of the question.  The N3F was founded by the same person who founded SFWA, damon knight (always writen with small initial letters).

I'm not a pro writer IN ADDITION TO being a fan.  There is in fact no difference, at least there wasn't a difference when I was a beginner.

Fred Pohl was a member of N3F, bought my first professional sale which is a Sime~Gen short story, OPERATION HIGH TIME, now posted online for free reading.  At that time, the sale qualified me for SFWA (qualifications are higher today, and I'm a Life Member).  Later, Fred Pohl became editor at Bantam Books, and bought Star Trek Lives! which is a book about WHY Star Trek Fans love Star Trek, and who those fans are.  The identity profiles we put into the book were garnered from questionnaires circulated (by snail mail), and reveal the high powered, highly educated, creative, and fiercely goal directed personalities of Star Trek fans.

Those profiles are about the same as the average science fiction fan -- except Star Trek fans came from a group who THOUGHT they hated science fiction.  They were wrong.  My Sime~Gen novel (my first novel) HOUSE OF ZEOR (now in e-book, audio-book, and new paper editions), was specifically structured to captivate Spock fans.  I sold the expensive hardcover edition to Spock fans on a money-back guarantee and never had one returned.  Perhaps that proves I understand why fans loved STAR TREK.

Fiction Writing


QUESTION:  You began writing the Sime~Gen books in the late 60s, around the same time that you started writing Star Trek Fan Fiction.  By my count, you’ve had works appear in over 25 different fanzines.  Knowing that authors were not paid, what drew you to Trek fan fiction when you were already a published SF author? 


The premise of this question is correct!  I sold my first story before embarking on the Kraith series, and I do believe it's way over 25 'zines that pieces of Kraith have appeared in.  I also contributed letters of comment to every zine I ran across, and it was through such 'zines that I distributed the questionnaires that became STAR TREK LIVES!

I designed the Kraith series as homework assignments for the writing course I was taking at the time (Famous Writer's School, it was called). Since I had to do homework anyway, why should I waste the time and effort on things nobody would ever read but some instructor who knew nothing about the very different literary requirements of the science fiction field.  (in fact they looked down on the genre!)

Sime~Gen actually dates from the mid-1950's, though it was first written down in the early 1960's.  The first REAL story, with a beginning/middle/end structure and a theme was OPERATION HIGH TIME which I wrote as the homework assignment for the 4th lesson in the course.  The correspondence school's pitch was that students would SELL stories by their 4th assignment.  They were sued and lost and went out of business as a jury decided the pitch wasn't true.  But the thing is -- it was true for those who had spent their lives preparing for one thing only - to be a professional writer.


QUESTION: You’re well-known for the Kraith Universe of Trek stories - How would you describe these stories for our listeners who may not be familiar?

I saw Star Trek as the first real science fiction on television.  But it was missing so much of the richness that characterized science fiction.  The premise had so many holes in it, and lacked so much in character and relationship that makes the science fiction genre Great Literature.  Being a TV Series (forced into the old anthology format by distribution/marketing requirements), Star Trek couldn't explore Relationships on the air, and tell ongoing stories with Character Arc - characters becoming different people as they learned from the beating they took during their adventures.

Novel series can do that.  My best example at that time was Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover Series (which has since become much longer, and more popular).  Marion Zimmer Bradley is credited with THE FIRST science fiction story with a character driven plot.  It was published in about 1955, about the time Zena Henderson's PEOPLE stories hit the magazines.  The genre CHANGED because of these women writers.  Yes Andre Norton was a prominent woman who wrote science fiction -- but under a male name.

There's a lot to say about the history of the field, but Bradley's contribution was seminal.  And it encompassed precisely what was missing in aired STAR TREK.  So to generate Kraith, I took aired Trek and added Darkover, spun it through my own imagination, and came out with Kraith.

I was pretty sure I understood why Trek had caught on so widely, and I wrote Kraith to find out if I was correct.  Kraith, a writing homework assignment sequence, was actually an experiment to test the market for Sime~Gen.  My aim was to write novels that would lay out the framework for a TV Series -- or several TV Series.

TV is written by teams of hired writers -- it is collaborative creativity, a very different sort of activity than novel writing.

I constructed Kraith to have that collaborative, open framework that would induce other writers to write in my universe, just as fans had begun writing fiction in Gene Roddenberry's universe.  That invitational quality to engross and immerse other creative participants is what STAR TREK LIVES! names The Tailored Effect.

I was delighted when others spontaneously began contributing to Kraith, and accepting my editorial direction to make the stories they wrote fit onto a coherent master plan.  We had 50 creative writers, artists, poets, musicians involved in creating Kraith.  Many different people originated ideas we incorporated into a smooth narrative.  At least two Alternate Universes were spun off of Kraith that I know of (and I've heard of others).

This indicated to me that I understood what energized Star Trek fans to create their own stories and characters.

I used what I learned experimenting with Kraith to structure Sime~Gen to allow for other writers to create their own Sime~Gen stories.

Fans of Sime~Gen began asking questions and writing stories in Sime~Gen, which generated 5 fanzines full of fiction, non-fiction, artwork, poetry, music, and handicrafts (and convention costumes!).

Right at the beginning of this, Jean Lorrah wrote a review of HOUSE OF ZEOR which was published in a fanzine. I wrote to her, and very soon sent her a draft of UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER which she sent back dripping red ink editorial comments (what is called, today, beta reading).

Jean Lorrah, author of the Night of the Twin Moons fanzines (concurrent and of the same stature as Kraith), jumped in and began writing about her OWN characters in Sime~Gen, the HOUSE OF KEON folks.  Keon is designed as the literary foil of Zeor, the people I write about.  We met at a Star Trek convention, and she gave me the outline for a story she wanted to write, and I said do a chapter-and-outline submission package and we'd send it to Doubleday (my hardcover publisher at the time).

She did that, and we sold FIRST CHANNEL

as the third Sime~Gen novel to be published.  We suspect we were the first female-female collaborating team in Science Fiction professional publishing.

Jean Lorrah may have been the first English Professor to get tenure on the basis of a science fiction novel publication -- and a collaboration, to boot.  The byline reads by Jean Lorrah and Jacqueline Lichtenberg. We established a convention that the first-drafter of a novel gets top billing, so the Series alternates our bylines.  Now we've been joined by one of our best fanfic writers, Mary Lou Mendum (a Ph.D. in plant genetics), So 3 women collaborators get the triple byline on her novels as we all work on them.

Mary Lou is also a Trek fan, and one of the most prolific Sime~Gen fanfic writers. Her second professional Sime~Gen novel is now in production at Wildside Press.

A 4th professional has joined the Sime~Gen Group - he's a video game producer and is working on the Sime~Gen space age story, bringing up the Star Trek/Kraith space-adventure-with-aliens elements in Sime~Gen.  He's aiming at graphic novels, board games, video games, and many other platforms.  Jean and I incorporated Sime~Gen and the corporation is under contract to Loreful LLC giving them 150 years of our thousand year future history (Heinlein style) to play with First Contact stories.  He gets to invent the aliens.


QUESTION:  Your website says that these works were influenced by Marion Zimmer Bradley - can you tell us more about that?

I think I jumped the gun on that question.  See above.

QUESTION:  Eventually, other writers started contributing to the Kraith Universe.  Were you actively managing these stories?  Or was there fanfiction about fanfiction?  

Both, I suspect and I tried to cover that above.  I was learning to do what Gene Roddenberry was doing as he managed all those writers, directors, and actors.  What GR did was different from what other TV Series Producers had done -- he included science fiction novel writers who had never sold a script in his first season writers.  Then he bought David Gerrold's script (Trouble with Tribbles) before David (who is still a good friend on Facebook) had sold a book.  Subsequently David had many best seller science fiction novels to his credit (good ones!), and kept on working in visual media, too.  GR connected different artistic media outlets and released enormous creativity into the world by doing that.
A volume of the 6 volume Kraith Collected, collected from all the scattered 'zines.
http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/kraith/


Star Trek Lives!

QUESTION:  In 1970-1, you had a project called the Strekfan Roster Questionnaire, with one questionnaire for zine publishers and another for general fans.  Can you tell us about the genesis and goals of this project?


I was raised in the news business.  I knew a news story when I saw one.  Up until Star Trek, science fiction fans wrote and published fanzines by the hundreds (I know because I got most of them!), but except for the N3F Round Robin fiction efforts (proto-RPG and more of an APA than a 'zine), science fiction fanzines were NON-FICTION.  The NEWS STORY was fanzines with fiction, original fiction using non-original characters interacting with original characters).

That this shift to amateur publication of fiction (the first since maybe the mid-1800's women's Gothics), and fiction based on a TV show, was a huge news story.  But  none of the newspapers or magazines I saw had any mention of this development.

So I set out to write a news article, maybe for the New York Times or the local county newspaper -- just a news article I could submit, as I wasn't employed by them at that time.

To do that article, I needed the classic structural elements, "who-what-where-when-how many" --  I didn't know!  So I started asking fanzine publishers (by snail mail)  about their readership, and found out there were too many fanzine publishers to ask one by one and using different wordings.  I needed to ask everyone the same questions the same way, like a survey.

So I created the Roster Questionnaire trying to find out the scope of the 'zine readership.

Well, I still needed to know "who" these people were.  So I did another Questionnaire for the readers, got that published in fanzines, got a lot returned very articulately filled out.

It was hard to get a handle on the size of the groups of readers and publishers, writers, editors, teams of teams of people, because the number of 'zines and their readerships were growing and growing.  I realized this couldn't be an article -- it was a book.  And not a small one.

A bit deeper into the concept of a book, after I got Gene Roddenberry to enthusiastically say he'd write a forward if we could sell the book, I realized I couldn't do it by myself.  So I took on Sondra Marshak and she recruited Joan Winston.  Just like Trek itself, a book about fans had to be a collaborative effort between fans of different points of view.

Interviews with the cast and crew were Sondra's idea.  She organized and executed most of that.  But I did a lot of it, too.  We recorded conversational interviews, then I transcribed them (back in the day, to get typescript, you had to listen-type.)

Joan Winston added eye-witness accounts of the New York Conventions as she was on the famous Committee, and ran publicity for them.

Joan sold STAR TREK LIVES! to Fred Pohl at Bantam Books while she was a Guest at a Star Trek con in Canada.  Pohl had turned down STL! on first submission because they had a contract with James Blish who got that contract via SFWA connections when he became ill.  Because of illness, though, Blish missed a deadline.

Publishing works like a freight train.  Books ride a flatcar pulled along a track. Eventually, the produced book is slotted into a display at a book store.  A publisher must fill their slots at the bookstores because the slots are automatically emptied every few weeks.  If the publisher doesn't put a manuscript on the passing flatcar, headed for their wall-slot, the publisher loses that slot to another publisher, and all the sales that go with it.  Publishing was and still is a slender margin, competitive business.  Publishers pay Amazon extra to feature a book, just as they used to pay chain bookstores to put a book in the window, or in an aisle dump.

Book contract deadlines are set to bring the book to the slot with the inevitability of a juggernaut.  Publicity is cooked up, contracted, paid for, to hit at a certain date. Publishers must fill their slots and editors feel that pressure.

Pohl needed to fill a Star Trek Book Slot at the big chain bookstores that would suddenly go empty because a manuscript deadline was not going to be met.

Hearing about Blish's delay, Joanie pointed out to Fred at the meet-n-greet cocktail party that a complete STAR TREK book was ready to go into production in time to fill that slot.  He remembered liking the book manuscript, had some editorial changes and additions he wanted, but figured we could do it.  Remember, Pohl had bought my first sale years prior.    We were not unknown writers to him.

We signed the contract and worked ourselves to melt-down to get all the changes done.

Remember every single time some pages were deleted or edited, chapters moved around, and myriad references deleted or added material had to be changed, the ENTIRE BOOK had to be retyped by hand, without typos.  The retyping was my job, and I had to rephrase many sentences on the fly.

In the end, we couldn't do it so just whole chapters got retyped, which messed up the manuscript page numbers, putting an added burden on the copyeditor and typesetter.  Today, nobody has that problem any more.

There was no electronic means to email a copy to my collaborators.  I was in New York, Sondra in Louisiana, and Joanie in Manhattan.

We got it done and made the deadline, and paid the huge phone bills.  It went 8 printings!

My goal with the project that became STL! was to inform the world why STAR TREK was important in human history, an event as important as the Agricultural Revolution.

Sondra took that comparison as hyperbole.  It's not, and that has, I think, been illustrated amply by now.

It was Trek fans playing a computer game who hooked computers together in different cities starting the internet.  The Web came from another country, with the invention of the "Browser" able to read pages posted on the internet if they had code in common.

Much of what NASA has accomplished after the first orbital mission, was done (and funded by) people who caught the vision via Star Trek.  Many of the changes because of social networking (web 2.0) were instigated by Trek viewers, if not actual fans.  And paper fanzines moved to the web.

Socially, women's place in world history has shifted into the path Trek illustrated was possible.

Trek didn't originate any of this change.  A TV show doesn't initiate change.  A TV show - especially fiction - just brings everyone yearning for a particular change onto the same page.

Trek gave us a "common language" to discuss these issues, and Characters to speak for us.

Trek was (and is) Art.  Most TV at that time was not Art.  Trek stood out in high relief, clearly different from all other shows, while disguised as just another TV show.  People thought science fiction was for kids, or just adolescent males.  Trek proved them incorrect.

QUESTION:  In 1975, along with Sondra Marshak and Joan Winston, you published Star Trek Lives!  How did that come about?

Ooops, I answered that above.

QUESTION:  STL! explored why Star Trek affected and stuck with so many fans.  Why do you think that is, even today?

I haven't watched the newest CBS streaming only Trek: Discovery.  Streaming is another outgrowth of the moment I understood ToS was not just another lackluster attempt at TV science fiction, and I have been an early adopter.  I now prefer to binge-watch whole seasons in a row, rather than wait a week between episodes.

We live in a new world where you don't have to drop everything and rush to the TV screen before they yank away what you desperately want to savor and enjoy.

But there is a problem I have with some of the films that might apply to the new series.

Fred Pohl and John Campbell, and Heinlein and Asimov etc had a litmus test for placing a story in the science fiction genre.

I think it applies to all genres, and even Series.

If you can take the science out of a story and still have a story, it wasn't science fiction.

Likewise, if you can take the Trek out of a story and still have a story, it wasn't Star Trek.

Many of the current entries into the Trek genre are just mundane stories that could happen to any characters anywhere.  And so, at heart, they lack the driving theme, the seminal statement of the nature of humanity and the nature of reality and the relationship between them, which is the core essence of science fiction.  Roddenberry insisted on including the Spock character because that was the only way to make the series Science Fiction, not "Wagon Train To The Stars."

But I do think the newer efforts to extend the Trek franchise are valid, exciting, and inspiring Art in and of themselves.  Mostly, they are good science fiction, too.  But I think many of the stories would be better stories in and of themselves were they set in Universes of their own, designed to contain and showcase those stories.

I think what fans love about Star Trek is that it is science fiction, but the label "science fiction" has become associated in their minds (largely through High School literature courses) with dull-and-boring.  Adding "adventure" just makes the genre more boring to some girls if the "action" gets in the way of the "story."  It's that way for guys, too, though they don't necessarily know it until later in life.

Debate has raged for decades trying to define what is or is not science fiction.  I can't settle that here, but I think Roddenberry's sense that, no matter what, Spock had to be on the bridge, shows he understood what science fiction genre actually is.

One definition says that science fiction is about the impact of science/technology on human personality/character/psychology/society/culture.  That's what GR added with Spock -- a visual commentary on how humanity changes (as he always said, Becomes Wise) under the impact of new discoveries.

Science fiction happens at the collision zone between hard and soft science.

Science fiction is scientists at play.

I'm a Chemist, Jean Lorrah is an English Professor, and Mary Lou Mendum is a plant geneticist, Aharon Cagle (Loreful LLC videogames) is a high level marketer -- we write science fiction.

We are seeing the new generation gap created by cell phones and iPhone connectivity, AI, and Internet of Things (IoT).  How current 15 year olds differ from current 65 year olds illustrates the subject matter of science fiction, the signature issue that sets that one genre apart from all others.


Jacqueline Lichtenberg
https://www.amazon.com/author/jacquelinelichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/
http://twitter.com/jlichtenberg

Info Buzz

Information is addictive, even when it is not particularly useful. Owners of brains seek it (information) as voraciously as a predator seeking prey.

This is good to know for writers. The review-writing reader is to the writer what the jury is to the jury consultant.

This week, psychologist and legal blogger for Holland & Hart LLP's The Persuasive Litigator blog, Dr. Ken Broda-Bahm explains how to feed a juror's passion for information, sustain their interest with the anticipation of more... and also, how to cope with the problem of hindsight.

 https://www.persuasivelitigator.com/2019/06/tap-into-your-jurors-reward-system.html#page=1

or
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=c5ec6365-5f00-4d51-83bf-83b1820817f7&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+General+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2019-06-28&utm_term=

and also
https://www.persuasivelitigator.com/2019/06/dont-just-warn-about-hindsight.html

Some of the English-reading world's most popular authors sprinkle their yarns with glittering gobs of uncommon knowledge, and it is--at least for some--equally fascinating whether it is open kimono on the secret world of an American military analyst, or a small town Southern lawyer, or behind the scenes in big business, or the life of an Israeli assassin who restores Catholic works of art between wet work jobs..

Perhaps the research into "brain treats" that The Persuasive Litigator discusses is also applicable to crafting a page turner, and what he has to say about hindsight might be useful to an author who aims to appeal to the Monday morning quarterback in the reader who has read the book, devoured the information, and is about to review.. or not.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/  http://www.rowenacherry.com

Work-Life Balance for Writers

Speaking of burnout (last week), coincidentally the current issue of RWR, the magazine of the Romance Writers of America, contains an article by multicultural romance author LaQuette, rebutting the assumption that "work and productivity is the only measure of success." It's titled "Passion, Productivity and Technology: Work-Life Balance." Since RWR articles can't be accessed by the general public, I'll list her points:

"Define your goals."

"Control your work; don't let it control you."

"Be honest" (with yourself about how much work you can realistically accomplish in a given time span).

"Maintain equilibrium in a healthy way" (by organizing your work schedule to leave time and energy for other things).

"Working lunches should not be a thing."

"Limit your access to work and work's access to you." (Self-explanatory in today's frenetic atmosphere of instant connection. Don't feel obligated to keep your phone on all the time or answer every e-mail the moment it arrives. Happily, that's a problem I don't have, because I don't own a smart phone. Just a dumb, basic flip phone, which I turn on only to make—rare—calls out.)

"Make time for the non-writing things you enjoy."

"Find a way to be social" (applies to introverts, too).

"Recognize and admit your issues; know it's okay to ask for help."

"Personal interests are important, too."

"Recognize the importance of goofing off."

As you may guess from these taglines, the author continually emphasizes, in a variety of terms, the importance of setting aside opportunities for relaxation, personal time, and fun. She summarizes, "All work and no play doesn't make LaQuette a dull girl; it makes her a snappy, disgruntled ogre...." I especially like the recommendation to goof off. I can do that!

That's goofing off in the context of a routine that also allows for a balance of work and other activities directed toward one's own personal goals, of course. However: "Let no one make you feel bad about taking your downtime seriously." The combination of "seriously" and "downtime" in the same sentence invites us to think hard about the apparent paradox.

I'm not sure I fully agree with LaQuette's broad statement, "Hard work to the point of mental, emotional, and physical collapse is what we're encouraged to do." It seems to me that our culture is beginning to repudiate that destructive mind-set. Otherwise, why would we see so many articles about work-life balance such as this one?

On a different topic, try to pick up a copy of the July issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC. In honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the first moon landing, the cover story focuses on space travel, past, present, and future, with lavish illustrations.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Plot-Character-Worldbuilding Integration Part 12 - The Character Driven Plot

Theme-Plot-Character-Worldbuilding Integration

Part 12

The Character Driven Plot

Previous parts in this advanced series are indexed at:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/12/index-to-theme-plot-character.html

From Twitter -

J. H. Bogran (who did a Guest Post for us here: https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/06/settings-part-4-detail-guest-post-by-j.html ),  forwarded a tweet from "thebigthrill.org" in April 2019.


J. H. Bogran writes:
------quote--------
Interesting topic this week at the Roundtable “Does ‘character-driven’ mean the plot should be simpler or more complex?” (link: http://www.thebigthrill.org/2019/04/april-22-28-does-character-driven-mean-the-plot-should-be-simpler-or-more-complex/) thebigthrill.org/2019/04/april-… via
@thrillerwriters

@thrillereditor
 #writingcommunity #litchat #scifichat #thrillers #amwriting

--------end quote-------

Forwarded message the comment was about:

-------quote------

April 22 – 28: “Does ‘character-driven’ mean the plot should be simpler or more complex?”
With regard to novels,  August Norman, T R Kenneth, Cathy Ace, Caitlin Starling, Jerry Kennealy, Lisa Towles, Gary Haynes, Rachel Caine, Elisabeth Elo, Nicole Bross, Lynn Cahoon and Laurie Stevens.  we use terms like "character-driven" does that mean the plot should be simpler or more complex? This week we're joined by ITW Members

thebigthrill.org

-----------end quote----------

My answer, in tweet-format, was:

--------quote---------
JLichtenberg@JLichtenberg
1 min ago
#scifichat "Character driven" = plot's energy comes FROM Character's internal conflict. Writer shows via THEME how our angst creates our vicissitudes, while strengthening of character allows us to overcome them. "Driven" means Character Arc is Story.
-------end quote------


Compare to their take on the subject, here:

 http://www.thebigthrill.org/2019/04/april-22-28-does-character-driven-mean-the-plot-should-be-simpler-or-more-complex/


As we've discussed at length in these Tuesday posts, when you have your THEME clearly in mind as you write (or most usually rewrite), and use each scene, each Character, each line of dialogue, etc., choose details of environment, all to express that single theme clearly, then both the internal-conflict-plot-resolution AND the external conflict-plot-resolution sequences are crystal clear to the reader, and though complex seem simple.

On rewrite, you use THEME to decide what to keep and what to delete.  It really is that simple to write a simple plot -- it will be complex, but only other writers or editors will notice that.  Readers read it as simple.

It's the same in every art form.  Sounding spontaneous takes careful preparation.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Teachers Taken To The Woodshed

One would have preferred a highbrow homage to "Sartor Resartus", but the go-to translation app does not check out, so one settles for alliteration.

Two recent legal cases result in a righteous smack down for educational establishments that defended some form of stealing.  In one case, the stealing was copyright infringement. In another, it was shoplifting.

From the early Oughts, copyright advocates have compared shoplifting and copyright infringement with varying degrees of success. One of the best examples was penned on June 18th, 2012 by David Lowery.

Revisit the 19th and 20th paragraphs beginning

"What the corporate backed Free Culture movement is asking us to do is analogous to changing our morality and principles to allow the equivalent of looting .... " 

And  also

"But it's worse than that. It turns out that Verizon, AT&T, Charter etc etc are charging a toll to get into this neighborhood to get the free stuff. Further...."

https://thetrichordist.com/2012/06/18/letter-to-emily-white-at-npr-all-songs-considered/

Fast forward to this week. Legal blogger Krista L. Cox, writing for the "Above The Law" blog discusses a case where a Houston school district purchased a few very useful study guides (that had copyright wording including "Copying this material is strictly prohibited") and made multiple copies and distributed the illegal copies throughout the Houston school district and beyond.

https://abovethelaw.com/2019/06/houston-school-district-ordered-to-pay-9-2-million-in-copyright-infringement-case/?rf=1

One teacher allegedly committed to email that she knew the material was copyrighted and that she was "ok with violating... (copyright)". Krista L. Cox makes it clear why that email was a particular slam dunk for the plaintiff's winning case, and offers an expert explanation of the limits on fair use of copyrighted materials in an educational setting.

Also this week, commentators Suzanne Fields, also Brent Bozell and Tim Graham reflect on Oberlin College's $44,000,000 loss for alleged defamation and other alleged interference with a local grocer's ability to conduct business, allegedly because the grocer had zero tolerance for shoplifting and Oberlin College staff allegedly took exception when a student was arrested for shoplifting.
https://townhall.com/columnists/suzannefields/2019/06/21/crisis-at-super-liberal-oberlin-n2548720

https://townhall.com/columnists/brentbozellandtimgraham/2019/06/21/oberlin-punished-for-factfree-food-fight-n2548719

Finally, given the trouble one can bring down upon oneself for words stored on devices, the Parallax offers some sensible advice for readers who plan to take devices with them on international travel and who would like to protect their social media privacy.

https://the-parallax.com/2019/06/12/what-to-do-customs-social-media/

All the best,

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/  http://www.rowenacherry.com

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday

Writer's Burnout

Kameron Hurley's essay in the latest issue of LOCUS focuses on burnout. This isn't the same as "writer's block" (which some authors maintain doesn't actually exist, as there is always an identifiable reason for being "blocked").

The Singular Cure for Burnout

She discusses the "hustle culture," the need to work two or even three jobs to make financial ends meet. I must confess I'd never thought of freelancers as "working class folk," as Hurley classifies them in this article. In terms of income, though, a moment's thought makes it clear that the earning level of most freelance creators places them in the same income bracket as working-class employees—or lower. The typical writer's annual income, divided by hours worked, falls below minimum wage. Hence the "side hustle" that Hurley vividly describes. As she puts it, she couldn't afford to quit any of her day jobs because she was "hustling for health insurance."

Some of her comments strike me as chilling to contemplate:

"How are we monetizing our hobbies, our passions?" Isn't a "passion" something we pursue for the love of it?

"If you can’t carve out an hour in your day [to squeeze in writing between the day jobs], you must just not be working hard enough…." If many creators have to work nonstop like that, no wonder they tend to suffer burnout.

"I could have it all, it seemed. I just couldn’t remember much of it. I was too exhausted." Just reading that sentence makes me feel tired.

"I found that the only personal experiences of any note that I was mining for my writing happened in my twenties. All I could remember of my thirties was… working."

Upon googling remedies for burnout, Hurley discovered, "All the advice was the same: seek 'balance.' Meditate. Get enough sleep. Eat healthy." None of those sources recommended the "cure" mentioned in her title: "Do less." Her overall conclusion is, "Our culture worships busy-ness, but we, individually, don’t have to." Yet how does one do less and still pay for necessary expenses, not to mention the all-important health insurance?

The only time I came close to "burnout" was during graduate school, especially while working on the PhD. I wrote little or no fiction during the years of attending classes and producing my dissertation. Constant, high-volume academic writing left my brain too numb for imaginative creation. Throughout my adult life, I've been lucky to have what every author needs—a well-employed spouse with a secure career and high-quality health coverage (in our case, through the U.S. Navy). Unfortunately, not all writers are in that position (or, maybe, want to be).

It's fortunate that most of us don't write mainly for the money. On the other hand, royalties have symbolic importance, because they represent readers. We write in the hope of being read. Low sales can make one feel there isn't much point in writing, since nobody will read the stuff anyway. While that feeling in itself isn't exactly burnout, it can get discouraging. That "What's the use?" malaise sometimes creeps over me, especially with three publishers folding under me within the past few years. While I haven't stopped producing new fiction, right now I'm mainly working little by little on getting the "orphaned" works re-released, partly through a new publisher (Writers Exchange E-Publishing) and partly through Kindle self-publishing.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Reviews 47 - Police Family Love by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Reviews 47

Police Family Love

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Reviews haven't been indexed (yet).

In the entry, Theme-Plot-Character-Worldbuilding Integration Part 11 - Arranging Marriages,
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/06/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding.html
we discussed the TV Series, Shtisel, made in Israel, in Hebrew with English subtitles.

The title, Shtisel, is after the Shtisel family it follows through the harrowing issue of arranging marriages amidst a secular culture in Jerusalem.

It is reminiscent of the Chaim Potok novel about a talented artist, MY NAME IS ASHER LEV.

https://smile.amazon.com/Name-Asher-Lev-Chaim-Potok-ebook/dp/B002GKGAZG/

But Potok wrote in novel style, and was thus able to address deep and far reaching nuances of his theme about family and the misfit artist.

I noted that, as a TV Series, Shtisel couldn't do that and stay on the air.

Here, I want to point you to a series I've talked about before, by Marshall Ryan Maresca, set in his fictional/fantasy city of Maradaine.

He has crafted a series of series -- focusing on different levels, layers, and professions that make up a huge, sprawling port city.

Here are previous discussions of this huge work of art in the making:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/09/theme-character-integration-part-14.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/05/reviews-34-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/06/theme-plot-integration-part-17-crafting.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/07/depiction-part-16-reviews-26-depicting.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/06/reviews-16-thorn-of-dentonhill-by.html

And now we have two more books.  Note that -- books, not just TV episodes. Each of these novels is replete with details revealing the depths of a World you could never imagine, but which seems totally familiar.

  The Way of the Shield (A novel of the Maradaine Elite)


A Parliament of Bodies (A novel of The Maradaine Constabulary) 

The Way of the Shield has a sequel, Shield of the People, out October 2019.

"The Shield" is a martial arts "order" -- part of the previous culture, struggling not to be lost amidst a changing society.  Think of the parallels to the TV Series, Shtisel, which I recommended previously:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/06/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding.html

If you do a deep contrast/compare study of the martial arts order, how hard it is to live their life, what they swear to do, how seriously they take that oath, with the lifestyle depicted in SHTISEL, you will learn a lot about the writing craft.

But include the novels of the Maradaine Constabulary, along with two American TV Series, NCIS and BLUE BLOODS,

and you begin to see where Alien Romance fits in the genre-mix that is most popular today.

We have a long history of great Detective Series, novel series made into TV Detective series (Perry Mason comes to mind), and many stories of how teams of police and/or lawyers become bonded into a family.

A working group of crime fighters (even superhero alliances) bond the way combat veterans have bonded with buddies from time immemorial (really, pre-Rome days).

It is the nature of humans to bond with those who face adversity with them.  It is in the whirling blades of combat (physical or psychological), that the true core of a human's personality is revealed.

Thus many of the best Romance novels mix in another genre that includes some sort of danger, testing, supreme effort.  Becoming part of an organization, such as a Martial Arts Order, where you must pass a test to be accepted, forms that sort of bond.

These procedures (reduced to hazing in the case of the college fraternity - kid's games compared to real life) do forge MARITAL BONDS, true marriage for life, and perhaps beyond.

In the USA, we have had influxes of immigrants over the centuries, and such communities have settled together and formed major bonds that last generations.  Some groups have assimilated easily, and others have resisted for many generations.  Some just soak up Americana and adapt it.

In the 20th Century we had the Italians and the Irish, as well as the Jews of Eastern Europe.  New York's Irish Cops became famous.

All three of these incoming groups were famous for their family strength, keeping family ties going for generations before intermarrying and becoming part of the 50% divorce rate statistics.

The TV Series, Blue Bloods, focused on a multigenerational Irish family in the process of complete assimilation.  Being a cop (or in one woman's case, an attorney) was the family business.

It's a stereotype for s reason -- non-Irish people knew many such families.

In the sub-series, The Maradaine Constabulary, Marshall Ryan Maresca has given us a multi-generation family of cops, tough men and women of impeccable loyalty to law and order.

The inexplicable element in the Maradaine law, to me, is how it replicates USA law, the legal protection against search and seizure and other rights of individuals that cops can't violate and get a conviction in court.

While these concepts date back thousands of years, and are part of the Magna Carta -- survived a multitude of dictatorial Kings, and somehow became codified into USA law, they are by no means universal among countries today.  Even where such law is on the books, it is often ignored.

There is no explanation (so far) in the Maradaine novels about where they got these ideas -- but they do have an Aristocracy as well as a Parliament.

The novel, A Parliament of Bodies, has major elements of Horror Genre, but likewise incorporates both unbreakable family ties and love/loyalty between spouses.

Setting aside the inexplicable World Building puzzles, both these novels and the sub-series they represent are well worth your time to read.  They are not Romance novels, but love and loyalty are the plot-driving forces that depict what a strong family really is.

Always remember that "strong family" is the single most critical element in the Happily Ever After ending for a Romance.  If the marriage doesn't nurture children, a next generation and a next beyond that, who love, understand, appreciate, and above all honor, the couple forged in Romance, then you didn't have Soul Mates to begin with, and thus no HEA is possible.

So study the limits of what the publishing industry can allow right now, and, like Srugim and Shtisel TV Series, break that boundary, challenge the stereotype, find a new angle to view your story.

Just don't miss the Maradaine novels.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Creepy, Snoopy, Moribund... And All In The Best Possible Taste

Extrapolated from an alert on the Yahoogroup "AuthorsAgainstEBookTheft":

For authors who were published by Mundania.com, it has something in common with the Monty Python parrot. It is no more.

The website has an announcement:

PUBLIC NOTICE:
ALL PUBLICATION CONTRACTS MADE WITH MUNDANIA PRESS LLC, PHAZE BOOKS, HARD SHELL WORD FACTORY, AWE-STRUCK BOOKS, AND CELERITAS LIMITED LLC FOR EBOOKS, PRINT, AND AUDIO BOOKS ARE IMMEDIATELY CANCELLED AND FULL PUBLICATION RIGHTS ARE RETURNED FOR ALL BOOKS TO ALL AUTHORS AS OF MARCH 27, 2019.

The smart move would be to visit http://www.mundania.com/ and obtain a screen shot in case this is the only proof of return of rights that is available.

Note: Margaret L. Carter has pointed out that she received a full and proper return of rights directly from Mundania. Apologies if the above note was in any way inaccurate.

FIVE SCAMS FOR SENIORS
For Americans who might or might not have someone in the household nearing or older than sixty, beware of unexpected, unsolicited phone calls from persons claiming to be from Medicare. They are not. They quite possibly found your/your loved one's contact information and age on a site such as Been-Verified (which is not a reliable site, and which may well have complete and utter elderly strangers listed as living at your home with you... and their system provides no way for you to correct this error), and what the callers want is
a) to record you saying, "Yes?"  (Never say Yes to a stranger.)
b) to get your personal information and secret(ish) numbers.

Or perhaps some files were badly consolidated and some creepy snoopy sites got bad information from the Microsoft data breach.
https://blog.malwarebytes.com/cybercrime/2019/05/mysterious-database-exposed-personal-information-of-80-million-us-households/?utm_source=double-opt-in&utm_medium=email-internal-b2c&utm_campaign=EM-B2C-2019-June1-newsletter&utm_content=mysterious-database

Look here for scam warnings.
https://www.aarp.org/health/medicare-insurance/info-2018/open-enrollment-scam.html

OK. That is not writing or copyright related, but even writers get older. Moreover, authors are obliged by the nature of their business to put out more information on back matter and on public sites than most people.

Writers, be like The Queen of England. Keep your real birthday private, and celebrate an "official" birthday for social media purposes that is not your truthful birth date.

Finally, for anyone who is interested in SUPER (voting) POWERS that affect the big social media platforms, the trichordist has an eye-opening expose by Chris Castle on how supervoting works and why Zuckerberg (for one) has nothing to fear from shareholders.
https://thetrichordist.com/2019/06/06/guest-post-musictechsolve-betting-on-the-house-issues-that-house-judiciary-should-investigate-against-google-end-supervoting-shares-for-publicly-traded-companies/

One reason why Mark Zuckerberg maybe should be reined in is his alleged interest in monetizing other people's menstrual periods.

All the best,
Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/  http://www.rowenacherry.com

Inside Apollo

The June 2019 issue of SMITHSONIAN magazine includes a long article on little-known aspects of the Apollo lunar exploration project. Unfortunately, the online publication is behind a paywall. Here's a sample of the article:

What You Didn't Know About Apollo

Pick up a copy of this issue if possible. It contains some shocking revelations (shocking to me, anyway). Despite his inspirational public speeches about the race for the Moon, President Kennedy stated in private that he had no particular interest in space as such. He simply wanted to beat the Russians. A significant percentage of Americans considered the space program a waste of money. In 1968, only four weeks after the Apollo 8 flight, a Harris Poll survey revealed that only 39% of Americans favored landing a man on the Moon. When asked whether the project was worth its cost, 55% said no—even though the war in Vietnam was costing more per year than the total price of the Apollo program so far. Aside from the excitement of televised launches, most ordinary citizens didn't give much thought to the Moon project. Even scientists, polled in 1961 by Senator Paul H. Douglas, were divided on the importance of a manned Moon mission, 36% believing it would have "great" value and 35% "little" value. This attitude seems so remarkable to me as an SF fan, since I've regarded the vital importance of space exploration as obvious for most of my life. In October 1963, funding for the Apollo program was being reduced. Ironically, if Kennedy had lived longer, lunar aspirations might have faded away, whereas President Johnson "was an authentic believer in the space program."

Equally astonishing to me, as described in the SMITHSONIAN article, was the United States' level of unpreparedness for the promised goal of a man on the Moon by the end of the 1960s. When Kennedy announced that goal, "he was committing the nation to do something we simply couldn't do." As the article puts it, "We didn't have the tools or equipment" and furthermore "didn't even know what we would need." We didn't have a list of requirements; "no one in the world had a list." And yet we proceeded to do the impossible, producing along the way results such as the most advanced computers created to date, "the smallest, fastest and most nimble computer in a single package anywhere in the world." Furthermore, NASA invented "real-time computing." Not being a tech person, before reading this article I had no idea what a revolutionary development that was. Previously, the only way to get problems solved with a computer was to submit a pile of punch cards and wait hours or days for the printed results of the calculations. Clearly, the space race gave us a lot more than Tang!

It felt strange to read this article and realize how the groundbreaking achievements of our nation's space program, which now seem like a foregone conclusion of unique historical significance, often hung by precariously slender threads.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Plot-Character-Worldbuilding Integration Part 11 - Arranging Marriages

Theme-Plot-Character-Worldbuilding Integration

Part 11

Arranging Marriages

Previous posts in this series for advanced writers on blending individual techniques so readers never notice you did anything are:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/12/index-to-theme-plot-character.html

The previous entry in this series of posts is about How To Marry A Billionaire.  It used to be "millionaire" - but, inflation, you know.

The symbolism of "rich" is desirable not just for looks, but prowess.  The self-made billionaire is sexy because he/she can provide for children and ease the burden of motherhood with maidservants etc.

Considering what happens when a billionaire comes into the spotlight of the media, do you really want to be the spouse of such a hot property?

Hmmm.

Check out this series of posts on symbolism:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/02/index-to-theme-symbolism-integration.html

The billionaire is the one-step-solution to all life's problems rolled up into one symbol - being rich.  Likewise the Duke, the King, the Prince -- all the royal titles or heirs to such titles come with the implication of rich, and an easy life.

But novels are not about living EASY.  Easy is what happens after the novel is over - (or the series) - in the HEA part of existence.  To get to the HEA, you gotta suffer!  And you have to work for that ending, really work, searcher your soul, change your habits.  (My Fair Lady!)

So to marry your Soul Mate, you have to know your own Soul.

Generally, readers (in any genre) don't buy a book to learn how to search their own Soul, but will remember a book that illustrated (in show don't tell) how to determine what you really want in life.  You only know you got the right answer decades later, when having what you want has gone on-and-on until it becomes the norm.

Novels can happen at the point where that norm is threatened, and the Characters must question whether they made good choices as children.  Most often, those characters, slogging through those confrontations, are ancillary characters, supporting players (not spear carriers or red-shirts).

So here we'll study how the World you build shows (without telling) how to determine what you really want in Life.

I suggest you watch 2 TV Series, one on Netflix and one on Amazon Prime, imported TV Series with English subtitles (that aren't always accurate).

1. Srugim on Amazon Prime

2. Shtisel on Netflix

If they aren't there when you read this, Google around a bit.  They are popular for a reason.  But companies are playing games of keep-away against viewers these days.

We discussed Srugim here
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/01/cozy-science-fiction-part-1-by.html

The world it is set in might as well be another planet full of people who aren't quite comprehensible to normal humans.  They march to a different drummer.

In Srugim, the Characters in the drama are all young people searching for a true mate, and over the course of 3 seasons, most of them settle down.

In Shtisel (the word is a family name), we see a whole family with grandparents, retirement age parents, and adult children with young children approaching marriageable age.

It is a family drama set in a world most viewers have to learn as they go, but since it is not an American made series, it assumes the viewer knows things Americans probably don't know (or think they know the opposite).

Shtisel has been hailed as a breaker of stereotypes, and as such is worth studying carefully -- because writers of Science Fiction/Paranormal Romance are breaking stereotypes.  Most of the blow-back against the HEA ending is coming from that source -- people are comfortable inside their "world" composed of stereotypes, and find it painful when you break them.

The Theme of Shtisel might be stated thusly:

A) Ancestry Matters
or
B)  To maintain coherence, a family must change with the World they live in.
or
C) No family can survive in a changing world.
or
D) Religion doesn't help anyone understand the World around them.

It's unclear which theme would be more descriptive, and that lack of clarity is the problem with this TV Series.  At the same time, the lack of clarity in the theme is what makes this TV Series about the role of Romance in Marriage worth studying for all writers -- most especially Romance sub-genre writers.

The plots of the episodes turn on marriages broken (widowhood, abandonment, divorce), and marriages made or mended.  The only solid, continuing marriage is almost completely off-stage.  The episodes are set in Jerusalem, and the successful religiously solid couple lives in Tel Aviv and has adopted different practices from their ancestors.

The Tel Aviv couple's only interaction with the main story line is to invite the (stubborn, reluctant) grandfather to come teach Judaism to their children who are learning a different tradition.  It's a little like Catholics vs. Protestants, but not really the same thing.

So one stray, modernized, couple mends estrangement from ancestors -- but that whole story line is barely mentioned.

The main plots turn on a young Rabbi with a nice teaching position in a primary school environment where his father has taught, and eventually becomes Principle.  But the young Rabbi wants to be an artist and paint portraits, thus estranging himself from his entire family.

A daughter of the Rabbi's father is married with 4 then 5 children, is abandoned by her husband, but keeps that quiet, lies about it, and supports her family by herself, by taking over the (somewhat illicit) currency-exchanging business of an old widow in the same Care Facility as the grandmother of the young artist-Rabbi.  Her lies are rewarded when her strayed husband comes home, and she takes the advice of another Rabbi to not-know too much about what happened.

Another brother with a marriageable daughter comes back from Europe looking for a husband for his daughter, and thus a Matchmaker (time-honored profession) is brought on stage.

We follow several attempts to match a couple in the ultra-orthodox way that is still rather successful in these modern times.

All the while that meetings are being arranged for possible young couples, we see all the men involved sitting over books, studying Torah and Talmud on the adult level, as we see the elementary school students being introduced to the material.

This is their World, framed by ancient laws of how to behave gently and forgivingly to other people.  These are the Characters - members of a family with a lot in common, and even more in divergent interests and standards of behavior.  And that is the Plot -- get married, already!  All of the Themes suggested above surface many times, but none of the themes actually crystalize.

The reason the Themes in the TV Series Shtisel don't sizzle off the screen with vivid portraits illustrating how to decide what you want out of Life, which mate is right for you, what sort of destiny you want to guide your family toward, is not a flaw in what is there on your TV Screen.

The reason the Themes of Shtisel don't crystalize properly is what is missing from that TV Screen.

That missing material is what we'll focus on here, despite all the other elements worth delving into.

The element missing from your TV screen is one that can be crafted very smoothly in a novel, printed text, but is commercially impossible (so far) in a TV Series.

You'd have to break a stereotype to get the fully realized THEME that belongs to the TV Series Shtisel (and even to Srugim) onto public TV Screens.

You'd have to SHOW DON'T TELL how the Hand of God moves the real world, in everyday reality.  In other words, you'd have to convince your readers that their world actually does have the potential to deliver to them a Happily Ever After ending for their lives, an ending that leaves an indelible legacy stretching back to the Beginning, the family of humanity.

The stereotype that lulls people into security is the portrayal of every person who understands God as a real, close, present force in this World is just deluded into superstition.

The production company behind Srugim and Shtisel, "YES" is their English name, probably couldn't get that kind of disruptive stereotype-breaking show on the air, and I'm not sure if anyone on their staff actually understands the HEA or Soul Mates as a concept.  I don't think they know what a Matchmaker really is -- at least not from the Character portrayed in Shtisel.

But if they could, if Shtisel were a Romance Novel (and it has all the makings of hot-stuff Romance), what could they add that isn't on the screen now?  What could draw that show-don't-tell image of how to recognize what you really want in life -- at first glance.

The principle behind the Matchmaker concept is that such an individual is very close to God, very much an instrument of the Creator of the Universe, and is given prophetic insight beyond the simple facts about a person's ancestry and temperament.

Matchmakng is a divine profession.

But it only works if the young people behind matched are enough in tune with their Creator, enough attuned to their own Souls, to be open on the highest wavelengths, and able to recognize their Soul Mate and fall in love at first sight.

The young, matched, couple only gets two or three brief meetings in a public setting to determine whether to marry.  It has to be love at first sight, and that's not a quality of the person you are looking at, but rather a quality of yourself.

So, given this TV Series is about the arranged marriage, thematically it lacks the dimension of an explanation of how and why matchmaking works, and what could prevent it from working.

Conflict is the essence of story.

Conflict means there is a goal, a reason to reach the goal, and an obstacle to prevent reaching that goal.  The conflict is between the goal-directed person and the obstacle.

Shtisel has that conflict laid out nicely.  The Characters have internal conflicts that are projected into their lives, reflected in the other Characters.

But the plot never addresses the reason why the obstacle is there, or the methods of removing or surmounting the obstacle.

The thematic element completely missing from this TV Series is the content of the material we see everyone studying.

Because we are not given the content of what is being learned, we can't notice how or whether the behaviors and events in the family's daily life illustrate that wisdom contained in that content.  If the content were added, though, the writers would have had to add a Character and change the character (and eventual fate) of the Matchmaker, then play the two off against each other to illustrate the dynamics driving the religious lifestyle.

One thing the American audience might miss because it's not mentioned in the series, is that there are specific pages of specific books assigned to be learned on specific days.

Because it is a set calendar, if the content were specified, it would date the show, and that might prevent it from surviving enough years to earn back its investment.

However, because it is a set bit to be learned, what does happen in real life, too often to be mere coincidence, the content of that assigned page to be learned does manifest in surrounding Reality.

It is just plain spooky how often that happens.  It happens so often that when it doesn't happen, someone who pays attention to correlations knows that they've missed something.  It happened, but you just didn't see it.

So the characterization of the TV Characters is just plain "off" somehow.  Several of them are Rabbis, and the rest learn and pray routinely.  But they don't understand their World in terms of those assigned readings.

What little is revealed of the content is contrived to sound boring and irrelevant (when in fact it is not).  With one exception, each Character who is studying from a book gets interrupted and just ignores what they're reading as if the interruption is more interesting and compelling than the material.  The exception is a very mentally disturbed young man no one in the audience wants to become.  (he gets saved by the woman who falls in love with him)

The stereotype the series did not break is how for normal people, Talmud is boring to learn, and religion is an irrelevant waste of time that just keeps you from having fun in life, or a refuge for the unbalanced.  Religion can't be the key for understanding what's really happening in the real world.

The stereotype the series did break is how helpless and illiterate the women of arranged marriages are.

All of the women Characters in Shtisel read, learn, and think for themselves.  They are dynamic businesswomen, faithful employees with skills and talents, adventurous and indomitable -- just like real people.

These women who have chosen husbands who were suggested to them by a Matchmaker are not helpless victims of an outmoded system.  They are the backbone of the family heritage.  They matter.  They count.  They make their own decisions and carry them out vigorously.  And sometimes they choose a husband who was not selected by the matchmaker!  Sometimes that works out very well.

So, dig up this TV Series, Shtisel -- and the other I've discussed, Srugim.  You will visit an alien world, and learn how to create a Romance with an Alien that will put your Characters on a glide-path to their own, individualized, Happily Ever After ending.

Really - having a blast watching TV is not wasting time.  To be the writer you were born to be, you have to understand why this TV Series, Shtisel, couldn't live up to its potential.  Use that knowledge to build the world your Romance Novel needs.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Bad Faith

Assuming that the opposite of good faith is bad faith, the latter is this author's theme this time.  This week's news in the legal blogosphere has been thin for copyright-related matters, but the lack of good faith seems to be a common thread.

For a cautionary tale about crowdfunding, legal bloggers Kathleen K. Sheridan   and Melissa Landau Steinman  writing for the law firm Venable LLP point out three rules to live by, including that it is vital to keep promises made to investors.

All About Advertising Law source:
https://www.allaboutadvertisinglaw.com/2019/06/ftc-reminds-crowdfunders-deliver-on-your-promises-or-refund.html#page=1

Lexology source:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=57a69027-f21d-4761-b1bf-03d4d542ec7d&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+General+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2019-06-06&utm_term=

For advice for authors from Zach Obront about using Kickstarter to crowdfund your book launch, find tips here:
https://scribewriting.com/8-lessons-for-launching-your-book-with-a-kickstarter-and-raising-25000/

The balance of the good and the bad relate to the use of other people's photographs. In one case, the photographer prevailed against a commercial publisher, in the other case, the photographer appears to have gone after a safe-harbor-protected big fish, instead of the possibly culpable little fish.

Legal bloggers Mariah Volk and David Grossman writing for Loeb & Loeb LLP examine the case of Downs v Oath, and explain why Oath --which owns HuffPost-- is not legally responsible under the DMCA for publishing contributor-uploaded copies of copyrighted works that are uploaded in defiance of HuffPost's TOS..

See here:
https://www.loeb.com/en/insights/publications/2019/05/downs-v-oath

or here:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=48e2eee2-90ce-4a7c-ae7b-0872e5a84788

It took an appeal to the Fourth Circuit for the photographer to prevail against an alleged infringer, as legal blogger Jodi Benassi discussed for the law firm McDermott Will & Emery.

Here:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=730ef86e-69be-439f-b7f8-ded544a777cd

How someone can crop out the copyright wording from a photograph and then claim that they had a good faith belief that the photograph was not copyrighted is... beyond belief.

Jodi Benassi's breakdown of the four factors of  fair use and the "heart of the work" is especially worth reading.

All the best,
Rowena Cherry
SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/  

Beliefs, Facts, and Action

Sometimes it doesn't matter whether one has accurate beliefs about facts as long as one's beliefs have a correct or useful effect in practice. In one STAR TREK novel in which the crew brings aid to a planet suffering from an epidemic, they advise the local healers of the importance of cleanliness. One of them says something like, "Yes, we know dirt attracts disease demons." Later Spock gives her a medication with the statement that disease demons can't abide it. Whether the healers believed in disease demons or germs, what mattered was the treatment being applied. The British Navy realized lime juice prevented scurvy long before vitamins were discovered. Likewise, cooks knew food would spoil if not stored in the proper conditions, even though they knew nothing about bacteria. During medieval epidemics, the spread of disease was controlled by quarantine when doctors still thought illness came from unbalanced humors or malign astrological influences. The heroine of Henry James's short novel DAISY MILLER dies of malaria, which the story attributes to the miasma emanating from the swamps near Rome. Although people then didn't know malaria was spread by mosquitoes, they knew hanging around swamps and other sources of stagnant water often led to catching the disease. Of course, as a literary symbol of ancient, corrupt Europe destroying a young, naive American girl, a swamp works better than a mosquito.

Before astronomers accepted the Copernican model of the planets revolving around the sun, they believed Earth was the center around which the planets (including the sun and moon) and the sphere of the fixed stars revolved. People still managed to navigate by the stars, and astronomers and astrologers could use the incorrect model to predict the movements of heavenly bodies. The triumph of the Copernican model, however, allowed more elegant predictions and opened the way for the revelation that the planets and stars obeyed the same Newtonian gravitational laws as objects on Earth. Contrary to popular belief, by the way, the Earth-centered universe theory didn't mean people thought Earth and the human race were special in a good way. Unlike the heavenly bodies outside the sphere of the moon, Earth was flawed, the lowest point in the cosmos, where the dregs of creation ended up. The moon was imperfect, too; it changed on a monthly schedule, and it displayed visible spots. The planets, sun, and stars were thought to be composed of different, perfect material. The main shock of the Copernican revolution wasn't that we lost our place at the center. It was that the heavens were as changeable as Earth and the objects on it, made of the same kind of matter. Speaking of Newton, the classical laws of physics worked fine in practice for centuries, despite the fact that theories of relativity and quantum mechanics eventually revealed the inadequacies of classical physics on the macro and micro levels.

Often, of course, erroneous beliefs about facts do make a practical difference. Long before Mendel and the later discovery of DNA, farmers knew how to breed animals and plants for desirable traits. However, they also believed in prenatal impressions—that the experiences of pregnant mothers left their marks on the offspring. According to the book of Genesis, Jacob induced his father-in-law's flocks to produce spotted offspring by placing spotted twigs in front of the breeding animals. Columbus was mistaken about the size of the Earth. If he hadn't bumped into a previously unknown land mass by sheer luck, his expedition would probably have been lost long before getting near Asia. When medical science discovered the risks of excessive cholesterol in the bloodstream, authorities assumed dietary cholesterol should be restricted. People unnecessarily reduced their intake of innocent, nutritious eggs, until new studies identified trans fats as the main dietary villain. Pediatricians used to recommend that babies sleep on their stomachs or, later, face up in an inclined rather than flat position, for fear they might spit up and choke. Better understanding of the physiology of sudden infant death has led to a complete reversal, so that babies now sleep on their backs. Ideology drives policy on matters such as punitive incarceration of drug offenders versus treating addiction as a medical problem or what kind of formal sex education (if any) adolescents should be offered in schools—issues in which mistaken beliefs about real-world effects can result in undesired actual outcomes.

What factual beliefs might our present-day culture hold that will be disproved in the future, maybe with real-life consequences? What universally held assumptions of ours might future generations or visiting extraterrestrials consider as absurdly wrongheaded as we consider the heliocentric cosmos or the "humors" theory of disease?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt