Angela's Ashes

Last week I read ANGELA'S ASHES, the autobiographical memoir by Frank McCourt, finding myself among what seemed like a tiny minority of people in the English-speaking world who hadn't yet read it. Someone I mentioned it to laughingly asked, "Are you depressed enough yet?" I'm amazed by the way this author could make the story of his early life, shadowed by so much death, loss, poverty, and family dysfunction, into such a riveting tale. If it weren't for McCourt's wit and near-poetic Irish gift for language, the book really would be too depressing to read. The book also highlights the skill required to transform the amorphous messiness of actual life into a story. McCourt structures his narrative with a framework that begins and ends in America, starting with his parents' meeting and his own conception in New York, ending with his return from Ireland to New York as a young man of nineteen. All the action in between illustrates his foreshadowing claim on the first page that there's no unhappy childhood as miserable as an Irish Catholic childhood. Another thought the book left me with: McCourt's phenomenal bravery in writing all those experiences for the world to read. I can't help wondering whether he has any living relatives left and how they reacted to his public revelation of the family's troubles. The conventional advice to "write what you know," if taken to mean "write from your personal life experience," isn't suitable for beginning writers, in my opinion. Drawing on one's own experience is hard; an author has to reach a certain level of maturity to make that kind of writing work, even in fiction where the characters and incidents are heavily disguised to protect the innocent. Margaret L. Carter Carter's Crypt

Story Springboards Part 2: The TV Shows FRINGE and ROYAL PAINS

Part One of this series is a Guest Post on Art Heists by a writer who is also a  fan of the TV Series White Collar, It Takes a Thief, etc:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/01/story-springboards-part-1-art-heists-by.html


With all the shifts in Publishing since the big publishers all ate each other up and turned over the editorial policies to committees and bean counters, the entire structure of "Gatekeepers" has morphed into something truly different.

By "Gatekeepers" writers usually mean folks who can say "no" to an author and make it stick, keeping the author away from the author's natural audience. This can be at the Agent level, the Editorial level, the Marketing level inside the big publishers, or the Bean Counter level.

Many authors whose books finally make it into traditional publishing channels, find their next book being rejected because the computers (also a new kind of gatekeeper that grew to dominance in the 1980's with the chain bookstores) just aren't returning the numbers.

When that happens, writers often take special notice of the immense drain that pirating has had on their sales (immense). 

Writers whose books take off to become New York Times bestsellers usually don't notice that drain so soon.  They're too busy writing their next book.  Publishers, though, notice.  They just can't do anything about it, (yet).

Everything they've tried has failed, and now Amazon is picking fights with distributors over the pricing of ebooks -- mostly because of a button TAG they put on some pages where people can note that the price is too high, or DRM deters them from purchasing.

In this environment of being swept round and round the tornado of change in the fiction delivery system due to ebooks, Print on Demand (POD) and Kindle and Nook readers, writers who are burning up with something to SAY feel they are not able to "reach" their audience.

Many tools have been launched in the last couple of years, and all those tools come and go (such as self-publishing, social networking promotion campaigns, YouTube Book Trailers). 

But the question remains.  How do you "reach" the audience you are writing for? 

You'll see statistics that people are watching less TV -- less network TV, less Cable TV, canceling cable subscriptions for internet-only TV -- and here comes Apple TV.  But the networks still exist.

By all accounts, profits are being made -- OK, it's more like the airline industry if you track the stocks -- but people do acquire and absorb TV series.  They just don't slave themselves to a network broadcast schedule, and on the whole, are determined to avoid sitting through commercials.

Video fiction is "churning" under the impact of the digital revolution just as publishing is.  But people still want fiction, and they want a wider choice.

Just as publishing feels they are competing with fanfic posted free online, video-fiction purveyors feel they are competing now on an almost-even footing with the Indie Film Maker, and web-based webisodes, (even webinars compete with classroom instruction).

So what is the creator of fictional universes to do to reach the hungry audience?

What happens next, (yes, this kind of cycle is repetitive throughout history) is  called "Market Making."

To get the notion into your head, think of the publishing history of Harry Potter.  At first it couldn't get sold.  Then it went to an obscure publisher working into an obscure readership (kids) - then Scholastic here in the USA, then kids with cell phones and Facebook accounts took it viral, then it exploded as a "Market" cohered, demanding more-more-more so more books came out creating the series, then movies.  I'm sure eventually a TV Series.

Now go study Vampire Diaries (CW network - and the books), and its history. 

Here's a blog post that arose out of the copyright dispute the originator of Vampire Diaries has had with the publisher.

http://parafantasy.blogspot.com/2012/02/this-is-utterly-ridiculousi-cant-even.html

I dropped a comment on that blog pointing to the blog posts here in recent weeks:

APRIL 10, 2012 POST BELIEVING IN THE HAPPILY EVER AFTER PART 6
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/04/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-6.html

APRIL 17, 2012 POST BELIEVING IN THE HAPPILY EVER AFTER PART 7
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/04/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-7.html
-----------
I did note that your blog shows that you are young, and so my posts based on this issue are not personally about you, but about how to train to enter the writing profession, what to expect, and how to maneuver into a position where you can negotiate from strength.

Those interested should read up on the trademark and copyright history of "Superman" and other movie Icons from the early days.

Originally, actors did not get "residuals" -- they didn't get paid every time a film was shown.  Then came TV, and reruns, and actors revolved, marched in union picket lines, and won a % payment every time a film they are in is shown on TV. At that point, the number of commercials inserted in films went up (where else would they get the money to pay?)

Every new technology has smashed the creative artists that the business and marketing people use to create the product they market.  Right now, skirmish lines are being drawn again.  You've fingered one of the jig-jags in that skirmish line, the "work for hire" provision of the 1970's revamping of the copyright laws.

I believe your post shows brilliance and a huge potential as a writer.  But it also points up the sore need for people to learn about the 1970's, and how well-meaning actions of that time, rooted in an understanding of the technology shift between 1920 and 1960, are shaping the skirmish lines today.

Artists (writers, actors, animators, film makers) can't win this battle if we don't know what the core of the battle is about. 

What may happen is that, without understanding the import of the impact of the new technologies, the well meaning and morally correct actions may create an even worse problem for artists working in the world that will exist 40 years hence.

So boring as it is, the history lesson is necessary, but I'm not the one to teach that lesson! 

I'm a science fiction writer, a futurologist, and my whole focus is on that world that will exist 40 years hence, and more. 

You do not deserve to be bashed for bringing this point to the surface.  You deserve to be celebrated.

But I for one am crushed that your taste for Vampire fiction has abated, because I write Vampire stories, novels, and now I've just turned in an anthology of Vampire stories by writers of Vampire fanfic who have gone pro with original universe stories.

Of course, I also write many other sorts of novels, so maybe you'll find one you do enjoy.  House of Zeor might be a likely candidate.  Or if you like doctor novels, try Unto Zeor, Forever.
--------------

So studying these Market Making works, and contrasting and comparing with the two TV shows Fringe and Royal Pains, what do we learn?

Consider the elements I focused on in this post:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-to-learn-to-use-theme-as-art.html

And here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html

Now remember this post from my writing craft blog on constructing openings:
http://editingcircle.blogspot.com/2009/03/in-beginning.html

It's about the protagonist's goal at the opening -- and of course, how that changes by The End (i.e. how the character arcs).

In one of the comments, I pointed out how it is possible to telegraph the Protag's goal to the reader without the Protag actually knowing what his/her goal is. That is the goal that will be achieved at the ending in order to resolve the conflict, but the protagonist might have his/her conscious mind focused on a different goal, or even on avoiding the actual goal.

Now that "telegraphing" has to do with "symbols" and images and icons that we've discussed at length.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/04/turning-action-into-romance.html

That's my post on Icons and iconic book covers and movie posters.

Icons are two things simultaneously. 

A) They are a shorthand representation of some complex, mostly subconscious, notion shared by a large group of people.

B) They are a means of planting, germinating and spreading that notion to the subconscious minds of others. 

Think about that as the answer to the conundrum of Violence on TV being the cause of violence among children (and among the adults they will become) and the counter argument that no-way can mere stories affect the behavior of sane, well balanced, well parented children (or adults). 

It's one of those chicken/egg problems.

In our current "Learn This In One Minute A Day" and "Computer Programming Made Simple" world, we default to the assumption that every question can be posed and answered as an either/or proposition (the duality view of reality, the binary view, the zero-sum-game view).

The question is formulated as "does violence on TV cause children to misbehave -- or NOT?" and then everyone rushes to take sides, without ever questioning the question itself.

Critical thinking (questioning the question is an example) is not taught in school by teachers who don't know their subjects but do have degrees in "Education" -- degrees they achieved because they didn't ever stand up in class and tell the Professor off for misleading the class into thinking that there exists such a process as "teaching."

In my personal view, there is no such thing as "teaching" -- but there is such a thing as "learning." 

Brain research has shown how "learning" changes brain synaptic pathways, the generation of brain cells and their connections, the configuration of the brain is changed which is what learning is.

But where's the research that shows how "teaching" changes the teacher's brain? 

THE KING AND I - wonderful book and film, (stageplay too) -- "by your students you'll be taught" -- sing it often.

So there's a world-view built on the idea that it's possible to "teach" without learning -- i.e. that imparting knowledge and skills is a one-way process.

More, that imparting knowledge and skills is a process that can be achieved on purpose, by training and skills in imparting knowledge etc.

In my personal world view that's nonsense.  In my personal worldview knowledge and skills can be acquired.  An environment rich in knowledge and skills may surround a person who is not (at a particular moment) being acquisitive, and that person will not acquire anything.  When they turn acquisitive, they may acquire all kinds of things the "teacher" or "parent" had no clue they were imparting! 

So as I see it, you can't deliberately, on purpose, make a person acquire a particular notion.  People, even little ones, will take away from a situation the lesson that they, themselves, select -- regardless of what the teacher wants them to learn.

That is, kids are perverse and stubborn for the most part. 

So how is it that notions get transmitted generation to generation?  Where does culture come from and where does it reside within us?

I work on the model that culture resides in the subconscious which speaks the language of symbols.

By symbols we transmit notions.

Symbols in wide usage become Icons.

Icons that link a multitude of subconscious minds, giving them a "language" in common, create "markets."  People who've found meaning in an Icon want to learn more about it.

"The Vampire" has become such an Icon today, and now The Zombie is cycling into that iconic role, and other "supernatural" and "mythological" creatures are being cycled into that niche. 

Now look at the two TV Series, FRINGE and ROYAL PAINS.

FRINGE is about the structure of time, and the parameters of the Universes, collisions between Universes, the displacement of characters between universes, and how the human brain can be altered to facilitate Universe-travel. 

FRINGE is a very complex, abstract, piece of "worldbuilding" -- and it actually has a "real science" base -- a "what if...?" question based on current suspicions about stars, galaxies, time, space, and sub-atomic particles. 

The character of Peter has become iconic -- with the machine he gets spread-eagled into and transmitted across Universes.  It's a Crucified position. 

Who is "Peter"?  He died in one universe, and his genius father then went to another universe where he was deathly ill and rescued him, brought him back to "our" universe where he'd invented a cure.  Our character Peter grew up in our universe, only to discover he'd been kidnapped before he was old enough to remember.  He tried to get back to his own universe, had problems (several seasons of TV shows worth of problems) and has been displaced into yet another universe. 

In this built world of multiple universes, there are Time Cops of a sort, bald guys who flicker through Situations trying to straighten out the timeline.  They tried to get rid of the individuals who were messing up the timeline.  They tried to get rid of Peter - and he popped up in a lake in this third universe. 

It's all very abstract, very confusing, and the "science" seems more ridiculous than the Star Trek science seemed in the 1960's.  But guess what?  Mundanes, people who don't particularly enjoy science fiction, watch and like this show.

It's a story about people, and about two Soul Mates with a cross-universe affinity.  It's got a "mad scientist" stereotype with a twist, and with a heart who simply loves his son.  For love, he will bend the universes into pretzels -- at least he will until he realizes the harm he's causing.  Then he tries to fix it.

Now we're down to the thematic level with FRINGE.  When you get to the level of people, what they do, what happens, and WHAT THEY LEARN FROM THE RESULTS OF THEIR ACTIONS, you are at the level of theme.

And that's where you encode the lessons learned into icons that communicate, generate markets, and proliferate imitations of a type of story.

FRINGE is a science based science fiction universe with a science fiction theme -- actions have consequences, choices have consequences, and even mad scientists are highly moral about taking responsibility for the results of their actions, especially actions based on knowledge they have that others do not have.

As with most science fiction, the TV series FRINGE just barely acknowledges the possibility there could be Divine fingers stirring up lives and events.  If it's hinted at, it's more spooky than the science. 

ROYAL PAINS is a totally mundane TV series about a doctor (Hank), a very creative Emergency Room physician with an ethical streak a mile wide who gets himself fired from a top tier job at a hospital because he put the immediate emergency of a poor patient ahead of an (apparently) less urgent medical issue of a very rich donor to the hospital. 

That happened in the premier, and the TV Series Royal Pains is about this doctor's adventures when, on vacation in the Hamptons after getting fired, he solves a medical problem on the fly for a very rich person.

Hank goes into "Concierge" medicine, being on contract to the rich and famous who vacation in the Hamptons and ritzy surroundings.  The "Royal Pains" of the title are the complaints of the rich and privileged, the very kind of people who, in the TV Series Leverage which we've discussed ...

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/02/tv-shows-leverage-and-psych.html

... are the ones who cause all the problems which the hero's group of barely reformed criminals must solve for the ordinary people who are the victims of the rich and famous.

In Royal Pains, most of the rich and famous, or rich and very not-famous-on-purpose (I mean that's really rich), turn out to be very nice people who don't deserve ill health, who do a lot of charity and public service, and are open to learning a lesson or two from Hank.

Hank "models" (without teaching) ways of solving problems and of getting along with people, of paying attention and taking people seriously even if they happen to be rich.  Hank models respect for other human beings, regardless of what they appear to be on the surface. 

We live in a world which is, right now, very conscious of the very different ways people live at different income levels.  Hank completely lacks that consciousness.

He had a high paying job in a wealthy city.  The next week he was impoverished, and on vacation only because he'd bought tickets already.

The next he was living in a mansion's cottage posher than anywhere he or his family could ever afford to live. 

And he barely notices. 

If he were a Magician, you would have to say he is living "On The Law Of Abundance."

He doesn't think about or worry about money or where it comes from.  He focuses entirely on doing the right thing, the moral thing, the ethical thing. 

Of course he has a brother who is an accountant who takes over the practical part of his life and creates the business known as Hankmed. 

So where's the "Icon" -- it's "Concierge Medicine" -- and that business model is the modern doctor's equivalent of  the writer's bizmod of the  "self-published."  He doesn't take insurance.  His customers pay cash and never notice the expense.  Or he treats people free because they're living hand-to-mouth.

Just as with the TV Series Leverage, the icon is the business model.  But with the TV Series Royal Pains, we see a business model based on serving the rich and famous and thus imparting a notion to those who are receptive to it that their privileges are not due to their personal superiority.  In the TV Series Leverage, the business model is based on the assumption that all the wealthy are irrevocably convinced of their inherent personal superiority, and the Team's mission is to disabuse them of that notion forcibly.

In the TV Series Fringe, we see an iconic Mad Scientist -- who has a sense of morality and an open hearted love for his son, who becomes an Icon.

In the TV Series Royal Pains we see a new icon, a Concierge Doctor who is part "McGiver" -- who has a sense of walking the world unthreatened, without fear, and with love for all.

Strip off the decorative details of either of these shows' Icons - each show with a nice, solid Market - and use the Icon as your springboard into a story in an original universe aimed at a Market that's already been Made.

Just be sure that your philosophical (i.e. thematic) statement is encoded in an Iconic Image that is understood by the target market.  That can take some market-testing, but don't use people who know you personally. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Ethics on the Titanic

Last week I finally watched TITANIC, which one of our sons had urged me off and on to watch. It truly is a gripping movie, despite being over three hours long!

The conclusion seems to me to pose an ethical dilemma.

Of course, the story contains many moments of ethical crisis. The ship's officer who shoots men to stop them from forcing their way onto a lifeboat ahead of women and children. The ship's builders who, for either financial or aesthetic reasons, didn't include enough lifeboats in the first place. Rose's horrid fiance, who tricks the crew into letting him onto a boat by picking up a random little girl and implying he's her father. He acted from selfish motives and took a place someone else could have occupied, yet the child might have died if he hadn't gotten her on the boat in the course of saving his own life.

I'm mainly thinking, though, of the choice Rose makes after her rescue. I don't dispute that she would have been justified in breaking her engagement to the rich, selfish bully, whom she was supposed to marry just to save her mother and herself from financial ruin. Her mother could have sold the family property to pay off her late husband's debts, and Rose could have found honest work to support them. Her mother would have just had to get used to living in reduced circumstances. However, is Rose justified in assuming a new identity and leaving her mother to mourn her as dead for all the years to come? Not to mention that her mother's attitude toward financial security suggests that, without either Rose's support or the wealthy lifestyle they're accustomed to, the mother would probably be helpless. The audience is clearly expected to applaud Rose's choice of a clean break with her old life, but can it be argued that her decision is selfish? How far does an individual's "right to happiness" extend (using a problematic phrase C. S. Lewis discusses in one of his late essays, "We Have No Right to Happiness")?

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Believing In Happily Ever After Part 7 - The Writer's Lifestyle and Voice

Part 6 (which has a link to part 5 which links to previous parts of this series) is dated April 10, 2012:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/04/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-6.html

At the end of Part 6 we began talking about the trajectory of a writer's career and how it can be affected by decisions about what to write.

Look again at that quote from the screenwriting blog discussed in Part 6

http://gointothestory.blcklst.com/2012/02/screenwriting-101-jonathan-lemkin.html 

If you take "the wrong job" just because you've let your lifestyle drive you into needing a check, you will find the quality of your work deteriorating and it'll be harder to get another job (by this, the screenwriter is talking about WORK FOR HIRE -the exact business model that is freaking out L. J. Smith's fans.)

Here's something I know about Marion Zimmer Bradley.  She did take just anything that came along, writing, editing, odd jobs, anything!  She had kids to feed and bills to pay and she scrambled and scraped for years before the career triumph of having one of her novels made into a TV miniseries.

If you've read the Darkover novels in publishing order, you know that the quality of her work increased over the years.

But she did what that screenwriter is advising writers not to do.

What's the difference? 

Over her lifetime, Marion was a practitioner of many religions, an expert at considerable depth at many philosophies and worldviews.  She understood Tarot, Astrology, Magic, Christianity, Paganism, and much more.  She understood what they all have in common, the conclusion that behind it all there is a strong Hand that guides events. 

The theory of what that Hand is, where it comes from, how it manifests, how it treats this person differently from that person, etc etc -- all these mysteries of life, was always an open question for her, but one thing she always knew throughout all her adventures in life -- something is 'assigning' us our problems, and solving them makes us better, stronger and more able to solve the next one.

At least, that's what I saw (remember the commentary above here about memoir writing and facts) -- that's what I saw in her. 

That basic concept about the nature of reality is woven into all the Darkover novels she wrote, and it is something I think I was born with.  And so when I encountered the Darkover novels, I resonated to the stories in a way that was different from how I responded to other novels written at that time.

Marion, for the worldbuilding behind Darkover, invented a term for the psychic effects we experience as real but which somehow just can't be proved (or disproved actually). 

Science as we know it today is based on a "law" that Francis Bacon popularized, the system of empirical science based on the law of cause and effect.

Our whole Aristotelian worldview (I do hope you remember that from the Tarot posts) is based on cause and effect, establishing that when you do this, then subsequently because you did this, that happens.  This causes that.

Current politically correct philosophy insists that because cause/effect has worked so well to improve life on earth, that therefore there can and must be nothing else in reality except cause/effect.

Any phenomenon that is observed that can not be analyzed down to a cause/effect basis just isn't real.  Therefore it must be ignored.

Well, Happily Ever After is just exactly such a thing! 

Nobody has ever been able to nail the CAUSE for which the inevitable and repeatable, achievable by anyone EFFECT is Happiness, nevermind Ever After-ness!

Finding and marrying a Soul Mate is not a project one can embark upon by reading the textbook and performing the required actions.

So Marion came up with a catch-all term to lump together the entire non-scientific (not anti-scientific!!!) world of actions and events. 

She called the psychic and spiritual world "the non-causitive sciences."

As has been observed in Astrology for thousands of years before "science" was invented, very often the EFFECT can precede the CAUSE.

That is, what happens as a result of an action can happen before the action is taken. 

In modern science, this can be accounted for if you have been following developments at the edges of theoretical physics where the realm of magic is converging on the realm of science.  But we've still a long way to go.

So how does this apply to L. J. Smith?  I have no idea because I don't know L. J. Smith personally.  But the Vampire Diaries fans are resonating to her Voice which has to be inflected by her deepest philosophical notions, possibly notions she isn't even aware she has.  I keep finding such notions lurking inside myself, a constant revelation, so I assume others have them too.

So how is it that one writer can observe in himself and his compatriots in Hollywood that taking a job (writing a script) that is just for the paycheck can cause a deterioration in quality and marketability of the byline when another writer (in novels at the time) finds the exact opposite, that taking whatever COMES TO HAND increases skill quality and marketability?

I have a theory (well, 2 actually )about how that could be.  It might not be true, and might not apply to any of the writers mentioned here -- but it would surely make a grand foundation for a novel series.

There is a principle of Magic that says that if a Magician turns his/her Talent to lesser tasks than the Talent was gifted to him for, then the Talent will dissipate, not be renewed by the Higher Power that gifted him with it.

That could be what the screenwriter was observing. 

But there's another way to look at this process.

In Magic, there is a principle known as the Law of Abundance.

It's pretty well illustrated by the Biblical story of Mana -- how in the desert, when the Tribes camped, in the morning the ground would be covered in a dew-like substance that could be picked up and taken home to eat.  When eaten it would taste like whatever the person craved, and sustain them perfectly in energy and vitamins.

From that story is derived the concept that we work for this Higher Power, God Himself.  God pays our salaries, not the person who signs the check.

We are gifted with a Talent to make our way in the world, and a Lesson that we must learn and take out of the world with us when we die.  What work we are assigned is the work needed to learn that Lesson, and our Salary will come to us via another channel. 

In other words wealth itself is mana, or a Gift. 

In yet other words, your salary is not caused by your work.

Salary, sustenance, income, wealth are not part of the Scientific Universe. 

Work, tasks, difficulties, traumas, job, unemployment, success and failure, are not causes that directly result in wealth or poverty.

So, if you live in a world where there exists such a thing (right alongside Science and interacting with it smoothly and invisibly) as the non-causative sciences, then you accept whatever tasks, work, job, script contract that comes to you, and you do that work with all your might, all your strength, every last iota of Talent, ability, craft, and no-stone-unturned meticulous effort.

If you work with that attitude -- that the task is yours because God assigned it to you -- then you will, little by little, achieve the purpose of your life.

Meanwhile, sustenance will be provided, sometimes wealth, but inevitably happiness will accrue (even in poverty!). 

But wealth and happiness (two often incompatible things unless your Soul has achieved its lessons in this life) have to be understood not as a result of  what you do but of what you are, what you've made of yourself on a Soul level.  And it isn't a simple, scientifically understandable paradigm. 

The laws of cause and effect as they operate in material reality (Pentacles of the Tarot) do not apply at the level of Cups or Wands -- at least not exactly and without modification.

If you live in a science-only world, where no spiritual dimension exists or functions, then you have to believe that if you take on a shitty job writing some crap script for a very small paycheck, then you, yourself have caused your reputation to deteriorate so you can't get more work BECAUSE you made a wrong decision about what work to accept.

If you believe that your actions and your actions alone cause you to get work, then you must believe that your actions cause you to not-get work.

The belief that there is nothing but simple cause/effect operating in the world can become your religion, and anything that challenges that belief (such as an inevitable Happily Ever After) must be rejected with religious fervor.

If on the other hand you can understand your reality as managed by and even driven by a Higher Power, then you will look at your monetary problem in another way. 

You might conclude that you were given wealth beyond your spiritual level of development to handle (e.g. that you didn't give the 10% to Charity you should have) and so find yourself in poverty.  You will then pray, make ammends, pray real hard, and take whatever work comes along and do it with all your Talent and all your might.

This is what happens when people find themselves out of work and, despite pounding the pavement, can't find any opening.  So they go volunteer at a Hospital as a candy striper or at a Soup Kitchen or Homeless Shelter -- or teach Bible Study on Sundays, or whatever -- just DO something for others.

And then a break happens, out of nowhere for no reason anyone can see, and the person's life picks up, barreling hell bent for leather toward a Happily Ever After.

That's the stuff out of which stories are made because that's how real life really works.  (I know real people who've been through that process and I've followed the astrology of it all.)

So if you find yourself young, with writing Talent or storytelling Talent, you can regard that Talent as a "lethal weapon" with which to "wipe out the competition" and achieve Great Things (and maybe die of a drug overdose in some posh, or foreign, Hotel Room). 

After all, "you" are just a lump of meat, and it's a dog-eat-dog world.  You're never going to be Happy Ever After because there is no such thing -- there can't be because there's no such thing as a soul.  After all, brain research can account for every human trait and experience, including near-death and out-of-body so that proves there is no God.  What you, yourself do with your own hands is the only cause of events in your life.  So use your Talent to elbow your way to the top of the heap -- at least you can breathe a little up there.

OR -- you can look at the entire matter from different perspectives, not just that one narrow "Scientific" perspective.

Why did I put scientific in quotes?  Because real science keeps an open mind.  No matter how well proven any theory might be, it is always possible that NEW EVIDENCE can prove that theory wrong.  Science doesn't "believe" -- science only knows, and that knowledge is only tentative.

The Real Scientist admits of the possibility of the non-causal sciences -- even if she hasn't seen any evidence at all of such a thing.

It's possible to think it, so it might be true.  It might not be likely, and you might not want to bet your life on it -- but...

See?

So now read the following from my review column -- The False Hobson's Choice:

http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/columns/0212.html

That's part of a Series on Justice, and you'll find the index to the year 2012 reviews here:

http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2012/

That's my review column I've been writing for the paper magazine, The Monthly Aspectarian which is posted to their website lightworks.com then after the exclusive they paid me for has run out, it is archived on my site, http://simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/   

Science and Magic are not different things, not incompatible.  They are different coordinate systems, each useful for describing the same Universe.

A coordinate system is like a Point of View.  When writing a novel, you can shift the genre (remember the post on genre I linked here above) by shifting the point of view.

And that brings us back to the top of this topic.  A writer's LIFESTYLE "informs" the writer's "Voice" -- but Voice and Lifestyle are not connected by Cause/Effect -- they are interlaced via the non-causative sciences view of the universe. 

Some Voices irritate, send shudders through you.  Others soothe.  Others are as @MiriamSPia noted, boring. 

Boredom is, as most students of Magic know, the strongest of all Wards.

You want to keep something secret?  Make it boring. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com  
http://astore.amazon.com/simegen-20

Trademark Scams

For those who own trademarks, please be aware
that you will receive through the mail a great many
highly convincing scams telling you that fees
(which you do not owe) are "NOW DUE."

I believe that the true status of a trademark
registration is that it has to be updated every
five years.


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

Flying Cars Again

This one, apparently, will actually become commercially available in the near future:

Terrafugia Transition

It will cost you over $200,000, though, according to one of the other articles I discovered with a Google search. And is it a true "flying car"? One headline calls it a "roadable sport aircraft," which sounds more accurate. What kind of license will be required for driving (or piloting) this hybrid vehicle? Something more stringent than an ordinary driver's permit, I hope. You'd probably need to get a private pilot's license of some kind.

I don't expect to see ordinary commuters flitting around like George Jetson anytime soon. More reasonable would be having these "roadable aircraft" available for hire, like taxicabs, with trained pilots at the controls.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Believing In Happily Ever After Part 6 - The Writer's Lifestyle and Happily Ever After

Part 5 of this series is:
http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/02/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-5.html

On this blog, I talk a lot about the business model of being a professional writer, about writing craftsmanship, and I talk a lot about the Romance story requirement of the Happily Ever After ending.

I talk a lot on this blog about fiction, fictional worldbuilding, and crafting a good story.

But let's take a moment to look at how a writer crafts the story of their own life.

On Twitter in February 2012, I sat in on one of my favorite chats, #litchat, where the topic was about a lawsuit (that seems to have merit as it describes egregious wrongdoing, but that seems to me to hold hidden threats to writer's freedom to create and communicate).

Here's the URL to a brief description of the issue:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=146661802

So #litchat kicked around the issue of "truth in memoir writing" quite a bit, showing that many writers and readers have only begun to think about this topic, and consider it deeply.

In this particular case it seems a memoir writer fabricated actions and events that never occurred - on purpose - just to popularize the book and allegedly donate money to a charity -- which may never have occurred.

The facts of the case seemed to capture more attention than the legal principle I find alarming -- that a court can decide what is or is not factual in a memoir -- (not autobiography, not biography, but memoir). 

Since I'm in the midst of writing a memoir this intrusion of law into subjectivity gives me a different perspective.  Call a spade a spade, I was freaked out by this lawsuit article!

The next day I ran into a post -- I think it was on google+ -- on a blog by a teenager who wants to become a writer (and likes the kind of stuff I like) who was just as freaked out by a discovery on literary contract law that I've known about since I was younger than she is. 

The post was about L. J. Smith (author of Vampire Diaries) losing control of her product, and her byline, and all her titles, having the publisher hire writers to write more stories in her universe under her byline.

That sort of thing has been "business as usual" in publishing, especially YA, longer than I've been alive, so ho-hum-yawn for me but a major freaking-out-discovery for this young writer-to-be. 

When I learned about this standard practice in publishing, I already had decided I wanted to be a writer (not that I would, but that I wanted to) but was only mildly curious that some of my favorite novel series (Nancy Drew for example) were written by a lot of different writers under the same byline.  I just wondered how they managed that miracle and wanted to be part of it. 

Here's the post by this very talented teen writer:

http://parafantasy.blogspot.com/2012/02/this-is-utterly-ridiculousi-cant-even.html

Now, keep in mind the memoir writer who "sold out" for money, the idealistic teenager getting a taste of real life as a writer -- considering the biggest thing in writing news these years is Harry Potter, and the writer writing all her own story and benefiting from it all, she has a reason to believe writers keep what they earn -- and put this together with how L. J. Smith is being hammered for being successful.

Think about Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and her legal battle to keep hold of her St. Germain as a Vampire concept.  (she won, but just barely, and only after years of court battles during which she had to switch to writing about Olivia and other female vampires who were "made" by St. Germain.)

When I learned about multiple YA authors writing a series under a joint byline with the worldbuilding and byline being created by publishers, I also learned that Films and TV drama were written the same way, though authors would get byline credit. 

I later learned that byline credit could be extremely fictitious, too!  But since I wanted to 'be a writer' I was merely interested in how they managed all that and still got paid.  (I now know that sometimes they don't get paid!  Getting paid is a different issue!) 

I do hope you've been following the blog by one of my favorite Hollywood writers who "tells it like it is" in Hollywood from a writer's point of view:

Here's an example:
http://allan-cole.blogspot.com/2012/02/follow-bouncing-beach-ball-part-two-and.html 

Yes, this is "The" Allan Cole!!! 

Here's the masthead of his blog:
---------
Tales sometimes tall, but always true, of Allan Cole's years in Hollywood with his late partner, Chris Bunch. How a naked lady almost became our first agent. How we survived Galactica 1980, with only the loss of half our brain cells. How Bunch & Cole became the ultimate fix-it boys. How an alleged Mafia don was very, very good to us. The guy who cornered the market on movie rocks. Why they don't make million dollar movies. And many more.
-------------

Now, with all this background in mind, I run into the following post on a blog that usually has very interesting, salient, and informative entries:

http://gointothestory.blcklst.com/2012/02/screenwriting-101-jonathan-lemkin.html

Here's the blog entry that caught my attention this time, just a quote in isolation from the context (which I am familiar with but don't think much about):

-----------------
THE SCREENWRITING BLOG OF THE BLACK LIST
Screenwriting 101: Jonathan Lemkin
Posted on February 14, 2012 by Scott

“If you let your lifestyle expend your last check, you then say yes to a really bad project to keep the checks coming. The quality of your work goes down, your reputation goes down, and it’s harder to get the next job. I’ve definitely taken the wrong job a couple of times, and it’s very hard to do your best work if you’re feeling like, ‘Oh, this is the wrong job.’”

– Jonathan Lemkin (Lethal Weapon 4), excerpted from “Tales from the Script”
--------------------

OK, now back to the main subject I blog about here, how to raise the reputation of ROMANCE GENRE - but in particular science fiction Romance, Paranormal Romance being a real focus (since I write vampires in love).

One of my followers on twitter @MiriamSPia (a writer, surprise-surprise!) commented on a guest post I did for another beginning writer who had asked on yet another blog post about the challenges of cold-pitching a project at an agent or editor at a convention (being SF fans, they are planning on being at the Worldcon in Chicago 2012 -- worldcon.org for info).

The Guest post was for @Madison_Woods and it's in two parts.  Here's the first part which discusses the origin of Genre showing how a new writer can use a particular understanding of genre to create a pitch that will sell.

http://madisonwoods.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/genre-tuesday-guest-post-from-jaqueline-lichtenberg-part-1/

It went up on Valentine's Day, at the same moment as the following post which I did for Alien Romances:

http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/02/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-5.html 

which discusses the TV Series ONCE UPON A TIME.

Miriam commented on twitter:
I think its that "happily ever after" may seem boring and peaceful to outsiders.

As I've established in my posts here about Happily Ever After -- and the other posts linked in those posts mostly about how a writer uses THEME to do "worldbuilding,"  my best analysis is that the ability to suspend disbelief and enter a world ( remember "liminal" from the Genre Guest post) where there is a genuine threat that a situation will finally resolve with a Happily Ever After Ending (yes, threat! - to some people happiness is more threat than reward) depends entirely on the ability to include GOD in your model of the universe.

That doesn't mean you have to be "religious" or "spiritual" or anything like that.

It simply means you need to be able to STIPULATE that maybe there could be such an extra-reality entity orchestrating events, creating souls.  Some people can't stipulate that premise -- it's just way to scary.  So they can't cross that "liminal" threshold that the Guest Poster prior to my Guest Post talked about in such scholarly terms. 

Here's the guest post about "liminal" experience:
http://madisonwoods.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/genre-tuesday-with-dr-harrison-solow/ 

To accept the idea that there is HAPPINESS in finding a SOUL MATE -- you need to accept the idea of SOUL, which means humans aren't just meat.  There's something else to us.

What that is, where it came from and how it works can be open questions, but they have to be questions somewhere in the reader's psyche.

Now, for those who have followed my posts here on Tarot and Astrology, you know that I've used these esoteric tools to show you how to do the worldbuilding (hopefully invisible to the reader) that supports the foundations of story upon which you can build a plausible relationship that hurtles toward an "inevitable" Happily Ever After resolution of the main conflict.

Here are index posts to those posts in case you missed them:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_23.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/04/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me.html

The sense of "hurtling" and the sense of "inevitability" of the Happily Ever After ending do come from using tools in those index posts, yes, but they also come from the way the writer herself lives her personal life, and her professional life.  Or maybe it's vice-verso -- that you live a certain way because you understand such tools.

As I pointed out, these aren't the only philosophical tools around that produce this effect.  Choose your own tools, but master them to the point where they are fully integrated not just into your novels but into your life.

Examine what this teenager writer-to-be has said, (and what the comments on that post add up to) about how precious L. J. Smith's "touch" on this Vampire Diaries material is.

Think about the severe shift in the "feel" of the Darkover novels after Marion Zimmer Bradley was no longer writing them -- that transition is less jarring because the turnover to her successor was gradual as she became too ill to do the actual work.

What exactly is that quality that we treasure so much in the VIBRATION that a particular writer injects into material?  We often term that the writer's "voice" and it's terribly illusive for new writers to get a handle on.

The truth is you can't hear your own voice the way others hear it (not even in recordings, and not when reading words you have written).

One vital ingredient in a writer's "voice" is how they live their lives, professionally and personally.

Look again at that quote from the screenwriting blog. 

If you take "the wrong job" just because you've let your lifestyle drive you into needing a check, you will find the quality of your work deteriorating and it'll be harder to get another job (by this, the screenwriter is talking about WORK FOR HIRE -the exact business model that is freaking out L. J. Smith's fans.)

Here's something I know about Marion Zimmer Bradley.  She did take just anything that came along, writing, editing, odd jobs, anything!  She had kids to feed and bills to pay and she scrambled and scraped for years before the career triumph of having one of her novels made into a TV miniseries.

If you've read the Darkover novels in publishing order, you know that the quality of her work increased over the years.

But she did what that screenwriter is advising writers not to do.

What's the difference? 

We'll look carefully at that difference next week in Part 7 of Believing In Happily Ever After.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

You can find my January 2012 release THE FARRIS CHANNEL and 11 other books in that series (some by Jean Lorrah), plus my other novels, 3 with audiobook versions at
http://astore.amazon.com/simegen-20

The New "Buried Alive"

The May 2012 issue of DISCOVER magazine contains an excerpt from "The Undead: Organ Harvesting, the Ice-Water Test, Beating Heart Cadavers -- How Medicine Is Blurring The Line Between Life And Death" by Dick Teresi.

I was shocked to read that the American organ transplant industry is so profitable (for everyone except the donor, the donor's family, and the donor's estate!) that doctors and hospitals (who are paid finders' fees) will torture and butcher (without anaesthetic) "suitable" donors, even if those so-called brain dead, beating heart cadavers draw breath on their own, or flinch in pain, or respond when their nipples or penises are stroked, or have a heart attack or seizure.

Torture may be too strong a word. Doctors establish brain death by pouring ice water into their (hopefully) unreceptive and unresponsive patient's ears and subjecting limbs to "the most intensely painful stimuli".

At least, in Europe, these "beating heart cadavers" are given anaesthesia while their hearts, livers, kidneys, corneas, lungs and so forth are being removed. Just in case. In America, unresponsive organ donors receive no such consideration.

The author, Dick Teresi, points out that anyone who goes under general anaesthetic for routine surgery is
technically put into a state of brain death. Temporarily. The only difference between being "under" for surgery and passing the Beating Heart Cadaver test is that the former state is not "irreversible" and the later state is deemed "irreversible" by a physician.

I'm troubled by the possibility that the physician who might do the deeming, might also be paid a finder's fee. Whatever happened to "First, Do No Harm"?

I lived in Europe during the decade of mad cow disease. Therefore, I am not permitted to donate blood. I've offered. I've tried. Now, I wonder whether I ought to get myself a nice, tasteful tattoo in a clear font explaining my unsuitability as a donor.

Anyway, I thought that the historical horror stories of coffins scratched from the inside were bad. I thought that the assembly-line organ-harvesting machine in Lexx was grisly!

Rebuttal to Cracked.com

I just came across a rebuttal to the article, cited in my last post, about "5 Ways Men Are Trained to Hate Women":

Misogyny

This blogger has a lot of good points. However, I don't think she's accurate in saying the Cracked essay claims men want sex and women don't. Its premise (as I read it) is that men are controlled by their sex drive in a way women aren't, which is a different matter. Am I misreading one or both of these essays?

Are Men Trained to Hate Women?

Here’s an essay on Cracked.com about “5 Ways Modern Men Are Trained to Hate Women”:

Cracked

Now, this is a satirical website, so there’s obviously a bit of exaggeration involved—but also a considerable amount of unsettling frankness. Images and plotlines in popular media teach males that, like the heroes of adventure thrillers, they’re “entitled” to a hot woman and within their rights to be angry at all females if they don’t get this “prize” that they’re “owed.” Really? Men always seek power and status mainly to impress women? On an evolutionary, biology-driven level, okay. As a conscious, personal motivation? I’m skeptical. Some men must have other motives for pursuing success (to impress other men, for one thing).

By the time I finished reading this essay, I sympathized with the hypothetical woman mentioned in the text, who reacts, when the elements of this mindset are explained to her, as if she’s just realized all men are “secretly werewolves.”

Two other thoughts that crossed my mind:

The ideal fictional hero (created by a female author) with whom the typical romance heroine falls in love doesn’t display these attitudes. The blog gives an example from a scene by a male novelist in which it’s clear that the author imagines women think about themselves the same way men think about them. It’s probably almost as hard for a woman, no matter how long and happily married, to get inside a man’s head.

If the typical adventure story (e.g., a James Bond movie) portrays heterosexual relationships from the man’s viewpoint and shows the woman as a “prize” the hero will “get” at the end of his quest, a romance novel differs from the default of most other genres by portraying these relationships from the woman’s angle. And from the two sexes’ viewpoints the relationship dynamics apparently look quite different.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

The Education of an Action Romance Hero

Officially,  the 2005 film titled SAHARA is described thusly:
---
Master explorer Dirk Pitt goes on the adventure of a lifetime of seeking out a lost Civil War battleship known as the "Ship of Death" in the deserts of West Africa while helping a UN doctor being hounded by a ruthless dictator. (124 mins.)
Director: Breck Eisner
Stars: Matthew McConaughey, Penélope Cruz, Steve Zahn, William H. Macy
---
There are a lot of DVD's on Amazon titled SAHARA - this is the 2005 movie about treasure hunters looking for a battleship in the desert -- As I was watching ( logging the SAVE THE CAT! "beats" with part of my mind), I was imagining the story I would have written:  LIKE THIS: “ Indiana Jones on Tatooine with McGiver for a sidekick and Captain Kirk in orbit ”


The film SAHARA also reminds me of the Action-Romance film ROMANCING THE STONE -- the two-guys-and-a-tough-gal in a chase/battle for life and limb (with larger stakes beyond themselves) format is now an entrenched classic, though there was a time when the gal was only there to be rescued and do stupid things to get caught again.

Looking at the dates - early 1980's to just before 2008, I think these films hit big because they were hammering away at a stereotype the people of theater-going-age desperately wanted to break (all females are helpless, or if not, are "Evil.")  Power in the hands of a woman turns Dark, or destroys the woman.

Today, (2012) we have NEW STEREOTYPES that the teens of this time will hammer away at.  These are recently born stereotypes, almost too new to be called cliche.  Yet the rate of change in our society has exploded to the point where the brand new stereotype is an old cliche before the movies to challenge it have been shown in theaters.

We're seeing those challenges I think in the "Indie" market - the films made on low budget by the brilliant producers honing their craft on YouTube and Vimeo.

The question the beginning writer must answer is, "What are today's stereotypes?"

I suspect you'll find a lot of answers by examining the condition of "the family" in today's world.

Statistics recently posted indicate that a man and a woman who marry and raise their kids in a structured, family environment, have a much MUCH lower chance of unemployment, poverty, -- and I haven't yet seen the statistic but I suspect someone is crunching numbers on the juvenile delinquency rate.  We do have a "bullying" problem erupting in the early grades of schools, a precursor to real trouble in life (both for the bully and the victim).

One development we have seen between 1980 and 2010 is the advent in the Romance Genre of the novel centering on the divorced or single-parent woman finding true romance the second (or third) time around, despite having attained a sense of total independence -- or perhaps because of it.

The broken family mends, might be the theme of that sub-genre.

The stereotype that may be forming (to be broken soon) would be that seen by the children of these "broken" marriages -- the next generation looking back and seeing "family" and the distaste, strife, and even real hatred between their parents and their grandparents.

"The Family" broke during those decades along two axes -- horizontally via divorce rate, and vertically as children found the "generation gap" (that has always existed) widening beyond comprehension.

It's probably not irrelevant to include the advent of the internet as a household utility between 1980 and 2010.  The cell phone revolution of the 1990's just added fuel to the fire.  Social networking, Web 2.0 and up, ebooks, and a whole new curriculum in the schools widen that vertical gap.

I do hope by now you've all read Alvin Toffler's non-fiction book, FUTURE SHOCK -- he predicted all this and more.  If you are looking for the next stereotype to break and sell a blockbuster movie, read that book.
Toffler notes that the public school system in the U.S.A. (an innovation that changed the world, PUBLIC schooling) has always been the tool of industry, politically dominated in such a way as to turn out workers suitable for the jobs that industry needs to fill.

The nature of the jobs needing filling has shifted markedly in this 30 year period -- to the point where those educated in the 1980's public schools don't qualify for modern jobs unless they've acquired more certificates or skills, degrees, and resume items in between.

The "covert curriculum" that Toffler points out prevailed in the 1970's actually cripples folks for the workforce today -- it shifted and then shifted again.  But then in the 1990's or so, the covert curriculum in the schools was turned much more "overt" -- saying "on the nose" that the purpose of schooling is to prepare you to work a job rather than to educate you to think for yourself.

Some of this peaked as the Unions became powerful enough to challenge industry's control of the job market, setting the idea that the monetary compensation for a "job" should be determined by what the worker thinks it should be - not what the employer thinks the job actually produces.

And another notion ebbed and flowed all the way into the university level -- that the purpose of education was to learn certain things are true, and others are not true.  That the world "should" be this way, but never "that" way.

I've had some long, deep conversations with teachers retiring from the workforce who have taught at the High School and college levels (and I know some Middle School teachers too) who have felt this shifting wind of philosophy altering the textbooks.

Two rules I've seen imposed that exemplify this shift creating a new stereotype that new films will attack:

A) If one student in a class misbehaves, punish the entire class.  There are no individuals, just the group, and the whole group is responsible for the behavior of individuals.

B) Never allow students to read ahead in the textbook, or ask questions from the "next chapter."  The full weight of Teacher Authority must squash any notion that a student should teach themselves without supervision.

The covert curriculum thus becomes control of the group by authority.

Now this is not yet entirely visible across the nation, not at all.  It turns up here and there, gets dismissed, turns up again, and is tossed out.  Parents get outside tutoring for their children, take them to dance and music classes and all those things that break the grip of the public school authority.

But just anecdotal evidence from teachers I've spoken to indicates it's a rising tide not a receding one.  The children who grew up trained by authority not to teach themselves are almost at the level of being in charge of things.  The main result of having gone through school being punished for the misbehavior of others (over whom we have no control) is to hammer at government to CONTROL the misbehavior of others lest it hurt us.

Safety from the misbehavior of others and a deep seated conviction (irrational as it may be) that we can't solve problems that haven't been solved before, may be creating an even wider generation gap, or a very wide gap between spouses.

In the 1970's, the biggest business and the biggest category of self-help books was the DO-IT-YOURSELF industry (father of Home Depot).  Today, you don't do-it-yourself, you go to Home Depot and ask a clerk how to do it and what to buy.

The oldest joke since the popularization of the automobile is the difference between the husband and wife as they try to find an unfamiliar location.  Ask or read the map?  That's gone now by the GPS!

So, the writer should be asking, "Will the imposition of Authority over Thinking For Yourself bring us together and heal the Family?"

 At one time, "Father Knows Best" -- a man was King of his Castle and the wife had to shut up and take orders.  That let at least half the people in the world vent their frustrations at being bossed around at work on their stay-at-home-do-nothing-but-rest-all-day spouse.

Did we have healthy family dynamics then?  Do we need to go "back" to that?  Or forward into something new that's never been tried before in human history?

In the film SAHARA the characters are on a treasure hunt -- and they find more than they were looking for, but only after harrowing, near-death experiences that only miracles could rescue them from (yes like INDIANA JONES).

Take the beat structure from SAHARA, strip out the subject matter, and replace it with THE FAMILY.  That's the treasure the treasure hunter searches for - the HEA.

Remember in the HEA ending, the Happily Ever After of the Romance story, the result of happiness is children (one way or another).  That means HEA is the equivalent of FOUNDING A FAMILY though "Romance Genre" doesn't usually deal with after the wedding.

Ancestry.com is a very big and growing web-based enterprise now.  People are curious about their distant heritage (even if they hate their parents).

Yes, I know, you don't hate your parents -- nor do I.  But if you watch a few TV series, you'll see the modern "cliche" stereotype when the parents come to visit.  There's always anticipation of strife, and then really serious strife -- sometimes it's resolved in the show, or at least partially, but the RIFT between generations is routinely portrayed as so common it doesn't need explaining to the audience.

The other thing you see mentioned offhandedly with the implication that the audience understands the nature of the strife implied -- that's the phrase "my Ex"  -- everyone has an Ex and knows what meetings with him/her mean.  Strife.  Galore.

The reason Romance Genre doesn't deal with "after the wedding" is that we, as a culture, now expect Family Life to be fraught with strife.  There's me vs. my parents.  There's spouse vs. spouse's parents.  There's me vs. my spouse's parents.  There's my spouse vs. my parents.  Children only make it worse.  Then there's his children from a prior marriage vs. my children from a prior marriage.

Remember THE BRADY BUNCH?  Could you put that on TV today and make it a hit?  Why was it a hit then?  (1969 and a film in 1995)



It was a hit because divorce had become common, but "The Family" was still strong.  An amalgamated family was plausible because despite the inherent strife between generations, Family was plausible in a way it is not today.

Remember The Waltons TV Series?

The Waltons On Amazon

Remember Little House on the Prairie?


If you don't remember them, you can probably get them streaming on Netflix etc.

As a writer, you have to learn to discern the intended audience's characteristics and interests by looking at the piece of fiction with a writer's eye.  But just because you're studying one thing, don't think you are allowed to forget everything else you've studied. 

One of the things with WRITING as a craft, discipline, business, and artform is that you must teach yourself in defiance of most every teacher you've ever had in a formal school setting.

In truth, nobody can teach you.  Honestly.  There are a lot of expensive courses in writing all over the web now, but the truth is none of them will do you any good at all unless you are completely free of the ideas in A) and B) above -- that you get punished if someone else misbehaves and that you must not look ahead in the textbook.

In fact, that trick of looking ahead in the textbook is the one thing that got me through college.  The very first day when I got the syllabus that said what the textbook would be, I'd run to the bookstore and get the books, then while in waiting rooms, around anywhere I was, I'd be reading the textbooks from back to front -- that's right, BACKWARDS, starting with the index and ending with the table of contents, until I understood what the course was about, what the underlying covert-curriculum thrust underneath the material actually was (whether the professor knew it or not, and it was usually NOT).

When I went to college, professors and TA's didn't take role call, didn't know or care whether you were in class (unless there was a pop quiz you needed to score on).  If you knew your stuff, you got the grade commensurate with what you knew.  They did not grade "on the curve" -- everyone in the class could get an A or an F and the administration wouldn't blink.  Everyone had an equal shot at an A because no rule forced the teacher to sort the class by statistics.

All you had to do was take the mid-terms and final.  Sometimes you didn't need to bother with the mid-terms if you aced the Final.  Some courses you could get credit for by just taking the Final before the course was given (History was one of those).  It was called "placing out" of the course to satisfy a pre-requisite for some other course.  Some courses didn't have mid-terms or quizzes.  A term paper and a final was your only chance.  Nobody cared whether you lived or died, and the other students didn't even know your name.  In that environment, you grow up fast or you flunk out.

There was no hand-holding or encouragement.  All that baby-ing of students stopped for me in 12th grade.  And I thought that was fine.  I had known it was coming and was looking forward to it with relish.  As soon as the hand-holding stopped, my grade-point-average shot up. 

The maturity gained from being treated like that is what I see lacking in today's college age people.  It takes them years after college to attain that level of maturity.  I strongly suspect that the cohesiveness of  FAMILY illustrated in those TV Series comes from having been educated in elementary school the way I was educated in college. 

I suspect that because I know that is how my parents were educated in grammar school and that's where they learned how to teach me to go to college and succeed.

That lesson is one of the reasons I love my parents.  They turned me loose in the world with a fully mature sense of self at about age 15 when I got my driver's license.  At that time license-age was 15 1/2, and kids that age had never smoked a cigarette or taken a drink of hard liquor, not because it was forbidden but because it was uninteresting and irrelevant.  I'm not kidding, this culture has changed that much that fast.

That environment where you must achieve certain goals without anyone supervising you to force you to do the work creates a sense of individuality -- a sense of Identity.  You don't have to do the 1960's thing of "finding yourself" because your Self emerges strong, very early in life, and can never be threatened by anyone else's behavior or misbehavior.

The key, I think, is that covert curriculum item of "nobody cares whether you live or die" -- what you do doesn't affect whether they succeed so they have no stake in you failing (thus no bullying).  No grading on a curve means how well you do doesn't depend  on how poorly someone else does.  Thus there's no reason to hate, resent, or undermine other students.

It is that strong sense of individual self that is the absolute bedrock requirement for the ability to Pair-Bond, i.e. to experience ROMANCE that leads to the HEA not to just another fling ir at best the HFN (Happily For Now).

Now, go back to the film SAHARA.  Like ROMANCING THE STONE this film has a back-and-forth, rescuing and rescued, between a guy and gal who eventually do get to have their dream-date-on-a-beach.

These films depict the forging of a Pair-Bonded Relationship based on two people having that strong sense of Self.  That kind of educational experience I outlined that produces Heroes (no wonder women were excluded from college, from becoming doctors and Lawyers -- they might then become Heroes.)

Remember the film LEGALLY BLONDE?


Remember we're talking about hammering at stereotypes?  The "dumb blonde" is a big one, and the dumb blonde beauty who's a lawyer?  Think about that in terms of the "nobody cares if you live or die" educational method producing Heroes instead of herds of cattle or nice tractable, obedient soldiers or employees all in a row.

That "nobody cares if you live or die" is the feeling that the street urchin gets, the tough street kid who grows up to be a boss (Mob or otherwise).

Now there's a difference in the effect of receiving that attitude at the age of say, 8, and at the age of 18.

FIRST must come the warmth, coddling, and protection of a strong family environment.  THEN comes being thrown out into the cold, cruel world to fend for yourself.  If you're never thrown out, or are thrown out too late in life, you never develop the ability to fend for yourself.  You remain dependent and in need of protection (read some Regency Romances written prior to say 1980, then some from today which overlay today's woman on the Regency heroine.)

So, given cell phones and social networking peer support groups that parents know nothing about, what kind of pair-bonding potential will this new generation have built into them?  (We're looking for the stereotype that will be popular to attack, don't forget that.)

If family bonds that are both vertical and horizontal are now shattered beyond repair, what next set of bonds are under attack?  And by what tools?

We've seen the advent of the "flash mob."  We've seen it used to attack social order by robbing stores for fun and profit; or even by robbing stories in the name of demanding justice for a kid shot by a Neighborhood Watch fellow.

We've seen flashmobs used to build a strong community (actually coming together to clean garbage off a street or spend time gardening or building houses for the poor.)

The flash-mob by itself is a neutral development, but the purpose a group chooses will be the result of the values of the individuals in the group.

Is the flash-mob itself our next stereotype or cliche to be hammered by a great film?

Remember the film, You've Got Mail?




Is school bullying the stereotype to attack?

Look carefully at this selection of films and TV series and ponder what the current set of 10 year olds (born in 2002) will be 10 years from now.  If you start on a film script today, that's about when it will hit the theaters.  Most original novels take about 5 years from "Idea!" to published book.  10 years for a First Novel isn't out of the ballpark.

Don't dismiss any of this famous-film-based perspective on our fiction market from your mind when you watch the political gyrations and contortions flow out of your TV News or Videos online.  If you can think both these kinds of thoughts at the same time, you'll have the belly-laugh of a lifetime!  "LEGALLY BLONDE indeed!"  Politics is, first and foremost, entertainment.  To understand politics (especially the ads on TV) you must understand the fiction market.

Also scrutinize the political map of the USA vs population density.  Notice how the fiction markets of New York and California differ from those of Kansas and Nebraska, then compare with Florida and Ohio.  A novel has to sell in all those markets, and a film must be a hit in New York and California to survive the first day in the theaters.

For reviews of 5 novels in terms of Tarot cards that represent their plot/theme structure, with a further discussion of  the concept of what is (or is not) "Fair" in our current culture, see my April review column, now archived here:  http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2012/

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

No Laughing Matter

It was with great dismay that I read law professor Stuart P. Green's NYT opinion piece titled  
When Stealing Isn’t Stealing
 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/opinion/theft-law-in-the-21st-century.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1



How many people glanced at the piece, took in the credentials of the eminent author, registered the standard
copyright infringers' argument that"sharing" isn't stealing, and entirely missed the point that the good professor
does not condone copyright infringement?


I respectfully disagree with the professor's argument that copyright owners use the wrong terminology when they
compare copyright infringement to stealing.


How many law professors publish opinions that IDENTITY theft should not be called "identity THEFT"?

Mar 19, 2012 – Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in the U.S., with over nine million victims each year.

Try googling "When Identity Theft Isn't Theft".

Someone's identity isn't tangible property, any more than intellectual property is tangible, yet most sensible people agree that Identity Theft is THEFT and Fraud, and "theft" is an appropriate and widely accepted term to use for that crime.

How long does it take to establish a valuable identity? In some cases, one only has to be born. Far less active work goes into one's identity than an author puts into writing a work of fiction. 

One spends nothing to create an identity, but an author could easily spend $40,000 or more in time, materials, equipment, licenses, services, advertising etc etc in the course of creating a full-length novel.


Please consider that in many cases of copyright infringement, a form of identity theft does indeed take place. As does fraud.

Authors' identities are stolen for the specific, limited purpose of "sharing" their works without their knowledge or permission and in violation of various laws.

The Terms Of Service for many hosting sites state that only the author of a work may upload the work.
Similarly, auction sites state that only the copyright owner may sell an e-book, or collection of ebooks. One prominent auction site obliges "Sellers" to publish statements that the e-books they are selling are their own, or are in the public domain.

Copyright infringers falsely and fraudulently purport to BE the author and  claim to OWN the copyright, sometimes to tens of thousands of copyrighted works by living authors. 

Copyright Infringers do not pay attention to hosting sites' default settings intended for the use of copyright owners (authors/musicians) who wish to distribute their works freely under Creative Commons Licenses. Therefore, the hosting site explicitly advertises that these (copyrighted works) are in the public domain, or that they are shareware, or that they are GNU licensed for free sharing.

This is not true. 

Unfortunately, the DMCA does not require these sites to verify that their users make truthful representations, and it does not require the sites to use reasonable judgement, even when a User appears to believe that he/she is simultaneously Nora Roberts, James Patterson, John Grisham, Clive Cussler, Barack Obama, Georgette Heyer and a couple of thousand erotica authors as well.


The law is an equine ass.

The result is that every day, more and more internet users believe that current bestsellers are in the public domain, and that there is nothing illegal about uploading e-books to file hosting/sharing sites and publishing and distributing them to all the world. 

Moreover, copyright infringers claim to be "Non Profit" and make money from advertising and subscriptions and donations and bounties "for traffic" paid by hosting sites.... while "finding" illegally uploaded e-books and distributing copies for profit. Their subscribers wish to believe that it is lawful to upload and download new movies before they open in cinemas, and new books before they are released for sale.


How can people possibly believe that a book or a movie is in the public domain before it is even released for sale? Perhaps because teachers and law professors tell them that Stealing isn't Stealing if they would not have paid to see the movie or read the book if it hadn't been available free?  You think?

Copyright infringement does not stop with "sharing" in private yahoogroups and on "sharing" sites. Auction site users believe that it is perfectly legal for them to copy tens of thousands of modern ebooks --from these hosting sites and torrents and yahoogroups and SocialGo sites-- onto DVDs, and to sell those collections.


Those who purchase these "thousand-ebook collections formatted for Kindle or Nook or what-have-you" go on to Re-Sell the collections again and again, and believe with a passion that what they are doing is both incredibly profitable and legal.


It isn't.


What is more, when one reads the Feedback left for these Mass Copyright Infringers, time and again their satisfied customers say, "I will never have to buy another book in my life!" 

Chances are, if readers have 200,000 modern bestsellers in 10 different genres on their e-book readers and on DVD, they indeed will never buy another book.


That's no joke.


All the best,

Rowena Cherry
SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/