Rants & Observations

In light of the recent reader-generated digressions in comments to a previous post, that’s a fair question. It was asked to me privately by someone I like who was asking out of concern for me—out of fear that I was being too much myself on my weblog, and not enough the sort of person readers would expect me to be.

So I’ll answer from that angle—to the person who likes me and is afraid my honesty and bluntness are hurting me.

My writing diary/ weblog is not some carefully packaged promotional tool that I use to “build readership,” “market my books,” or any of the rest of that crap. It’s the place where I discuss writing and other things that are important to me.

Let me say that again. It matters.

This is where I discuss writing and other things that are important to me.

I’m going to take a moment to explain why that matters, and I’m going to break it down by section, so you will see where I’m coming from, and understand why, on occasion, I am not gentle or “nice” with someone who comments here.

First, writing.

Aside from my love for my family and friends, writing is at the core of how I make my life meaningful to myself.

Words matter. Words and what they mean and how you relate to them change your thinking, your actions, your philosophy, your existence.

I don’t write for you. I write for me. I write to create the stories I want to read, the stories that I cannot find on bookshelves, the stories that are about more than just a relationship, or just an adventure. I want to read stories written from a coherent, well-thought-out viewpoint, where the worldbuilding has been created and not copied, where the characters are doing things important to them, where the underlying theme is about something important.

I don’t want to read about puppets of destiny becoming king of the world, and I don’t want to read about helpless, stupid women being rescued from their lives by good-looking men with no brains. Especially, I don’t want to read about those women and those men if them hooking up is the whole story. What are they about? What is their story about? If neither is about anything I consider valuable, I don’t need them.

So I am writing stories that I personally consider important, and I am fortunate that what I love is what enough other people want to read that I have been able to make a career of writing.

If you like my books, that’s fantastic. If you don’t, there are countless other books by countless other writers where you’ll be able to find what you do like. Or, if you’re a lot like me, there won’t be any, or many, and you end up writing the books you wanted to read and couldn’t find anywhere else.

More on writing—this time how I connect writing with other people who also love writing.

My life is joyful and exuberant because I am doing what I love. There is enough of the missionary left over from my childhood that I want to be able to share the best of what I have discovered about writing and how to be good at it with people who also love to write. And who are willing to do the work themselves once pointed in the right direction.

I’m not big on handholding. If you want to be a writer, you have to be willing to do the work, and there’s a lot of work involved.

If you’re willing to work, though, I’ll bend over backwards to show you exactly what I’ve done, what has worked for me and what has failed for me, because I know that even though a writing life is financially hard sometimes, (especially if it’s your actual income), it’s a great life in which you wake up every day glad to be alive—and if you want to do that, I think you should be able to. And I’ll make what I’ve learned available to you in a variety of forms so that you can create your own best life.

I still won’t read what you’ve written, (unless I ask you for a sample, as in the Writer Crash Tests), and I still am not available for one-on-one mentoring at any price because I have my writing, I have my writing courses, and I have my family—and that’s a full plate.

Other things that matter to me, and that I from time to time discuss here.

At the core of who I am is the knowledge that our lives matter to others whether we choose to make them matter to ourselves or not. If you choose to make your life matter by making it valuable to you and acting for your own personal highest good, other people as well as you will benefit. If you think your life is of no value, then you will suffer, the people who love you will suffer, because you will act in self-destructive or outwardly destructive ways. If you choose to force your own values on others, destruction will again result.

From this basis, I hold sacred both freedom of religion and political freedom, because each of those freedoms allows every individual to pursue his own highest good without oppression.

I detest both religion and politics because both demand a “buy-in”—the revocation of personal reason either through a requirement for faith in the unprovable, or in agreement with a party platform “for the greater good”—and both religions and governments are institutions of oppression that coerce behavior from the unwilling through overt force (voluntary income tax?) or the threat of force (a.k.a. “You’re gonna burn in Hell for that one, Sparkie.”)

So I speak here about things I see going on in the world around me from this viewpoint. I riff on the idiocy of the global warming theory, I point out drifts I see from freedom toward oppression in such legal issues as the right to die movement or abortion, I point out the intellectual dishonesty of a women’s movement that has drifted from equal pay for equal work to declaring a woman who murdered her children a “victim.” And I note the inexorable creep of political parties and special interest groups to create division among people, encouraging everyone to pick sides against those different from themselves, playing the politics of race, religion, and special interest as a classic Roman “divide and conquer” ploy that, no matter the party in power, always leaves more power in the hands of the government, and less in the hands of the people.

You are encouraged not to trust those different from you, because they are out to get you. The guys on the other side of your personal issues, whatever they may be, are encouraged to do the same. Meanwhile, the government steps in and says, “Here, let us protect you from them.” And you lose your rights in return for safety from something that never threatened you in the first place.

And all of that comes down to this.

This is my space. It is an extension of my living room, where you are an invited guest. This is, however, my place to say what I think, and I won’t pretend to be someone I’m not in order to appease some small god of marketing who thinks my sales would be better if I were plastic and fake.

And in my place, I have a few rules.

First and foremost, freedom of speech belongs to the one who owns the press, and this place is mine. I reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason. Most I will let stand, but I have no intention of letting troublemakers and jerks run rampant across my comments, any more than I would tolerate such behavior in my home.

Next, I am as kind to my guests as they are to me.

You want to discuss things, I’ll discuss them as I have the time. You have questions, ditto. I will not seek an argument or pick a fight.

If you seek to debate, I may decide to play if you’re interesting and if I have time. I like to debate. I like to test out my philosophy against an opponent who holds an opinion different than mine, simply to see if I have it right, or if my opinion needs revision.

If I think you’re trying to pick a fight, I’ll either delete your post (if you’re simply obnoxious), or I’ll debate you, (if you’re obnoxious but interesting). I will not use against you any tools of words that you do not use against me first, so if you maintain a level of polite discourse, I will do the same.

If you lead with sanctimony, condescension, or insult, or if you are not willing to back up your statements with facts, I may decide it would be more fun to sharpen my logic on you and use you as an exercise in debate and an example of what not to do here rather than just delete you, or ban you. If you make a real jackass of yourself, then I’ll ban you.

If that makes me mean, okay.

I never claimed to be nice. I can be kind, but I detest niceness—it is pretending to be someone you aren’t in order to gain social approval. I’m not looking for anyone else’s approval. I already have my own.

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