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letterstothemidnightsociety · 4 years ago

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It’s crossroads and psychics and shipping, OH MY! Join me as I continue one millennial’s journey to discover why a show about beefcakes and demons managed to last on network television for over a decade. It’s Supernatural!

So now that we’re in the thick of it, there are two moves that the writing team of Supernatural pulled that make a season 2 work, or, more specifically, work for me. The first is that rather than Level Up their heroes, they allow our heroes to lose, and I discussed that in my last post. Now we don’t know what’s gonna happen - they didn’t defeat the bad guy, their ace up their sleeve (John) is dead, and they don’t even have wheels to roll around anymore.

Equally important, the second thing they do at the top of season 2 is World Build. I’ve read this article from Emily VanDerWerff at Vox like, 8 times so I’m just gonna go ahead and quote her directly:

Season two of a great drama usually finds a way to explain why the show isn’t just a story about the protagonist but a story about a whole cast and a whole world. With the premise having been thoroughly explored in season one, the show, by necessity, has to start looking for other ways to tell stories. This usually means turning to the other characters within the ensemble... but it can sometimes mean pivoting to explore a new corner of the show’s setting ...or diving further into core themes...

Side note: I know few TV critics by name but I find Emily VanDerWerff’s tv and media analysis to be particularly insightful and brilliant and if she ever reads anything I write about TV, I just want her to know it. Definitely go read/listen to some of her stuff at Vox.

So let’s break that down, shall we? The job of season one on a television drama (which SPN undoubtedly is), is to set up the show as a story about a hero(es) (which SPN season 1 undoubtedly does). We know the Winchester Brothers. We know their wants, we know their obstacles, we know their pressure points and triggers, they’re standard MO’s. We’ve seen them move as a cohesive unit against a big antagonist and with the start of season 2, we get to see how they handle failure at the hands of that antagonist.

But now season 2 has a bigger job: “explain why the show isn’t just a story about the protagonist but a story about a whole cast and a whole world.” As fun as it’s been riding with Sam and Dean across the country, that Impala does start to feel a little claustrophobic. We’re so focused on just these two characters that it’s hard to believe there’s a great wide world out there. Now, I call it claustrophobic now, but the chemistry between our two leads was definitely enough to carry the show without 3rd or 4th or 5th wheels through that first season and possibly future seasons. I was certainly happy to stick with just Sam and Dean for another 13 seasons when I watched this show for the first time back in 2008/2009. But after many years and many more TV shows, I understand that that model can’t be sustainable for the long haul. And that’s the goal, isn’t it? To get to a season five (and the sweet, sweet payday that is syndication) or farther. If your only regulars in series are two brothers and a car, that’s gonna get a little stale, at least for a broad audience anyway. And frankly, watching season 2 now and knowing what I know about the rest of the series, I’m excited to see new Found Family members show. If there’s one running theme throughout all 15 seasons it’s that Sam’s and Dean’s lives are deeply, tragically lonely.

So the writing team opens up a whole wide hunting world for our brothers to reside in - first with Bobby (AKA Poppa Hunter), then with The Roadhouse. But Bobby plus The Roadhouse crew don’t just expand on the SPN Scooby Gang. They show us, the audience, that Sam and Dean aren’t actually two lone guns out in the wilderness. Sure, season one gives us Missouri Mosely and then the deaths of Caleb and Pastor Jim, but these characters seem few and far between, unconnected to each other except by chance meetings with John Winchester. Introducing the new characters in season 2 shows us that there’s a network, a community out there, one that works together to stem the tide of evil from overtaking the Normals and their Apple Pie Lives.

Quick side note: Can we talk about how this, specifically, was a real disservice John did to his children? In “Everybody Loves a Clown”, Ellen tells Dean that she knew John was closing in on the demon and Dean responds “What, was there an article in the Demon Hunters Quarterly that I missed?”, and that’s probably a throwaway line for the joke, but it inadvertently signals that John really kept his sons isolated from having any kind of life at all. Sure, nobody wants the life of a hunter, but what if you had, oh, a community of hunters who took care of each others’ children and called people out on their bullshit abusive behaviors and watched each others’ backs so that there were fewer casualties and also were there so you could talk about all those things that Sam and Dean have spent their entire lives keeping secret from everyone? Ellen says John was like family once, and, like, whut? Why doesn’t Sam or Dean know who any of these people are? Why isn’t there a team trying to take down this yellow eyed demon? Why is it that Sam and Dean have, like, no support system other than their father?? I mean there probably IS a Demon Hunters Quarterly and John should have gotten his boys a subscription!

Of course, the Wider Hunting World isn’t all good guys like Bobby and Ellen and Jo and Ash. There’s also Gordon and Dean’s new Father Substitute, who’s a straight up psychopath, but they can’t all be winners, can they? That episode, as mentioned in my last post, also opens up the world of Team Monster - they’re not just mindless Evil devouring innocent victims. There’s also people out there with hearts and souls and consciousness’ who happen to have monster-like physical attributes, making the Winchesters’ mission that much more complex and fraught with drama and the potential for more storytelling opportunities.

And, in “Simon Said”, we start to see more of the Special Children, which is a fandom term that I do not like. Special Children? Special Children?? THAT’S what you went with?!? Anyway, we get the second instance of 20 year olds touched by the yellow-eyed-demon. There’s new abilities, stronger psychics, and just generally more to these children than Sam and Dean even knew existed. And I actually really love Andy a lot and really enjoyed this episode a lot. Andy is just an instantly likable character and I feel like, with his skill set, he could have been a real asset to the team. I mean, the guys get arrested by the feds at least once a season. But apparently Kripke decided, like, two episodes into the Special Children plot that he hated it and *spoiler alert* kills them all by the end of this season.

Just looking at the three other episodes on the same disc as “Simon Said” (yes, I am still watching the DVDs) I’d say “Crossroad Blues” is another expansion episode. Though it was hinted at in the first episode, the Crossroad Deal is now A Thing, and one that’s gonna come back to bite us later. So our lore is getting bigger, deeper, more involved in the plot. “The Usual Suspects” doesn’t do a whole lot of expanding the world, but that one feels more like filler/light fare to balance out the drama from the first 6 episodes anyway. I’ll add that even though it doesn’t have a lot to offer, “The Usual Suspects” is an A+ episode that does a great job of remixing the formula.

But back to our World Building - At the end of “Simon Said,” you get another taste of what this life should be for Sam and Dean. When Dean starts to pull the same secretive crap his father did, Ellen cuts back “This isn't just your war, this is war. Now, something big and bad's coming and it's coming fast, and their side holds all the cards. Now, at best all we got is us. Together. No secrets or half-truths here.” REALLY, John, you could have gone about your whole life of vengeance in a way that didn’t royally screw up your children and yet…

But Ellen’s complaint sums it up nicely - this show isn’t just about the Winchesters anymore, it’s not their war, it’s a whole world’s war, a world that the show now has the opportunity to explore and expand to their hearts’ content.

And here’s where things get sticky.

Like I said, the first go around, I was happy with only two protagonists and now that I worry about characters’ feelings, I’m really glad that the show tried to expand the Winchesters’ social circle for you know, mental and emotional and spiritual wholeness. And all the new characters that got introduced at the beginning of season two are generally well-liked characters...now.

I mean, nobody didn’t like Bobby Singer, right? The boys lose one father figure and he is replaced by another - better, stronger, more paternal than the one before. He’s the perfect blend of back country tough love and big ol’ softie and everybody loves Bobby, right?

I don’t think anyone hated Ash either, although, you know, he’s kind of barely there. I gotta say, I do appreciate the amount of mullets that show up in the show. I mean, that’s commitment to a bit right there. Ash is their Guy in the Chair and he’s ridiculous and I am not ashamed to admit that I kind of love him.

Then there’s Ellen. Ellen “Definitely Didn’t Sleep With John That One Time” Harvelle. And she is GREAT. She comes right out of the gate with that Big Mom Energy. Ellen is your mom, if your mom could also drink you under the table and still shoot you between the eyes without spilling her glass. A+ job on this character, would recommend, would watch again. Why she disappears for so long, I’ll never know, but it’s probably some kind of bullshit reason that has to do with misogyny and “bad” attitudes and unequal pay.

Honestly, in a sea of testosterone, there emerged a much needed island of femininity, and that island was The Roadhouse. But The Roadhouse also brings us Jo.

Oof. You guys. Now listen, I’m gonna say a thing and that thing might be controversial but here goes: there is nothing wrong with Jo. I’ll say it louder so that Me back in 2008 can hear: THERE. IS. NOTHING. WRONG. WITH. JO.

I’ve done a little digging and it seems the “official” complaint for Jo is that she comes off too naive, too innocent. I...do not agree. At least one site I read through says fans called her “immature”, but watching it this time around, she’s light and bubbly, sure, but she seems very much aware of the world she lives in. If anything, it’s the people around her who treat her like a child, it’s not the character herself who comes off that way. This watch, I see a character who is confident and pretty damn capable. I think “No Exit” shows a character who is maybe more fully realized than I gave her credit for the first go around - she’s tough, she knows how to handle herself in a fight, and she’s quick on her feet. But she’s also a human person, capable of making mistakes and getting in over her head and we see her deal with that once she’s captured by Holmes. She holds her own in both Sass and Skill against Dean and I think, at the very least, she could have made a good addition to the team on a regular basis. She makes a nice foil for both brothers - Sam, who never wanted this life, and Dean, who is already struggling to remember why he does what he does. Given time, I think her character could have settled into something that really stood out in the show. But that’s the problem with new characters who are written to be green - they need time to grow. Supernatural never gave her that time.

I think the REAL problem is that Jo is very obviously introduced to be a love interest for Dean and yeah, that feels pretty shoe-horned in there. But I think we have to hand it to Alona Tal - she really is doing the best she can with the material she’s given, considering that the writing team seems to have done very little work on fleshing that character out up front. It’s like the writers were shocked that they had to write? A person? And not? A sex appeal????? And that feels very on-brand for CW.

Do I ship Jo and Dean? I don’t know. My OTP at 19 was Dean + Me, so I’m real thankful I had no interest in writing fic at the time and there’s no incriminating author-insert work out there. But if asked me to chose an OTP for this entire series now, I’d say I ship Dean and Happiness and I feel like these two could have been happy.

But fans hated Jo, so much so that the writers completely abandoned the love interest subplot and all but wrote her out of the show for good. She was not well liked in 2006 when this season aired and according to several fan sites I looked through, attitudes towards her didn’t warm up until she comes back in season five, basically just to die. Sure, she sacrifices her own life to save Sam and Dean, but she literally comes back to be cannon fodder and that’s what changes peoples’ attitudes towards her. Listen, I’m not saying there isn’t some weird gross misogyny to talk about down the line, but I think we have to acknowledge that this fandom is also guilty of some real girl-on-girl crime.

Now I was curious - what was it exactly that so many fans hated? Why was the backlash against this character particularly passionate? And boy guys, did I find an answer.

I knew this was coming. I knew I couldn’t avoid it. And I’m not happy about it. But I said I was gonna dive into this show and you can’t dive into SPN without acknowledging the darker spots of the show and one of those spots is: Wincest.

I just. Hoo boy. Listen, I am a Ship and Let Ship person. My kink is not your kink, your kink is not my kink, and we can all still get along. At least I hope we can all still get along, cuz fandom is occasionally terrifying and I don’t want anyone coming after me. But also, I did not realize...that they were so...prevalent? Like, seriously. I am very glad that I never actually used LiveJournal as I intended to use LiveJournal because 19-year-old me was not READY for that kind of Fandom.

And hey I...understand why this happened? Sort of? Like, for all of season one, this show is only about two VERY attractive men folk who have VERY good chemistry with each other. And I will admit, in the spirit of honesty, that I too disliked Jo because I felt that introducing a girlfriend character would destroy the brother-character dynamic that was the heart and soul of the show. And I don’t want to dig too deeply into that sense memory because I don’t know that I like where it leads.

But where this becomes a real problem is the implication that Jo was written out of the show because it interfered with the Wincest community? The idea that the Wincesters had that much power is chilling. Chilling. I mean, it’s one thing for a creator to take their fans into consideration when creating, it’s another thing entirely when the fandom makes a major plot point disappear. I mean, I don’t know what Alona Tal’s contract for season 2 was, but I do know that contracting for actors on a television series is affected by how many episodes they appear in. The number of episodes you’re in is also tied to things like pay rates (like those mandated by SAG) and where your name goes in the credits (top billing vs. end credits) Are you a guest star or a recurring character? Are you recurring or a series regular? Now, as a new character, it’s probable that Alona Tal was considered a guest star/recurring role and contract was per episode and not by the season - after all, that’s how the majority of the cast of The Office worked for all of season 1 and most of season 2. Angela, Oscar, Kevin, Meredith, Creed, Stanley, Phylis - they were all recurring characters, only contracted for each episode as it was being produced and they were in way more episode than Tal had in SPN. In fact, it was not until half way through season 2 (episode 11, “Booze Cruise”) that they were promoted to series regulars and received season-long contracts. But as the love interest for their lead, she was probably hired with the promise of getting promoted to series regular at some point in the future. Now imagine being Alona Tal, and finding out three episodes in that you’re not getting that season-long contract and you’re probably not coming back for season 3 because the fanbase is more into Brother-Lovin’ than your character. I mean. Guys.

Now can we really say that the Wincesters derailed a woman’s career? I don’t want to believe it, so I’m gonna say no. I am sure there was a lot of testing the character in key demographics and screenings with diverse audiences and graphs and charts and it wasn’t just that the producers of the show were endlessly scrolling through message boards on LiveJournal to see what kinks the fandom was into. I’m sure that was not the case because that is not the world I want to live in. But also, it definitely seems to have played a part. A REAL part.

So let’s move back to television structure instead - why is this world building important? The key lies in a lot of the “prestige” shows that stream today. A lot of them have really strong first seasons, but a sophomore slump in their second seasons. Emily VanDerWerff calls out Stranger Things specifically, which had a tight, streamlined story that wrapped up so nicely at the end of season 1 that season 2 was left to flounder, trying to find its feet and its new story to tell. And they're not the only ones - this is a trend we see in a lot of premise driven shows.

How did we get here?The trend in shorter seasons has been really appealing to a lot of writers and directors who would typically work for feature length films. That means that a lot of the best shows are being written more like long-form movies than television series. The first season is a complete storyline from beginning to end with little deviation from the Main Quest. There’s less wandering like you’d see in a 22 episode season. Less of those filler/self-contained episodes where the writers get to explore new concepts and character work. This leaves less to detract from the single stream-lined story, but it also leaves little for the writers to explore once the season is done. When you wrap up all the loose ends by your season finale, you’re stuck wondering what’s left of the story to tell in future seasons? By not wrapping up the loose ends in “Devil’s Trap”, and by using these first 8 episodes to expand on more lore, allies, and world to inhabit, SPN is able to make space to create more story for years to come.

NOW - can they keep that up for the next 14 seasons or will it get boring? Will we end up with comically overpowered heroes and villains that result in lower stakes? I mean, all of the characters die at LEAST once and come back, so how can SPN sustain the audiences’ concern for the characters when we’re never that worried for them? How much of the world is there left unexplored as you get farther into the series? How are they going to keep plots and arcs and characters new and fresh and exciting when we’re so familiar with everyone and everything? So many questions and so many episodes left to answer them!

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kevinbingham · 5 years ago

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“Not every liberal is the same, though the majority of liberals I know think along roughly these same lines”

https://www.facebook.com/thethinker42/posts/10155931022478700

Lori Gallagher Witt

January 7, 2018

An open letter to friends and family who are/were shocked to discover I'm a liberal...

This is going to be VERY long, so: TL;DR: I'm a liberal, I've always been a liberal, but that doesn't mean what a lot of you apparently think it does.

Some of you suspected. Some of you were shocked. Many of you have known me for years, even the majority of my life. We either steadfastly avoided political topics, or I carefully steered conversations away from the more incendiary subjects in the name of keeping the peace. "I'm a liberal" isn't really something you broadcast in social circles where "the liberals" can't be said without wrinkling one's nose.

But then the 2016 election happened, and staying quiet wasn't an option anymore. Since then, I've received no shortage of emails and comments from people who were shocked, horrified, disappointed, disgusted, or otherwise displeased to realize I am *wrinkles nose* a liberal. Yep. I'm one of those bleeding heart commies who hates anyone who's white, straight, or conservative, and who wants the government to dictate everything you do while taking your money and giving it to people who don't work.

Or am I?

Let's break it down, shall we? Because quite frankly, I'm getting a little tired of being told what I believe and what I stand for. Spoiler alert: Not every liberal is the same, though the majority of liberals I know think along roughly these same lines.

1. I believe a country should take care of its weakest members. A country cannot call itself civilized when its children, disabled, sick, and elderly are neglected. Period.

2. I believe healthcare is a right, not a privilege. Somehow that's interpreted as "I believe Obamacare is the end-all, be-all." This is not the case. I'm fully aware that the ACA has problems, that a national healthcare system would require everyone to chip in, and that it's impossible to create one that is devoid of flaws, but I have yet to hear an argument against it that makes "let people die because they can't afford healthcare" a better alternative. I believe healthcare should be far cheaper than it is, and that everyone should have access to it. And no, I'm not opposed to paying higher taxes in the name of making that happen.

3. I believe education should be affordable and accessible to everyone. It doesn't necessarily have to be free (though it works in other countries so I'm mystified as to why it can't work in the US), but at the end of the day, there is no excuse for students graduating college saddled with five- or six-figure debt.

4. I don't believe your money should be taken from you and given to people who don't want to work. I have literally never encountered anyone who believes this. Ever. I just have a massive moral problem with a society where a handful of people can possess the majority of the wealth while there are people literally starving to death, freezing to death, or dying because they can't afford to go to the doctor. Fair wages, lower housing costs, universal healthcare, affordable education, and the wealthy actually paying their share would go a long way toward alleviating this. Somehow believing that makes me a communist.

5. I don't throw around "I'm willing to pay higher taxes" lightly. I'm self-employed, so I already pay a shitload of taxes. If I'm suggesting something that involves paying more, that means increasing my already eye-watering tax bill. I'm fine with paying my share as long as it's actually going to something besides lining corporate pockets or bombing other countries while Americans die without healthcare.

6. I believe companies should be required to pay their employees a decent, livable wage. Somehow this is always interpreted as me wanting burger flippers to be able to afford a penthouse apartment and a Mercedes. What it actually means is that no one should have to work three full-time jobs just to keep their head above water. Restaurant servers should not have to rely on tips, multibillion dollar companies should not have employees on food stamps, workers shouldn't have to work themselves into the ground just to barely make ends meet, and minimum wage should be enough for someone to work 40 hours and live.

7. I am not anti-Christian. I have no desire to stop Christians from being Christians, to close churches, to ban the Bible, to forbid prayer in school, etc. (BTW, prayer in school is NOT illegal; *compulsory* prayer in school is - and should be - illegal) All I ask is that Christians recognize *my* right to live according to *my* beliefs. When I get pissed off that a politician is trying to legislate Scripture into law, I'm not "offended by Christianity" -- I'm offended that you're trying to force me to live by your religion's rules. You know how you get really upset at the thought of Muslims imposing Sharia on you? That's how I feel about Christians trying to impose biblical law on me. Be a Christian. Do your thing. Just don't force it on me or mine.

8. I don't believe LGBT people should have more rights than you. I just believe we should have the *same* rights as you.

9. I don't believe illegal immigrants should come to America and have the world at their feet, especially since THIS ISN'T WHAT THEY DO (spoiler: undocumented immigrants are ineligible for all those programs they're supposed to be abusing, and if they're "stealing" your job it's because your employer is hiring illegally.). I'm not opposed to deporting people who are here illegally, but I believe there are far more humane ways to handle undocumented immigration than our current practices (i.e., detaining children, splitting up families, ending DACA, etc).

10. I believe we should take in refugees, or at the very least not turn them away without due consideration. Turning thousands of people away because a terrorist might slip through is inhumane, especially when we consider what has happened historically to refugees who were turned away (see: MS St. Louis). If we're so opposed to taking in refugees, maybe we should consider not causing them to become refugees in the first place. Because we're fooling ourselves if we think that somewhere in the chain of events leading to these people becoming refugees, there isn't a line describing something the US did.

11. I don't believe the government should regulate everything, but since greed is such a driving force in our country, we NEED regulations to prevent cut corners, environmental destruction, tainted food/water, unsafe materials in consumable goods or medical equipment, etc. It's not that I want the government's hands in everything -- I just don't trust people trying to make money to ensure that their products/practices/etc are actually SAFE. Is the government devoid of shadiness? Of course not. But with those regulations in place, consumers have recourse if they're harmed and companies are liable for medical bills, environmental cleanup, etc. Just kind of seems like common sense when the alternative to government regulation is letting companies bring their bottom line into the equation.

12. I believe our current administration is fascist. Not because I dislike them or because I'm butthurt over an election, but because I've spent too many years reading and learning about the Third Reich to miss the similarities. Not because any administration I dislike must be Nazis, but because things are actually mirroring authoritarian and fascist regimes of the past.

13. I believe the systemic racism and misogyny in our society is much worse than many people think, and desperately needs to be addressed. Which means those with privilege -- white, straight, male, economic, etc -- need to start listening, even if you don't like what you're hearing, so we can start dismantling everything that's causing people to be marginalized.

14. I believe in so-called political correctness. Not because everyone is a delicate snowflake, but because as Maya Angelou put it, when we know better, we do better. When someone tells you that a term or phrase is more accurate/less hurtful than the one you're using, you now know better. So why not do better? How does it hurt you to NOT hurt another person? Your refusal to adjust your vocabulary in the name of not being an asshole kind of makes YOU the snowflake.

15. I believe in funding sustainable energy, including offering education to people currently working in coal or oil so they can change jobs. There are too many sustainable options available for us to continue with coal and oil. Sorry, billionaires. Maybe try investing in something else.

I think that about covers it. Bottom line is that I'm a liberal because I think we should take care of each other. That doesn't mean you should work 80 hours a week so your lazy neighbor can get all your money. It just means I don't believe there is any scenario in which preventable suffering is an acceptable outcome as long as money is saved.

So, I'm a liberal.

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gingerwonderwild · 5 years ago

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Setting the record straight

I am a liberal, but that doesn't mean what a lot of people think it does.

1. I believe a country should take care of its weakest members. A country cannot call itself civilized when its children, disabled, sick, and elderly are neglected.

2. I believe we should all have access to healthcare. Somehow that's interpreted as "I believe Obamacare is the end-all, be-all." This is not the case. I'm fully aware that the ACA has problems, that a national healthcare system would require everyone to chip in, and that it's impossible to create one that is devoid of flaws, but I have yet to hear an argument against it that makes "let people die because they can't afford healthcare" a better alternative. I believe healthcare should be far cheaper than it is, and that everyone should have access to it. And no, I'm not opposed to paying higher taxes in the name of making that happen. It also makes economic sense to me that having decent healthcare is cheaper than ER care.

3. I believe education should be affordable and accessible to everyone. It doesn't necessarily have to be free, but there is no excuse for students graduating college saddled with five- or six-figure debt.

5. I don't throw around "I'm willing to pay higher taxes" lightly. If I'm suggesting something that involves paying more, well, it's because I'm fine with paying my fair share as long as it's actually going to something besides lining corporate pockets or bombing other countries while Americans die without healthcare.

6. I believe companies should be required to pay their employees a decent, livable wage. Somehow this is always interpreted as me wanting burger flippers to be able to afford a penthouse apartment and a Mercedes. What it actually means is that no one should have to work three full-time jobs just to keep their head above water. Restaurant servers should not have to rely on tips, multibillion-dollar companies should not have employees on food stamps, workers shouldn't have to work themselves into the ground just to barely make ends meet, and minimum wage should be enough for someone to work 40 hours and live.

7. I am not anti-Christian. I have no desire to stop Christians from being Christians, to close churches, to ban the Bible, to forbid prayer.

8. I don't believe LGBT people should have more rights than you. I just believe they should have the *same* rights as you.

9. I don't believe undocumented immigrants should come to America and have the world at their feet, especially since THIS ISN'T WHAT THEY DO (spoiler: undocumented immigrants are ineligible for all those programs they're supposed to be abusing, and if they're "stealing" your job it's because your employer is hiring illegally). I'm not opposed to deporting people who are here illegally (and don't have a valid claim under VAWA or CAT or for a hardship waiver, etc), but I believe there are far more humane ways to handle undocumented immigration than our current practices (i.e., detaining children, splitting up families, ending DACA, etc). And it takes a system not outsourcing to profiteers!!!

10. I don't believe the government should regulate everything, but since greed is such a driving force in our country, we NEED regulations to prevent cut corners, environmental destruction, tainted food/water, unsafe materials in consumable goods or medical equipment, safe flights, etc. It's not that I want the government's hands in everything -- I just don't trust people trying to make money will ensure their products/practices/etc. are actually SAFE. Is the government devoid of shadiness? Of course not. Certainly not right now. But with those regulations in place, consumers have recourse if they're harmed and companies are liable for medical bills, environmental cleanup, etc. Just kind of seems like common sense when the alternative to government regulation is letting companies bring their bottom line into the equation.

11. I believe our current administration is fascist! Not because I dislike them or because I can’t get over an election, but because I've spent too many years reading and learning about the Third Reich to miss the similarities. Not because any administration I dislike must be Nazis, but because things are actually mirroring authoritarian and fascist regimes of the past.

12. I believe the systemic racism and misogyny in our society is much worse than many people think, and desperately needs to be addressed. Which means those with privilege -- white, straight, male, economic, etc. -- need to start listening, even if you don't like what you're hearing, so we can start dismantling everything that's causing people to be marginalized.

13. I am not interested in coming after your blessed guns, nor is anyone serving in government. What I am interested in is sensible policies, including background checks, that just MIGHT save one person’s, perhaps a toddler’s, life by the hand of someone who should not have a gun.

14. I believe in so-called political correctness. I prefer to think it’s social politeness. If I call you Chuck and you say you prefer to be called Charles I’ll call you Charles. It’s the polite thing to do. Not because everyone is a delicate snowflake, but because as Maya Angelou put it, when we know better, we do better. When someone tells you that a term or phrase is more accurate/less hurtful than the one you're using, you now know better. So why not do better? How does it hurt you to NOT hurt another person?

16. I believe that women should not be treated as a separate class of human. They should be paid the same as men who do the same work, should have the same rights as men and should be free from abuse. Why on earth shouldn’t they be?

Copy & paste Or reblog if you want. I did! No pressure.Just wanted to set the record straight.Thanks for reading.

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armitige3 · 5 years ago

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Copypasta, but I agree with every word:

I'm a liberal, but that doesn't mean what a lot of you apparently think it does. Let's break it down, shall we? Because quite frankly, I'm getting a little tired of being told what I believe and what I stand for. Spoiler alert: not every liberal is the same, though the majority of liberals I know think along roughly these same lines:

1. I believe a country should take care of its weakest members. A country cannot call itself civilized when its children, disabled, sick, and elderly are neglected. PERIOD.

3. I believe education should be affordable. It doesn't necessarily have to be free (though it works in other countries so I'm mystified as to why it can't work in the US), but at the end of the day, there is no excuse for students graduating college saddled with five- or six-figure debt.

5. I don't throw around "I'm willing to pay higher taxes" lightly. If I'm suggesting something that involves paying more, well, it's because I'm fine with paying my share as long as it's actually going to something besides lining corporate pockets or bombing other countries while Americans die without healthcare.

6. I believe companies should be required to pay their employees a decent, livable wage. Somehow this is always interpreted as me wanting burger flippers to be able to afford a penthouse apartment and a Mercedes. What it actually means is that no one should have to work three full-time jobs just to keep their head above water. Restaurant servers should not have to rely on tips, multibillion-dollar companies should not have employees on food stamps, workers shouldn't have to work themselves into the ground just to barely make ends meet, and minimum wage should be enough for someone to work 40 hours and live.

7. I am not anti-Christian. I have no desire to stop Christians from being Christians, to close churches, to ban the Bible, to forbid prayer in school, etc. (BTW, prayer in school is NOT illegal; *compulsory* prayer in school is - and should be - illegal). All I ask is that Christians recognize *my* right to live according to *my* beliefs. When I get pissed off that a politician is trying to legislate Scripture into law, I'm not "offended by Christianity" -- I'm offended that you're trying to force me to live by your religion's rules. You know how you get really upset at the thought of Muslims imposing Sharia law on you? That's how I feel about Christians trying to impose biblical law on me. Be a Christian. Do your thing. Just don't force it on me or mine.

8. I don't believe LGBT people should have more rights than you. I just believe they should have the *same* rights as you.

9. I don't believe illegal immigrants should come to America and have the world at their feet, especially since THIS ISN'T WHAT THEY DO (spoiler: undocumented immigrants are ineligible for all those programs they're supposed to be abusing, and if they're "stealing" your job it's because your employer is hiring illegally). I believe there are far more humane ways to handle undocumented immigration than our current practices (i.e., detaining children, splitting up families, ending DACA, etc).

10. I don't believe the government should regulate everything, but since greed is such a driving force in our country, we NEED regulations to prevent cut corners, environmental destruction, tainted food/water, unsafe materials in consumable goods or medical equipment, etc. It's not that I want the government's hands in everything -- I just don't trust people trying to make money to ensure that their products/practices/etc. are actually SAFE. Is the government devoid of shadiness? Of course not. But with those regulations in place, consumers have recourse if they're harmed and companies are liable for medical bills, environmental cleanup, etc. Just kind of seems like common sense when the alternative to government regulation is letting companies bring their bottom line into the equation.

11. I believe our current administration is fascist. Not because I dislike them or because I can’t get over an election, but because I've spent too many years reading and learning about the Third Reich to miss the similarities. Not because any administration I dislike must be Nazis, but because things are actually mirroring authoritarian and fascist regimes of the past.

13. I am not interested in coming after your blessed guns, nor is anyone serving in government. What I am interested in is the enforcement of present laws and enacting new, common sense gun regulations. Got another opinion? Put it on your page, not mine.

Copy & paste if you want. I did.

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edmacmanscomixbookmuseum · 5 years ago

Text

Thanks, Ron Howard.

Ron Howard

January 24 at 5:41 AM

“I'm a liberal, but that doesn't mean what a lot of you apparently think it does. Let's break it down, shall we? Because quite frankly, I'm getting a little tired of being told what I believe and what I stand for. Spoiler alert: not every liberal is the same, though the majority of liberals I know think along roughly these same lines:

1. I believe a country should take care of its weakest members. A country cannot call itself civilized when its children, disabled, sick, and elderly are neglected. PERIOD.

6. I believe companies should be required to pay their employees a decent, livable wage. Somehow this is always interpreted as me wanting burger flippers to be able to afford a penthouse apartment and a Mercedes. What it actually means is that no one should have to work three full-time jobs just to keep their head above water. Restaurant servers should not have to rely on tips, multibillion-dollar companies should not have employees on food stamps, workers shouldn't have to work themselves into the ground just to barely make ends meet, and minimum wage should be enough for someone to work 40 hours and live.

7. I am not anti-Christian. I have no desire to stop Christians from being Christians, to close churches, to ban the Bible, to forbid prayer in school, etc. (BTW, prayer in school is NOT illegal; *compulsory* prayer in school is - and should be - illegal). All I ask is that Christians recognize *my* right to live according to *my* beliefs. When I get pissed off that a politician is trying to legislate Scripture into law, I'm not "offended by Christianity" -- I'm offended that you're trying to force me to live by your religion's rules. You know how you get really upset at the thought of Muslims imposing Sharia law on you? That's how I feel about Christians trying to impose biblical law on me. Be a Christian. Do your thing. Just don't force it on me or mine.

8. I don't believe LGBT people should have more rights than you. I just believe they should have the *same* rights as you.

9. I don't believe illegal immigrants should come to America and have the world at their feet, especially since THIS ISN'T WHAT THEY DO (spoiler: undocumented immigrants are ineligible for all those programs they're supposed to be abusing, and if they're "stealing" your job it's because your employer is hiring illegally). I believe there are far more humane ways to handle undocumented immigration than our current practices (i.e., detaining children, splitting up families, ending DACA, etc).

10. I don't believe the government should regulate everything, but since greed is such a driving force in our country, we NEED regulations to prevent cut corners, environmental destruction, tainted food/water, unsafe materials in consumable goods or medical equipment, etc. It's not that I want the government's hands in everything -- I just don't trust people trying to make money to ensure that their products/practices/etc. are actually SAFE. Is the government devoid of shadiness? Of course not. But with those regulations in place, consumers have recourse if they're harmed and companies are liable for medical bills, environmental cleanup, etc. Just kind of seems like common sense when the alternative to government regulation is letting companies bring their bottom line into the equation.

Ron”

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rennemichaels · 6 years ago

Text

What is and isn’t a Liberal

Jaymie Ringdal‎ to Trump Memes 12-29-2018 10:31 AM

I haven’t always been a liberal, but being a liberal doesn't mean what a lot of you apparently think it does.

1. I believe a country should take care of its weakest members. A country cannot call itself civilized when its children, disabled, sick, and elderly are neglected. Period.

6. I believe companies should be required to pay their employees a decent, livable wage. Somehow this is always interpreted as me wanting burger flippers to be able to afford a penthouse apartment and a Mercedes. What it actually means is that no one should have to work three full-time jobs just to keep their head above water. Restaurant servers should not have to rely on tips, multibillion-dollar companies should not have employees on food stamps, workers shouldn't have to work themselves into the ground just to barely make ends meet, and minimum wage should be enough for someone to work 40 hours and live.

7. I am not anti-Christian. I have no desire to stop Christians from being Christians, to close churches, to ban the Bible, to forbid prayer in school, etc. (BTW, prayer in school is NOT illegal; *compulsory* prayer in school is - and should be - illegal). All I ask is that Christians recognize *my* right to live according to *my* beliefs. When I get pissed off that a politician is trying to legislate Scripture into law, I'm not "offended by Christianity" -- I'm offended that you're trying to force me to live by your religion's rules. You know how you get really upset at the thought of Muslims imposing Sharia law on you? That's how I feel about Christians trying to impose biblical law on me. Be a Christian. Do your thing. Just don't force it on me or mine.

8. I don't believe LGBT people should have more rights than you. I just believe they should have the *same* rights as you.

9. I don't believe illegal immigrants should come to America and have the world at their feet, especially since THIS ISN'T WHAT THEY DO (spoiler: undocumented immigrants are ineligible for all those programs they're supposed to be abusing, and if they're "stealing" your job it's because your employer is hiring illegally). I'm not opposed to deporting people who are here illegally, but I believe there are far more humane ways to handle undocumented immigration than our current practices (i.e., detaining children, splitting up families, ending DACA, etc).

10. I don't believe the government should regulate everything, but since greed is such a driving force in our country, we NEED regulations to prevent cut corners, environmental destruction, tainted food/water, unsafe materials in consumable goods or medical equipment, etc. It's not that I want the government's hands in everything -- I just don't trust people trying to make money to ensure that their products/practices/etc. are actually SAFE. Is the government devoid of shadiness? Of course not. But with those regulations in place, consumers have recourse if they're harmed and companies are liable for medical bills, environmental cleanup, etc. Just kind of seems like common sense when the alternative to government regulation is letting companies bring their bottom line into the equation.

“So, I'm a liberal.”

#liberal #political correctness #snowflakes #right wing #alt right

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tweetybird-101 · 6 years ago

Text

1. I believe a country should take care of its weakest members. A country cannot call itself civilized when its children, disabled, sick, and elderly are neglected. Period.

6. I believe companies should be required to pay their employees a decent, livable wage. Somehow this is always interpreted as me wanting burger flippers to be able to afford a penthouse apartment and a Mercedes. What it actually means is that no one should have to work three full-time jobs just to keep their head above water. Restaurant servers should not have to rely on tips, multibillion-dollar companies should not have employees on food stamps, workers shouldn't have to work themselves into the ground just to barely make ends meet, and minimum wage should be enough for someone to work 40 hours and live.

7. I am not anti-Christian. I have no desire to stop Christians from being Christians, to close churches, to ban the Bible, to forbid prayer in school, etc. (BTW, prayer in school is NOT illegal; *compulsory* prayer in school is - and should be - illegal). All I ask is that Christians recognize *my* right to live according to *my* beliefs. When I get pissed off that a politician is trying to legislate Scripture into law, I'm not "offended by Christianity" -- I'm offended that you're trying to force me to live by your religion's rules. You know how you get really upset at the thought of Muslims imposing Sharia law on you? That's how I feel about Christians trying to impose biblical law on me. Be a Christian. Do your thing. Just don't force it on me or mine.

8. I don't believe LGBT people should have more rights than you. I just believe they should have the *same* rights as you.

9. I don't believe illegal immigrants should come to America and have the world at their feet, especially since THIS ISN'T WHAT THEY DO (spoiler: undocumented immigrants are ineligible for all those programs they're supposed to be abusing, and if they're "stealing" your job it's because your employer is hiring illegally). I'm not opposed to deporting people who are here illegally, but I believe there are far more humane ways to handle undocumented immigration than our current practices (i.e., detaining children, splitting up families, ending DACA, etc).

10. I don't believe the government should regulate everything, but since greed is such a driving force in our country, we NEED regulations to prevent cut corners, environmental destruction, tainted food/water, unsafe materials in consumable goods or medical equipment, etc. It's not that I want the government's hands in everything -- I just don't trust people trying to make money to ensure that their products/practices/etc. are actually SAFE. Is the government devoid of shadiness? Of course not. But with those regulations in place, consumers have recourse if they're harmed and companies are liable for medical bills, environmental cleanup, etc. Just kind of seems like common sense when the alternative to government regulation is letting companies bring their bottom line into the equation.

16. I believe that women should not be treated as a separate class of human. They should be able to make choices regarding their own bodies without interference by the government or their employers. They should be paid the same as men who do the same work, should have the same rights as men and should be free from abuse. Why on earth shouldn’t they be?

“So, I'm a liberal.”"

(This was copied and pasted. I think it is so well said.)(This was copied from Facebook so if anyone knows who the original poster is please tell me. So they can get credit.)

#liberal #democrats #politics #sorry for the political post #this is important

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rjcauthor · 7 years ago

Text

How to Make a Living as an Indie Author

[Author Note: Originally published on my website in 2014. The basics remain the same.]

I thought about titling this post, "My Advice to Writers 2014 - 150,000 Books Later," [2018 Update - 1,000,000+ sold and counting] but it'd be disingenuous. I'm not speaking to all writers here. There are plenty of advice guides/blog posts for basic writers, for the hobbyist, for the person who wants to get their book queried and submitted, etc, etc.

I'm not really an expert in any of those fields, so why spend my day off writing a blog post about it? (Why spend my day off writing a blog post at all, honestly? Fuck if I know. I should be on the couch partaking of the last day of the Titanfall beta or rewatching a few of the Harry Potter movies on Blu-ray. Instead, I'm doing this. I must be mental.) Anyway, I'm writing this because I want to speak to a certain segment of the writing population, and that's the person who wants to make a living as an indie author.

I've written advice posts before, and a lot of them were filled with caveats that were designed to protect people's feelings and avoid controversy, and also protect my ass from anyone who might get upset. Let me get those out of the way ahead of time: I'm assuming if you're going to read further you're:

a) Looking to make a living as an indie author, and are unwilling to accept any other means of making a living long-term.

b) Are smart enough to decide after reading my advice if the methods I describe are a fit for you.

c) Are willing to work for 100 hours per week for a sustained period of time if that's what it takes.

d) Are smart enough to know that I'm too busy to personally mentor anyone beyond this post. You're going to need to figure out the rest for yourself. Find some author friends, some like minded people you can talk to. It'll help a lot.

(As an aside, my harsh words here in this post are going to be the least of the slings and arrows you'll have to deal with if you go down this road, so maybe take it as a warning to look for surer footing elsewhere.)

Some quick background:

In March of 2011 I had been in financial services for seven years. It wasn't going terribly well, and I was spending all my free time working on a story idea that was absolutely haunting me. It kept me up at night writing, and I was having my friends read it and waiting anxiously for their feedback. I loved it - loved writing it, loved hearing what they had to say about it, loved every part of it enough that I was forgoing all my other hobbies just to write.

That was a unique experience for me. I'd gotten a degree in Creative Writing with the intent of becoming a novelist, but gave up on that dream by the time graduation had rolled around. I hated writing after getting my degree, my love of it all ground out of me by years of being forced to write about subjects I did not give two fucks and a shit about. I'd started half a hundred novels from the time I was in fourth grade until college; after college I didn't write anything for eight years.

I had started writing again in the summer of 2010. I kept writing for a few months during that summer, in spite of everything that was going on - work demands, a toddler running around the house, a pregnant wife, a house that we were doing a ton of work on to sell, selling said house, moving in with my in-laws, and a hell of a lot more.

I wrote in spite of all of this. I wrote DURING all of this. I kept coming up with ideas to advance my plot, ideas for interactions between my characters, ideas, ideas and more ideas. I'd sit at work and write ideas down during meetings - whole chunks of scenes and dialogue. I was a financial services salesperson and trainer; I was supposed to be paying attention.

It got bad. I didn't care about my financial services business anymore, all I cared about was writing. So I started trying to figure out how to become a full-time writer, and looked into traditional publishing (which was the only game I had heard of back then). It wasn't a happy answer I came back with. The short version: Good fucking luck, kid, and don't quit your day job.

A little depressed, I put aside my writing for a few months and redoubled my efforts in financial services in preparation for the upcoming baby. By the time January rolled around, I was twice as frustrated, and I was back on the writing again. I looked for answers to the question of, "How do I become a full-time author?" again, and this time I found something different.

Self-publishing. Amanda Hocking. Joe Konrath. They told tales of copious sales, of massive amounts of money, and of working hard, but being in charge of your own destiny. I found a few other names like David Dalglish and B.V. Larson, and I started studying up to figure out how I could do just a fraction of what they were doing. It took me about a month or so to figure it all out, but I came up with a plan, and on March 5, 2011, I told my wife I wanted to quit financial services and stay home with the baby so I could write in every available moment.

I'll spare you the argument and say that eventually she went for it. So I stayed home with our youngest and wrote obsessively during naps and after bedtime, defraying daycare expenditures for the first year and releasing two books with a third finished by the end of the year. After that, we put both kids in daycare all-day, every-day and I started writing full-time as of January 1st, 2012. I was making a living by the end of September, just after my sixth book came out.

And here's what it took to do it.

1. Be calculating

Whenever I talk about what I do/did as an indie author, I inevitably hear people in the background say, "Ehh, he just got lucky, that's all."

To them I say: I planned for both failure and success, understanding that as long as I did not yield, I could work until some level of success was inevitable. Luck may have vaulted me to way above what I'd planned for, but I didn't count on it and it wasn't required to be able to making a living, which is what I wanted - and what I planned for.

I worked my ever-loving ass off in ways that no one ever saw, spent most of my off-hours in analysis, took mighty risks, gambled a lot of money, time and basically my entire future on my own success, and then watched things work ALMOST EXACTLY LIKE I PLANNED FOR IT TO BEFORE I EVEN FINISHED MY FIRST NOVEL.

You need to constantly assess the landscape by reading about your industry. You need to know about what's going on in the world of publishing, the world of craft, everything about your industry that you can soak up. Even if it sounds stupid, even if you violently disagree with it, the time you spend learning these things can all weigh in the formulation of your game plan.

Watch the people who are doing it, and try to distill the common denominators of their success. I heard some motivational coach say, "Success leaves clues." No successful author is doing it exactly the same way, but a lot of them are doing similar things.

A lot of people speak of planning like it's something you do once and forget about.

Are you fucking kidding me? Planning is an ongoing process. Like Sun-Tzu said, your plan ain't gonna survive contact with the enemy (pretty much everything is your enemy, btw, this publishing environment is like Australia) so you have to revise it constantly. Throw out what isn't working, make new plans, revise old ones. My overarching plan (strategy) was this:

i) Write a shitload of books

ii) Get them in people's hands somehow

iii) ?????*

iv) PROFIT!

*(Step iii is actually, "Get them to pay for the next ones.")

It's the little plans (the tactics) - how to get those steps done - that needed changing. And you must assess where you are CONSTANTLY. And it cannot get in the way of your writing. (Starting to see why obsession - #5 - is important?)

I had this basic strategy/plan when I came to my wife on that day in March, and frankly, the strategy hasn't changed in the (nearly) three years since. What has changed are the tactics - the little ways I carried out said plan. Back then the way you carried out ii was through 99 cent pricing. That no longer works the way it once did, so now it's permafree or box sets (or the nuclear option, permafree box sets). (See points #2 and #7).

Caveats/Pitfalls for Point #1:

a) You will need to spend your off hours studying this business the way a horny teenage boy studies every line of the pretty girl in front of him's body while he's bored in math class. (See point #5, re:obsession.) You will need to read articles, journals, blogs, books and possible advice scrawled on rest area bathroom walls. (Jenny - 867-5309 and other assorted bathroom stall wisdom is probably not going to help you, but collect it anyway. Better to have it than not.)

b) If you have no experience running a business of any kind, things will be more difficult for you. I don't know how much. I spent eight years running a business in financial services before taking on this responsibility, and it was like an internship that prepared me for being an indie author. I learned to manage my time, I learned about marketing and sales, about loss leaders, and about picking up the shovel and doing unpleasant work I didn't want to do in the name of staving off working for someone else. I hate the thought of working for someone else. It's a powerful motivator for me. If you don't have motivation to drive yourself, this is going to be tough for you.

2. Write fast

Ingredient number one in the souffle of success is hard work. But simple hard work is not enough; results are key here.

In fact, this is probably the biggest caveat to the whole equation, because if you can't write fast (and a lot of people can't, no shame in that) it might not work for you like it worked for me. I wrote 140,000 words of fiction in my evenings over the course of a couple months while I was still running my financial services business because I was so obsessed with the story I had to tell.

Some things that *might* help you write faster - writing sprints of 15-60 minutes, reinforced by taking your laptop computer somewhere that has no internet/distractions or using an internet blocking program like Anti-Social or Freedom. Still, if you can't write fast enough to get out four books per year...again, this might not be the plan for you. I'm not dogging on you, I just know what it took for me to get to my present level of success, and I'm not sure what it will take below that level of output. Is it still possible? I'm sure it is. I just didn't plan that way so I can't really advise you.

Additional caveats/pitfalls of fast writing -

a) Make sure you have an error correction process in place. Spellcheck alone is not going to do it. Professional editing would be a great idea.You have to decide what your Quality Assurance process will be, but you need to have SOMETHING in place. Not every reader is turned off by tons of errors in a manuscript, but a lot of them are. These errors take away from your story. They're a distraction. You're fighting the wind instead of using it. Don't get me wrong, there's such a thing as TOO MUCH when it comes to time spent on error correction, but you need to find this balance for yourself.

b) You can write crap to get the words out, but you damned sure better edit/rewrite it until it's professional-grade. I can fix words on a page that suck, but I can't edit a blank page. Make sure your stories are good (See point #4), that they're engaging, that they keep the reader moving through. Get beta reader feedback to tell you where people are putting your books down and try to figure out WHY they're doing it. HINT: They may not know the reason why, exactly. Study craft to narrow it down.

3. Learn business

There's a lot of bullshit out there. Tons of it. Enough to fertilize the entire world. In your opinion, maybe this post is filled with it. It doesn't really bother me if that's what you think, because once I write this post, I'm done with it. I'm not an advice guru, I'm a full-time independent author who derives all his income from selling books, not writing advice posts. So if you don't like the material herein and think it's bullshit, you know what to do with it - fertilize something.

What does this have to do with business? Everything. If you're going to be a full-time independent author, you have to fill your time with things an indie author would do. You also have to develop a really exceptional bullshit filter. You need to seek WISDOM (publishing information) from a variety of sources and develop the DISCRETION (bullshit filter) to decide what to apply and what not to. Some of the things you decide not to apply may not be bullshit; they just may not be a fit for the direction you want to take your career.

For example, discounting. Lots of people run sales on books, run specials on books. I haven't done hardly any of this, with a couple recent exceptions. This particular strategy is NOT bullshit, it just doesn't fit for the direction I want to go with my career. It's a perfectly reasonable business plan that works, just not one I want to employ.

Another thing about business - if you're not able to understand basics of profit and loss, contracts and how they affect you, the concept and application of loss leaders, basics of time management - okay, this is going to be a problem. The indie authoring industry is a place of shifting sands, where things are changing rapidly and what worked yesterday isn't necessarily going to work tomorrow.

What else goes into the business end of things? Tracking sales, choosing vendors, figuring out your budget, figuring out how to grow top-line sales while improving the bottom line by controlling costs, and dealing with the ten thousand assorted land mines that could crop up on a daily basis. Other business activities could include trawling through the data on your bit.ly or smartURL links to determine where you sales are coming from, figuring out which the best venues are for adbuys (I have no comment on this) or networking with other writers and talking shop.

Caveats/Pitfalls:

a) This is probably the least clearly delineated subject in this post. The reason why is because I don't really know how fast you can learn what you need to know. Maybe you've already got all the business experience you need to start with the basics. Maybe you have no business experience and are starting from scratch. I'm not even sure what all I've learned along the way from my previous career and how much it helped me, at least not in quantifiable terms. I just know it's helped a TON.

b) If you don't know anything about business, that doesn't mean it's GAME OVER, MAN. You can learn. I highly recommend constantly trying to assess your weaknesses and figuring out how to shore those up. A couple areas I think authors struggle with - Time Management/Procrastination and Self-Discipline. If you've got those areas down, good for you. A few books I think might help if you feel out of control or unsure are Kris Rusch's Freelancer's Survival Guide and Brian Tracy's Eat that Frog! (which is a time management/priority setting book). Actually, I've read a lot of books by Brian Tracy and they've all helped. The Freelancer's Guide is a good starting point, though, for general business basics.

4. Learn your craft

I'm not talking about grammar and spelling. Spellcheck can save you in one of these regards. You do need some basic knowledge of sentence structure, syntax, etc, but a good editor can help you if you're close on that. Grammar and spelling aren't really elements of craft.

Here I'm talking about descriptions, narrative voice, all the components that allow you to take the reader from beginning to end without losing them. There are a LOT of pieces to this particular puzzle, and you'll spend a lifetime working on this if you're serious about it because there's always something new to learn. Still, some fundamentals:

a) Openings

b) Cliffhangers

c) Pacing

d) Character Voice and Setting

Classes on all these topics (and more) can be found online. Make sure you use your bullshit filter to determine whether the person you’re learning from is actually worth learning from.

If you can't afford classes, let me suggest you at least read heavily in these and other areas of craft. There are tons of books on craft from experts out there. I'll try and compile a list to place at the bottom of this post in the comments, but I don't have time for it right now.

Be deliberate, as Joe Konrath would say, considering how best to improve and giving all due thought to how you can employ what you've learned in your next work to make your writing better.

All craft exercises boil down to one purpose and one alone: HOOK YOUR READER FROM THE FIRST WORD AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DO NOT FUCKING LET THEM GO UNTIL YOU'RE DONE.

Everything you learn in craft, from characterization to plotting to whatever is essentially boiled down to the essential storytelling skill of keeping them interested in what you're saying. Find the obstacles in your writing that are knocking people out of your work and shave the rough edges off them as fast as your peppy little fingers can figure out which keys to punch to do so.

Some things that can help you build your audience - write in a series. Same characters when possible (not EXACTLY possible in romance to keep the same main characters book after book, but in mystery, sci-fi, fantasy, etc, you should do this). Can you build a career writing standalone novels? Yeah, but I don't know how to do it so go find someone who can instruct you in this manner. (see point #7 for more on the benefits of writing in a series.)

Caveats/Pitfalls:

a) Your first million words is (probably) going to suck. I had an advantage here in that I've been writing books since grade school so I expelled a lot of these crappy words during my teens/early twenties the way White Castle hamburgers are expelled from your digestive tract - violently and messily, with much disgust from anyone who witnesses this spectacle.

b) Taken alongside the first caveat, realize that sometimes you're better off jumping series as your craft/ability to hold the reader improves. My first series did not take off the way my second series has (probably because the first book isn't as strongly written/well-crafted with hooks in the first as the second). It doesn't mean I abandoned my first series (in fact it's doing quite well now) but I did put it on the back-burner for the last couple years as I focused on the one that was paying my bills. The first book of my first series was...my first book. Ever. I was still learning to write a damned novel. My craft got stronger and my second series did much better.

5. Be obsessed

To quote Bree Bridges (half of the Kit Rocha writing duo of hilarity and awesomeness), "When I say it's possible to make money in publishing, I'm assuming you've tried the easier things like digging for pirate treasure."

This does not mean it's impossible. It does not mean you can't do it. It just means that if you're just looking to make a living, it's easier to get a job that works you 40 hours a week that allows you to shut off your brain afterward.

You CANNOT do that in self-publishing and expect to have it work. You will need to think about it all the time. Wanting to make your living telling stories has to be the thing you get up for in the morning and the thing you go to sleep at night thinking about.

I wanted to spend the rest of my life telling stories and getting paid for it. I wanted no boss, no schedule but that I set for myself, and I was willing to work 100 hours per week for myself so I didn't have to work 40 for someone else (thanks to L.T. Ryan for that quote).

6. Market

Lots of people have different definitions for this. I have only one - help people who are looking for a book like yours to find your damned book. You can call it visibility, you can call it discoverability, you can call it the gorram hillbilly rock for all the fucks I give on the subject.

How did I market? One way, and one way only, pretty much. I wrote in a series that had an overarching story, and I set my first book in said series to free. Permanently. That's right, you can read the first book in my two series for absolutely nothing in e-reader formats. (More on this in point #7.)

But wait, you say! It's now 2017 and that doesn't work anymore. Amazon has come along and killed the permafrees to death using an algorithm attached to a death ray.

Fine. What's the lowest possible price you can get as many of your books to? Do that and see how many copies you can give away. No, I don't care if you've got a ten book series and you're selling 9 for 99 cents in order to collect full price for that last one. If that's what it takes to move some fucking books, you'll find me there doing it, too. I will race you to the damned bottom, and I feel confident that I can whip the ass off most of the other people there because I'm obsessed, I'm a fast writer, and I have no problem with discounting ridiculous amounts of my backlist in order to get people to TRY - JUST TRY - my writing. I dare you not to read on.

And really, this is all marketing is. I'm trying to expose the readers who will LOVE my books to...MY BOOKS. Some will merely like them, but keep reading. Some readers will get caught up along the way and only somewhat enjoy my books. Maybe they'll read more, maybe not. A certain percentage will dislike my books. A certain percentage (hopefully small, if I've done my craft job correctly) will absolutely DESPISE my books and want to flame them in perpetuity with bad reviews and bad word of mouth. This number is baked into the cake of success, so get used to it. I want AS MANY OF THOSE HATERS to read my book as possible, because if they're reading it, so are the people who will love it.

Marketing is just finding ways to get those people exposed to your books. I don't do interviews, blog tours, (or blog posts, really), Twitter spamming, etc. I did it my way - permafree and having enough reviews to get the big sites like Pixel of Ink, E-reader News Today, Bookbub, Indie Book Bargains in the UK - to give me some signal boost so my books could go up the freebie charts. Kobo has given me a helping hand before as well, getting visibility on their site. I didn't ask for it, they just gave (and I'm grateful for it). Ultimately, though, none of these things would help me if I hadn't set the damned books free and gotten enough positive exposure to push them up to where people could find them.

Exposure. That's the magic word. And I don't mean the kind that gets you sent to jail for indecency, so put your pants back on. (Until you're a full-time writer, then pants are optional.)

7. Don't be afraid to give your work away for free

Between 11 April 2012 when I released my book Alone: The Girl in the Box, Book 1 and when I set it free in September 2012 some five months later, I sold 42 copies of it through all channels. In August I released books 2 and 3 in that series, ended up making four figures that month for the first time, five figures in November, and I've never even come close to a four-figure month since.

Would that have happened if I hadn't set Alone to permanently free? I doubt it. Sales weren't even moving in the right direction on it before I set it free to boost its exposure. The month before it went free it sold 3 copies. Since then it's been downloaded some 320,000 times for free and generated some 100,000+ paid sales for the rest of the series (almost all at $4.99 or the foreign equivalent).

There are two ways to look at those numbers - the first is to say, MY GOD, YOU MISSED OUT ON 320,000 SALES, ARE YOU MAD?! The answer is no, not really, because I've probably only missed out on the 3 sales a month I'd have generated without the additional visibility brought on by Alone being free, and I traded it for a boatload of money in the form of subsequent sales. That's not even counting all the people who finish reading the Girl in the Box series and move on to the other books I've written, because there are those people, too. (And I love them. My truest fans.)

That's the second way to look at it. The thought that follows is, "if only I could give away MORE copies for free, I'd be able to push that paid number to 200k+ or 300k+." (Which I'm working on).

Let's talk about the emotion of this for a moment. It hurts to set your beloved book free. It's painful to drop it to a low price. But a recent survey of successful indie authors found that something like 85% of those making over $500k per year had at least one permafree. Look for commonalities, right?

Whatever promotion hurts you the most will be most appealing to your readers. (That's according to one of the most awesome gurus of the indie movement, Edward W. Robertson.) I agree with that statement wholeheartedly, which is why this morning I started the process of setting my two biggest sellers - Untouched and Soulless, books 2 and 3 in my Girl in the Box series - to FREE. Why would I do that? Because I'm thinking even if I go from 3:1 freebie to sale ratio, if I could give away a million of those free (because of the added appeal of 3 BOOKS FOR FREE OMG DEAL) and it drops to a 5:1, I've still sold 200,000 more books. Boom.

It hurt when I set my first two books free, but it gets easier every time. And yes, it even hurt when I was selling a couple books a month, because I put blood, sweat and tears into those books, making them as good as I possibly could. However, their true value is not in the price on their cover; it's in how much money they're making for the author. After all, I'm not in this to make $10 per book; I'm in this to make a living. Free is just another tool in the toolbox for making that happen.

Caveats/Pitfalls:

a) Maybe your book isn't appealing to readers (NOTE: I DID NOT SAY YOUR BOOK SUCKS. Though it may. I don't rule that out, having not read your book. It may be sucking the balls of every donkey in the shire, for all I know. But maybe not.)

If this is the case, a few things will happen - once you get to about thirty reviews, you'll probablyknow it it's not appealing to readers because your review average will be low. What's low? If you're below 3.5 on 30 reviews on Amazon.com, it's not a good sign. (Caveat to the caveat: Whatever you do, don't read the reviews for your work on Goodreads. This will not be helpful to your career - or your mental health, in all probability. And definitely don't base any judgments about what to do in your career on Goodreads reviews. Goodreads reviews skew much lower than Amazon, and as far as I'm concerned, anything above 0.1 on Goodreads means I'm doing aight.)

Again, just to be plain, for bad reviews - does it mean your book SUCKS? No, not necessarily. It means that for whatever reason, it's not CONNECTING WITH READERS. Which is the name of the game to make a living. Creating pure and beautiful art is the province of people who don't have any outside concerns (and don't write genre fiction). Us lesser mortals (aka Genre writers) have to get by on the time, energy and money we have.

I would never tell you to base your career decisions on one or two reviews, but if you've got 30 reviews on Amazon and half of them are 1-stars...you're going to have a hell of time getting even a permafree enough exposure. It may be time to jump ship to another series, and possibly another pen name depending on how bad it looks.

Writers are terrible judges of their own work, and the authors who most need to be told their work sucks would still think it's awesome even if they're running a 1-star average on 5000 reviews while an author who writes amazing work tends to bash their own brains in because they got their first 1-star after 9 5-stars in a row. (Another point, which I'm going to say only once here - In the words of Troy McClure, "Get confident, stupid.")

b) Maybe you're in a genre that's not selling. Maybe it's awesome, but it's in a genre that Bookbub is ignoring. (Sorry, Bria!) That can happen. If you can, pick a popular genre. I'm not telling you to defile your art (or whatever), but I was fortunate in that the stories I wanted to tell more or less fit into a reasonably decent-selling genre (Fantasy). If you write second-person POV octopus mysteries, your mileage won't just vary - it will suck. Even if your book is awesome.

8. Never stop learning

Things change rapidly. If you're not constantly paying attention and reading industry blogs/keeping up with the goings on through some form of peer group with its ear to the ground, you will miss opportunities. You will miss landscape changes. These can be subtle (the slow death of Amazon Select - actually, know what what? That wasn't all that subtle) or obvious (I dunno. The caffeine is wearing off. Find an example on your own.) Either way, you'll lose out.

I had my plan, I had my basic strategy, and I started to make money in September 2012. I could have coasted, thinking I had my shit together. Instead, around October or November, I made an enormous change, one that felt like a pain in the ass to implement, but that has made enormous difference in my career.

I implemented a mailing list with links in the back of my books.

I didn't fully finish implementing this until February 2013 (and I kick myself for failing to do so) but HOLY CRAP does it make a different. If you're wondering what I'm talking about with a mailing list, go read THIS POST on Kboards by my friend SM Reine. I'll wait for you here until you get back. Make sure you read her follow-up posts as well, down the thread.

This single change is revolutionary. If you're waiting for your audience to come find you every time you release a book, you're basically throwing your baby into the waiting wolves of the Amazon algorithms. Want to make a bigger splash? Want to "game" the system? Get your damned fans to all buy your book at once. It'll make a bigger splash. If you have half a dozen cherry bombs and you light them one at a time, it's like launching a book with only social media to inform your audience. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop!

Get a mailing list together and send that puppy while you're informing your Facebook and Twitter, and it's like wrapping those cherry bombs together to create a stick of dynamite. It can help you push your new release up the genre list and garner you exposure for your entire series. "Oh, look, book #9 of this series looks interesting. I should go back and read book #1." Boom, you hooked a new reader. And best of all, once they sign up for your mailing list, they're added to the dynamite for future launches.

If you're going to go to the hard work of writing and releasing books for a living while you're trying to build an audience, don't be yutz by skipping the last steps to success. Find a way to make it easier for readers to hand you money. Make it simple for them to know you've got a new book out.

Don't get stuck in marketing like it's 2009 and you can just format a warm turd into a .mobi, price it at 99 cents and have an Amazon Bestseller. ( #1in the Fiction -> Fantasy -> Turds & Burglars category! Oops, sorry, they eliminated that category in the great 2013 category shuffle. Which you would know if you were paying attention.)

Never stop learning. Or you'll get your ass beaten by someone who's figured out something you haven't.

Caveats/Pitfalls:

a) Honestly, no matter how much you're learning, you're going to get caught flatfooted by big changes every now and again. Try and limit how often this happens by keeping your fingers on the pulse of the indie author world (and off other places - you will go blind, dammit, STOP THAT).

b) You're probably going to get your ass beaten by people anyway, so you might as well be a good sport about it. Be honest: from where you're sitting right now, if you were suddenly selling a million books per month at $2.99, would you be happy? What if you were selling that many but you were still #1,987 on your category's Author Ranking?

Put another way, who cares what your peers are doing if you're meeting your goals? Focus on you, because you can't control what others are doing, you can only learn from it and apply it to your own career if it fits.

9. Don't be afraid to fail BIG - and find a way to use it as a stepping stone for future success

My first year as an indie author (2011) I made $12.25. I actually earned more than that, but because of the limitations on how big your earnings need to be before they cut a check, that's all I made. I never cashed that check, and it's still sitting on my desk right now (which is how I knew the specific amount).

That's kind of a big failure, isn't it? Would you be happy earning that much for your year's labor? Whatever your answer (please say no), realize that I was expecting that, so I didn't get disappointed when it happened. The game I was playing was long term, and I was aiming more for growth than anything. I was excited when I went up to 25 sales in a month, and I didn't get all bummed out and pissed off and demotivated when I sagged the next month. New releases and promotions help push you up, but there's a natural sag given time.

Another "failure": I launched a book last month, a collection of short stories in my Sanctuary Series. Thus far it's sold 468 copies, and at a lower price than I usually price my work. Whoops. I wrote a short story collection in my lesser-selling series and it bombed. This isn't a huge surprise or anything, but it's a failure. I'm not going to go crying over it, but you can bet I'll think long and hard before I spend my time writing another short story collection.

Of course, here's the biggest one of all: Every month before I started making a living was a failure, really. It was a calculated failure, but it was a failure nonetheless. We were sinking money into daycare costs, losing time for me to go get a degree in something that would pay me (with an English degree and financial services experience, I don't have a great resume). I was willing to accept as many of those failures as it took to cross through to success. My wife, however, was not going to wait forever.

Every month (even now) I do an autopsy on my calendar. What did I do right this month? What did I do wrong? What can I improve? (I also track my wordcount, sales, and number of books presently for sale.) My entire career in finance ended up as a failure, but that doesn't mean I didn't take away a ton of salvage for use in this one.

Comb through your fuckups. Often times you'll learn more from those than your successes.

Caveats/Pitfalls:

a) When you start to see some success, don't be a fucking idiot and stop working. Work twice as hard, because now you know your strategy is doable. I worked even more in 2013 than I did in 2012 because now I was 100% sure I was on the right track. I'm going to see if I can beat what I did in 2013 this year.

b) I think this probably goes without saying (but I'll say it anyway in case any of you are morons): don't go into something TRYING to fail. Unless it's low risk/low loss. Assess the amount of time/energy/money you're going to sink into something before you commit to it if it's got a high failure rate. Don't waste your time doing stuff you're almost certain is doomed unless it's like five seconds of your time. And don't get bummed when it goes to shit, expect that in advance and be pleasantly surprised if you get anything out of it.

10. Keep writing

I think I'm exhausted and the caffeine is wearing off, so I'm going to make this as quick as I can. If you're the type of person who's easily discouraged, this is going to be tough on you. If you're the type of person who flits from job to job always looking for the "better deal" or the "next thing"...you're probably not going to have much success here, either. If you're not okay with spending ten hours per day hammering at your writing career on various fronts for a while without much of a vacation or break...I don't think I can help you. If you're not bursting with excitement at the stories you have inside that SIMPLY MUST BE TOLD, I'm not sure this career thing is going to be the right fit.

But if you're dedicated beyond the capacities of most humans, if you're obsessed, and you're smart, and you're willing to learn and do whatever it takes (on this side of the legal and ethical bounds please, you Frank Underwood, you) to build a backlist and get your books in front of people, you can make a living as an indie author. Will it be huge? Maybe. Will it be minimal? Maybe. I don't know. There's some definite variance in mileage between writers, but I've seen enough of them MAKE A LIVING to know it's possible if you approach it correctly and you're willing to work hard enough to make a one-armed paperhanger look idle.

Once you've got all these other points down, it's really down to you to keep writing. Keep putting books on your bookshelf. Take the hits that will come and do not stop tapping keys on that keyboard. I don't know how long it will take you to get there, I honestly don't. Personally, I didn't care how long it took. The eighteen months it took for me passed like nothing because I was having the time of my life.

This isn't the lottery; there's not just one winning ticket. There's really no luck involved either, just an obscene number of things that are outside your direct control. There are so many things you can do to influence these events, though, and I've outlined as many of them for you as I could here. I probably missed some; I'm kinda tired by now, and it's my day off.

The bottom line is that if you *really* want to be a full-time indie author, I think you can do it. Will it be easy? FUCK NO. If you're looking for easy, scroll back to that paragraph with Jenny's phone number. This will be a lot of "nose to the grindstone."

But will it be worth it?

In every year of my financial services career, I interviewed people looking to hire them. I'd listen to their stories, hear them talk about their work lives. Every day I did that, I put myself in their shoes and imagined what my life would be like if I had their career. Sometimes I'd shudder, sometimes I'd wonder what it'd be like if I'd made the choice to do what they did. Sometimes I'd wish I had. A lot of times I wished I had. Especially when things got bad.

Since the day I started to write full-time, I have never once imagined myself as anything other than a writer. I have never wanted anyone else's life or job for my own, and I have never wanted to be anyone but me. I've maybe wanted to have other authors sales numbers if they're doing better than me, but I've never wanted to swap anything else.

I don't want to do anything else but what I'm doing. I love this gig. It's the best job I've ever had. Last year I went to England for a week to research a novel and meet some fans. Had one of the best times of my life. In January, it got damned cold here so I picked up and took the kids to Florida for a week to hang out with my parents and go to Disney. Sure, they just went last October, but you only live once, right? (I also wrote something like 12,000 words on a book while I was on "vacation" so...)

For me, it was worth it. It was everything I'd ever wanted and when I got here, it was everything I'd dreamed of plus more. I guess what I'm saying is, if you're the kind of person who wants it that badly, who's willing to do what it takes to do it, I hope this helps you.

Keep writing. That's the last key. Through the bad times, and the good - hopefully it'll mostly be good, but you better plan for the other. If you want it bad enough that you're willing to put in effort in these areas, you can do it. If you're hating every day of it, though, then it's probably not for you, and there's no shame in that.

What being a full-time indie author basically boils down to is that you keep writing, because you love it so much you can't stop. No caveats. No pitfalls. Just a love of writing that won't ever let you quit.

(Editor's Note: There is no editor and I'm sure this post is riddled with errors. Fuck off and go write, okay? I'm going to go play Titanfall.)

#writing #writers #writeblr

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libertaridan · 4 years ago

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The Power of Moral Authority

As I reflect on the various management styles of individuals I’ve worked with, both in politics and without, I recall some really excellent examples, some… not so excellent (I’m pleased to say those I work with at time of publishing this are all excellent), I sometimes find myself recalling one of the worst examples I ever came across – when former head of OfSTED, Michael Wilshaw, was quoted in 2012 as saying:

“If anyone says to you that ‘staff morale is at an all-time low’ you know you are doing something right.”

Really? He thought low morale was a success indicator? I hold this up as a particularly fine example of ego being the core driver, regardless of the human cost in self esteem, confidence and vitality of others. In holding his view Wilshaw was, in my opinion, blind to the fact that he was missing a key component that would net the success he wanted far more effectively than by crushing the morale of those he needed to bring it about. He was missing the component of moral authority.

Moral authority is arguably the opposite of formal authority, though they can co-exist in the same person at the same time, they can rarely be used simultaneously.

Formal authority is bestowed by virtue of job role, rank, position, contract. It is expected by right, even demanded, rather than given freely.

Moral authority, on the other hand, has no rank or position, or power to demand anything. Yet when freely given has arguably far more power to move people and achieve goals than any amount of formal authority. Rather than demanding, it leads by example. Rather than sacrificing others, it sacrifices itself.

In his book “The 8th Habit” Stephen R. Covey explains the powerful difference between the two.

“When conscience governs vision, discipline and passion, leadership endures and changes the world for good. In other words, moral authority makes formal authority work. When conscience does not govern vision, discipline and passion, leadership does not endure, nor do the institutions created by that leadership endure. In other words, formal authority without moral authority fails.

“The words “for good” means that it “lifts” and also that it “lasts”. Hitler had vision, discipline and passion but was driven by ego. Lack of conscience was his downfall. Gandhi’s vision, discipline and passion were driven by conscience, and he became a servant to the cause and the people. Again, he had only moral authority, no formal authority, and he was the father and founder of the second largest country in the world.

“When vision, discipline and passion are governed by formal authority void of conscience or moral authority, it also changes the world, but not for good, rather for evil. Instead of lifting, it destroys; rather than lasting, it is eventually extinguished.”

(Stephen R. Covey, The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness, (Simon and Schuster, Australia, Sydney, 2004), pp70)

Moral authority is an essential within modern competitive organisations. Good examples must be given, managers and leaders must talk and walk, because where they simply choose to ignore conscience and crush morale as a “motivator”, moral authority is unlikely to be arriving on the next train.

Morality

The “moral”, in “moral authority”, is inextricably intertwined with morality. The problem is very real. Managers and leaders, acting on ego, undermine their own moral authority and have nothing to replace it with but more ego, and it becomes a vicious circle.

If managers and leaders are to have moral authority, that means honesty and integrity as a bare minimum. Traits that are often the opposite of the egocentric approach. Traits that, quite frankly, scare those who are habitually egocentric in their management style – they like making allegations but they hate needing evidence, they like ‘drama’ but they hate cool reasoned consideration, they like pointing at others but cannot bear to see the flaws in themselves – it allows them to get away with maintaining their approach. Honesty and integrity are too transparent, too open, it is scary for the egocentric.

Again, in “The 8th Habit” Covey describes the traits of the egocentric:

“Ego focuses on one’s own survival, pleasure and enhancement to the exclusion of others and is selfishly ambitious. It sees relationships in terms of threat or no threat, like little children who classify all people as “He’s nice” or “He’s mean”…

“Ego works in the face of genuine crisis but has no discernment in deciding how severe a crisis or threat is…

“Ego can’t sleep. It micromanages. It disempowers. It reduces one’s capacity. It excels in control…

“Ego is threatened by negative feedback and punishes the messenger. It interprets all data in terms of self preservation. It constantly censors information. It denies much of reality…

“Ego is myopic and interprets all of life through its own agenda…”

(Stephen R. Covey, The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness, (Simon and Schuster, Australia, Sydney, 2004), pp78)

It seems obvious that such an approach to management and leadership is unlikely to result in the kind of success most organisations crave. As long as ego supersedes conscience, the success of an organisation is being undermined, and the true capacity of others is being crushed.

Ego will ultimately lose

The world is changing, as Covey also discusses in his book, the old industrial age is dying, and the principle of “servant leadership” hand in hand with the new age of “knowledge workers” is growing. With that in mind the following from Robert K. Greenleaf serves as a warning, to managers who cling to the egocentric industrial model, but also as an opportunity:

“A new moral principle is emerging which holds that the only authority deserving one’s allegiance is that which is freely and knowingly granted by the led to the leader in response to, and in proportion to, the clearly evident servant stature of the leader. Those who choose to follow this principle will not casually accept the authority of existing institutions. Rather they will freely respond only to individuals who are chosen as leaders because they are proven and trusted as servants. To the extent that this principle prevails in the future, the only truly viable institutions will be those that are predominantly servant-led.”

(Robert K. Greenleaf, “The Servant Leader,” Servant Leadership: A Journey Into the Nature of Legitimate power and Greatness, 25th Anniversary ed. (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 2002), pp. 23-24.)

A sustainable future for any organisation and your success at any worthy goal is built not on ego, or prowess, or a sense of entitlement, but on conscience, honesty, integrity, vision, discipline, passion and personal responsibility.

As a libertarian these are essential, and where they are found in deficit you can simply choose to withdraw your consent, to withdraw your allegiance, and move on as you choose.

#libertarian #moral authority #7 habits of highly effective people #servant leadership

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thinkingaboutsanfrancisco · 5 years ago

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Friday April 17th, 2015

If someone would've told me two hours ago that I'd be in the city tonight, much less standing in this fucking park again, I think I would've burned them with my cigarette.

Now that I've been revived by the kinetic energy of lucrative prospects and perhaps a runner's high from racing through the Embarcadero, I can reflect with amusement on my situation's irony instead of wallowing in the curse of it. Obviously I'm here, it's Friday night. Where the fuck else would I be? Making ends meet with my measly retail job where I walk away with $40 at the end of the night? Please. The earnings I can accumulate for one night of transactions wipe out what I gross in a bi-weekly paycheck in that store, it'd be laughable to acquire that lousy shift...especially when I've picked up four there this week already. Shouldn't I be resting instead since I'm so fucking tired? Fuck that. Since being on the other side of the door, I've been blessed with the clarity to realize that genuine sound rest for anyone in our apartment on a Friday night is ultimately futile, and fuck was I finding myself miserable for trying. While my body might've been wasting away on a bed or a couch, there's no way I would constitute the only other thing I've done this week as "rest". Not with the perpetual nausea in my stomach that kept churning from my mind's rotten, embarrassing, reruns that recommenced to torture me without mercy despite how I thought that I'd charred their disgusting instigator to oblivion the last time I was here. It should've been over because it was over to me and it didn't go catastrophically as I'd feared, yet that awful remnant lingered within me like a bitter taste in my mouth and nothing I could conjure up to distract myself was able to fully abolish the feeling. She may be naive that I ruined our friendship but it doesn’t matter, because I ruined our friendship and the only thing that could ever heal my festering regret is time and all I'm left to do is live with my stupid fucking self while I wait it out, which I know I can do. I've carried the burden of far worse guilt before. I'll live.

Five days of on running the worst fucking sleep I've had in two years, however, and whatever remained of my already fraying wit's end was deteriorating to its' last fragile fibers. I didn't want to do a single. goddamn. thing. Taking a couple of steps in our kitchen to open up the freezer, ripping open the bothersome box and pesky packaging, and putting a pepperoni Hot Pocket in the microwave so I could force myself to eat was as laborious as I wanted to get tonight and, while I slumped on the counter with my hand in my palm and waited for that unnecessary ding to inform me of what I was already anticipating, my exhausted frustration provoked me to make a spiel of decisions to ensure that: fuck studying, fuck avoiding texting Ray back, fuck waiting up for my dad, and, most unusual of them all, fuck Natalia. Most of the time I value her consistency, but I dreaded her then-impending text from the second I got back in from school because I was not in the mood to accommodate her pain in the ass schedule tonight, $300 be damned. She always wants an 8-ball before her shift and another when she gets off at one and there was no way in hell I could foresee myself having any ability to hang around Downtown for four fucking hours tonight. It was going to conflict with my Trazadone swiping plans, the enticement of which began to surge when I opened my burner and realized that I was going to have to deny my best customer. I hadn't received her usual request yet, but it was rapidly approaching nine and I was hoping that by intercepting her and initiating word of my very important schedule conflict, she'd be less pissed at my inability to show and not discredit and discard me like she did her other blow-off dealer. Yeah, the money always matters, but the price of my reputation is far more invaluable.

The weight of that knowledge slowed my usual punctual thumbs as I evaluated the brief sentences and consolation with more acuity than I typically reserve for my English essays. If there's one principal lesson I've learned in the last week, it's not to text the first thing that's on my mind...especially when it wasn't in the right place to begin with.

And thank the fucking Lord for that.

Because right when I was in the middle of selfishly setting us up for losing $300, fate buzzed me into my fucking senses and about gave me a heart attack in the process when I registered who the fuck was calling me.

I don't think I've ever picked up the phone and put it up to my ear as rapidly as I did then and it wasn't because I was eager to talk to him. Fuck, if I would've been presented with the question via text that he wound up asking me, maintaining my assurance would've been the easiest thing I've ever done and there's no fucking way I would be standing here but he called me and he never has fucking called me. There's never been a reason for him to and I've never wanted him to because surely it was going to be serious and my mind raced through a white flash of fragmented worst-case scenarios. What the fuck did I fucking do? I stammered out the first word of that question twice before I realized that I was revealing the pure panic in my voice and I had to put a fucking end to it. He demands to know if I'm busy, which I wasn't anymore since everything suddenly got rendered irrelevant by his boisterous, jovial volume that thawed the ice of my fear into cautious curiosity as I started to perceive that this call was more irrelevant to the state of my existence than I thought...

“I wanna go fucking clubbing, J. You wanna go clubbing?! Let’s go clubbing! I ONLY WANT TO GO IF YOU COME WITH.”

Or could've ever considered because what the fuck? No?! Why the fuck would I go clubbing with him?! I don't fucking "club"! What in the everloving fuck possessed him to think that I do? Especially since he already convinced himself that I'm a teenage virgin who's never experienced delights or tragedies of love without me implicating anything explicit to give that impression away or indulge him in it being correct. Now five days later he’s deemed me suitable enough for his clubbing roster? Ridiculous.

So I started to express my disinterest...until he said something that made every part of my broken mind click back into the proper, functioning, place...

“Come on, J…there’s money in it for you.”

Remembering how stunned I was upon hearing it sends me into a chuckle because it's so crystal clear to me now, but upon hearing it I had to work myself through the entire thought process as if I'd returned to Kindergarten and was introduced to the concept of the sum of one plus two equates to three. Of course, that's why S he asked me to go with him. Night clubs and the loosened inhibitions of their clientele are rampant for an opportunity. Granted, it's one I've never considered to take up on because the loose lips of those fiending in the alleyways outside of them after hours were enough to sustain my immediate needs and, frankly, is more apt for my style. No matter what you're trying to sell, whether it be the commerce of cocaine or cars, your chances of successfully convincing a customer of purchasing it increase substantially when you locate one aspect of them to relate to and use it as a driving force. Developing a niche is the proper term for it and my niche is desperation. I'm always desperate. I'm desperate for cash, I'm desperate for success, I'm desperate for a future, I'm desperate for freedom, I'm desperate for safety, I'm desperate for love...fuck, I'm desperate for about everything besides for actual fucking cocaine. I understand what it's like to feel hopeless on these San Francisco streets, searching for that special someone who can swoop in and deliver that sweet salvation and can satisfy what their heart craves and I'm thrilled when, instead of another suffering martyr, I can be a savior.

Like S was for me.

If it weren't for when he agreed to supply for me back in February, that might've been the most important sentence he's ever spoken to me because it's exactly the reminder I needed to hear. My entire move wasn't about making friends or an honest attempt at living or doing as perfectly as I can in school to keep up a GPA that isn't at all an accurate representation of my deteriorating intellect, it was about developing my own contacts and bringing in my own contributions—as legal or "unconventional" as they may be—for our survival and if I was that fucked up by some privileged British girl who would drop me so fucking quick if she found out how abhorrent my real reasons for being in this city are, then Lance Kelley should keep himself awake all night worrying about me because there is no way in hell I can afford to be that weak out here.

And I'm not going to be.

Certainly not when there's this thudding bass alerting me of that familiar black Altima's arrival. I never thought I'd be so relieved to see that car, but it's not so bad now that I don't have to display all of my personal belongings onto its roof. Now that I think of it, S hasn't entertained me with his little game in a while...

Taking a long drag of my Parliament because I'm sensing it's going to be the last one I'll be able to do silently for a while, I watch as S puts the car in park and proves me right when he jumps out and greets me with a name I haven't heard in a while.

“JAMES DEAN! How’s it going?!”

While I roll my eyes at it because I still don't get what he sees in that comparison, it's so stupidly cheerful that I can't resist a chuckle.

Damn, he's really happy to see me isn't he?

My rhetorical question resolves itself when I see color and animation thriving in his face as he exclaims how great I look and...surprisingly, he's not bullshitting me. I was fully prepared for S to call me out on being such a teenager that I had to rummage through my dad's closet and steal one of his button-up dress shirts, after all it is the honest-to-God truth since I didn't own one this nice looking myself, yet he refrained and I'm able to settle into a satisfied grin, "Well I’ve found that nice opportunities are more likely to present themselves to the presentable so... thanks. Glad to see you’re looking better too."

Seriously, he's in a refreshing return to form and it's obvious that the source of his rejuvenation has to be something far greater than merely my outfit. Pregaming, probably, but I don't care because he’s a far cry from the shattered soul I physically left sitting on that bench on Sunday night, yet who kept finding a way to agonize me mentally on the train ride back to Bayview. I wished I could’ve left him under a more imminently optimistic note but rushing his grieving process would’ve only delayed things for him in the long run and I’d truly delivered as much as I could for one night. Again, adequate time’s the only thing that could heal those wounds and watching him believe my compliment in this park only less than a week later is rewarding. The healing process can be a bitch and I’m happy it’s already starting to work out for him.

I can't wait for it to start working out for me too.

Tired of standing in this same spot, I take a few steps forward to the passenger's side of his car and lean against the door, tucking one of my arms underneath the one staunchly propping up my Parliament.

"Alright, so where is it? I’m not going anywhere until I see exactly what’s in store for me tonight.”

#/ilostmyheartandmymind #the bros #04172015

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