Host of @LegendariumPod and Haulin Assets. Producer of more shows at Legendarium Creative. I help ppl start their own podcasts and YouTube channels. #sc2 ❤️
Joined June 2015
- Tweets1.1K
- Following359
- Followers546
- Likes2.1K
Just finished (again)
@NoahCRothman's Rise of the New Puritans. Love books like this because they give you a new lens for seeing the world around you. Even years later as new events unfold and the jerseys and team captains change again and again, books like this are a touchpoint.
Back in college I watched There Will Be Blood on DVD, and had no idea the DVD player was malfunctioning. Watched the entire movie in black and white, thinking that was how it was released. Tried watching it in color, but there was no going back.
This isn't that tough to see through. It's not, "this is too dangerous," it's, "we climbed the mountain first, we need government regulators to pull up the ladder behind us so we don't get displaced."
Read it. Read it. Read it. Read it. Read it. Read it. Read it. Read it. Read it. Read it. Read it. Read it. Read it. Read it.
Hey.
You should read this book.
Elizabeth Warren is a fundamentally unserious person, and she hopes you are, too.
Ken Griffey Jr.
Without the injuries, he'd hold the top spot in almost every category he competed for.
Every word.
Relatedly, a writer who only ever writes doesn't know enough about life to write convincingly. Might as well turn it over to the robots at that point. But learn woodworking? Or cooking? Or horsemanship? Those aspects of your books will spring to life.
I don't think this is ill-intentioned, so let's dig deeper than a witty comeback that would get more retweets. I used to share the underlying assumption that novelists are story-producers who work at some sadly individualized words/hour. Therefore, more hours worked would equal more words. I've even tried it, cloistering myself and doing literally nothing but writing all day, nap, long into the night, nap, repeat--for two years. The work got faster, at first, with no drop in quality. Then it got worse. Then slower and worse in a doom spiral. It was like holding your breath and sprinting. It goes fine, at first. Art is a response to life.
And the truth is, as a reader today, you're lucky. You can now choose deeply human art that's slow and imperfect or deeply inhuman machine art that's fast and imperfect. And lots of people are scrambling to make android art that's fast. It will, I suspect, still be imperfect, with the added (overcomeable?) danger of being shallow.
So, me spending a few hours a week pursuing a hobby? That IS me staying in my niche, doing exactly what I need to do to make deeply human art, making it to the highest standard of excellence I can, and making it as fast as I can--which is much slower than I'd like! Thank you for saying I write amazing novels. I feel immensely grateful to be able to make a living doing this hard thing I love.
"Rights for me, restrictions for thee"
Ever notice that for someone like Sanders, the Constitution only ever flows one way? Amazon has the right to avoid unionization just like workers have a right to pursue it.
Amazon made more than $92 billion in the first half of this year but uses legal loopholes to deny workers their constitutional right to a union.
I applaud @NYCMayor for supporting legislation holding Amazon accountable for this corporate greed & protecting its drivers.
I still had some respect for MBD, though rapidly evaporating, over the last few years. This might be the analogy that dries up the pool completely. What a sad, sold-soul joke.
More stories of capricious and often malicious gods who play with the lives of the mortals around them for power and amusement?
I've already seen The Boys.
I hate this shit so much. Dan Wilson takes the Ms to game 7 of the ALCS, then they struggle the following year, and people want to boo him and get rid of him? Shut up and go back under your rocks.
Two people -- GRR Martin and Patrick Rothfuss -- may have ruined epic fantasy for a generation. And the weirdest part?
ROTHFUSS' SECOND BOOK WASN'T THAT GOOD. Not compared to the first one anyway.
I’ve been telling people this for years.
GRRM pissed off millions of customers but he don’t give a shit. He got his bag. But his legacy is being such an epic bum ass bum that he crippled an entire genre, ruined consumer sentiment, and killed off an entire generation of epic fantasy authors.
Romantasy and LitRPG grew as a direct result of filling the smoking crater George left in the industry. New writers could no longer get deals to write epic fantasy unless the entire series was in the bag, and nobody can afford to gamble that much time to write that many books they may never sell.
Publishers no longer took chances on new series because customers had got burned by lazy shirkers like George and Pat. Agents wouldn’t represent new epic fantasy unless the whole thing was done. It hurt Indy because dudes had to convince customers that they weren’t bums too. Except when book one makes $50 total, because customers said Im not starting a new series until it’s done! they sure as shit ain’t writing book two. So it’s a self fulfilling prophesy of suck.
In the comments Dunning-Krugerands are saying this isn’t true. Look at guys like Brandon Sanderson. Wrong. Guys like him, or me, who already had established names, reputations, and fan bases were fine. We had enough customers who trusted us we could still do new things and people would come along to make it economically viable.
For example, the only reason my epic fantasy series got picked up is because I was already successful and could guarantee a viable level of sales off my existing fans. Newbs don’t have that. And over the ten years it took for me to write the six books to finish it, the entire time I heard from potential customers, nope, not gonna start a new series that might not finish because of George.
I am fine during this because I’m still gonna make a couple hundred grand off each of those just off my existing fans. Newbs make two bucks an hour, say to hell with being a writer I’m going back to my day job, and you all missed out on the next great author and his absolutely brilliant series, because you were too mad at billionaire George shoving twinkies in his mouth instead of writing.
Nope. Guys like me and Brandon are fine. George’s profound laziness screwed over the new guys. Customers and the industry quit taking chances on new guys. We will never know how many excellent fantasy series we missed out on, robbed by George’s laziness burning so many customers.
Some writers gave up, but others moved into different genres. Which is good. But it sure does suck if epic fantasy is your jam. LitRPG is close but different enough it blew up during this time frame because that’s where the talented went.
Being such a pretentious, bloviating bum that you damage an entire industry and strangle a generation of aspiring artists is quite the legacy.
Kal (who is a good writer btw, check out his books) asks what can we do about this? For me personally I’m just gonna continue mocking George’s work ethic in the hopes more normies realize what an outlier he is, and how they should expand their horizons to read other authors who aren’t stuck up, know it all, dickheads.
And before anybody starts barking at me that I’m such a hypocrite because I’ve not finished all my series, sorry I’ve only finished three of eight so far, and have only written THIRTY books since George’s last one, the next MHI comes out in December, and the last two books are next year, and I’m not planning on retiring anytime soon (if ever).