Writing

Villains

This entry was posted in Techniques Writing and tagged fiction writing on by

Villains make stories exciting. They add an element of danger, giving the hero an adversary to overcome and the reader someone to hate. But who exactly counts as a villain? Is it any character who does bad things? This question came up in my mind when discussing the question of whether the opera Carmen has a villain. Is it Don Jose? He murders the protagonist. Is it Carmen? She leaves a trail of ruin, but that’s not her intention. Here I’ll put a few thoughts together.

First try: A proper villain does bad things with bad intentions. But do the intentions have to be bad? The classic example of the righteous villain is Javert in Les Miserables. Throughout the novel, he pursues Jean Valjean in the belief that he’s hunting down a dangerous criminal. He can’t grasp that Valjean has greatly changed, and when the truth hits him … well, that’s a spoiler. Is he a villain? Gottesmann in my The Magic Battery is similar, and I had Javert in mind when I created him. He thinks that letting just anybody use magic is too dangerous to allow, and he won’t allow the conviction of an innocent person, but his campaign kills a lot of people.
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Migrating from Smashwords to Draft2Digital

This entry was posted in Writing Writing as business and tagged draft2digital ebooks publishing smashwords on by

A few days ago I got an email from Smashwords saying I’m now eligible to migrate my self-publishing account to Draft2Digital. “Uncomplicated” accounts were eligible to migrate in February. Mine must be “complicated,” which surprises me. Maybe it’s because the two Thomas Lorenz novels constitute a series. In any case, if you’re a Smashwords author and think you may have missed the notification, check out the Migration FAQ.

The good news is that Smashwords says your existing links will continue to work. It would have been very annoying if they didn’t. However, it isn’t clear what the benefits are. The FAQ says, “After you update your manuscript through the Draft2Digital interface, only the ePub format will be available to readers.” That sounds like a downgrade. There’s nothing about whether migration will eventually be mandatory. If you have books published on Smashwords, read the information and use your judgment. This article on selfpublishing.com provides information which could help, though it’s a couple of years old. I’m content to drag my feet.

Recollections of Ergo

This entry was posted in History Writing and tagged education history MIT writing on by

Ergo: The Campus Voice of Reason. That was the name of our paper. Like all college students, we were more confident we were right than we should have been, but we stood apart from the crowd. As an organization, we were never “liberal” or “conservative” in the popular sense of the words. Our position was libertarian, strongly influenced by Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. Ergo challenged university administrators, the campus left, politicians, and academics. My association with Ergo helped me to develop a framework of thought that I still go by. My views on what is important and how to achieve it have changed, and so have some of my conclusions, but my basic principles have changed very little.

Ergo came into being during a time called the “sixties,” which lasted from about 1965 to 1975. The founder was J. R. M. Seitz, who allegedly acquired all the parts necessary to build an Atlas missile (except the nuclear warhead) on the open market. It was the time of the Vietnam War and urban riots. It was a time of protests and violence. People marched and occupied buildings. Some thought that totalitarian Communist states were a great idea. Others just wanted the government to stop drafting people and sending them into an undeclared war on the other side of the globe. Once I was punched in the nose, and another time the sweater I was wearing was set on fire. I can’t count the number of times I was called a fascist. Interesting times.
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The numbering of musical works

This entry was posted in Music Writing and tagged music writing on by

The other day while driving, I heard a familiar-sounding piano sonata on WCRB. It was one I’d heard before, in fact one I was familiar with. I could accurately anticipate the music, which was obviously Mozart’s, in some spots. But I couldn’t place the damn thing! When I reached my destination, I stayed in the parking lot and kept the radio on to the end. The announcer said only that it was Mozart’s “Piano Sonata No. 2.” This wasn’t very helpful, since there are different numberings in different editions.

The numbering of musical works is tricky in general. For many composers, there are generally accepted numbers, but Mozart’s sonatas aren’t the only case where there’s confusion. Schubert’s symphonies are usually numbered 1 to 9, even though No. 7 is just a sketch. The “Unfinished” is No.8 and the “Great C major” the 9th in this scheme. Some lists, though, have just eight symphonies. They make the “Unfinished” the seventh and the C major symphony the eighth, or vice versa.
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Time to flee Glassdoor

This entry was posted in Commentary Writing as business and tagged Glassdoor Internet privacy on by

Glassdoor is a site which lets employees and ex-employees report anonymously on what it’s like to work at companies. It used to place a high value on user privacy, since people reporting bad stuff about their employers can get them into trouble. Recently, though, it’s not only reversed itself but, in a single bound, become one of the worst websites for privacy.

I’m unusually close to Report Zero on this matter, and I think the person making this report would rather not be too widely identified, so I’ll link only to secondary sources here, such as this Ars Technica article, checking them against the original reports for accuracy.
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Gallup doesn’t understand set theory

This entry was posted in Commentary Writing and tagged journalism politics polls on by

According to a Gallup Poll article, “Less than a third of Americans say they would be willing to vote for someone nominated by their party who is over the age of 80 or has been charged with a felony or convicted of a felony by a jury.” If that’s true and Trump and Biden are the major-party nominees in 2024, then two-thirds of Americans will sit out the election for that reason alone.

Is that what the poll actually shows? The article goes on to say, “The poll addressed the issues of felonies and candidate age with separate questions each asked of about half of the poll’s respondents.” That makes it impossible to draw the conclusion stated at the top of the article. It’s an issue of set overlap.
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The Hugo cover-up

This entry was posted in Commentary News Writing and tagged China conventions fandom science fiction on by

It’s out in the open now: Legitimate Hugo Award candidates were disqualified because of Chinese censorship. A collection of internal email, posted on Document Cloud, shows that the committee reviewed “anything of a sensitive political nature.” Dave McCarty was specific about the reasons:

In addition to the regular technical review, as we are happening in China and the *laws* we operate under are different … we need to highlight anything of a sensitive political nature in the work. [Ellipses in the original]

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It’s Black History Month, not Black Advertising Month

This entry was posted in Writing and tagged history writing on by

Looking around the Internet and stores, the most obvious signs of Black History Month are ethnically targeted marketing. That’s what advertisers do, I guess. But the original idea was a good one: call attention to people whom older histories tended to ignore.

Writers might get some ideas from looking at black historical figures they admire. Let me just list three:
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Prescriptivism or consistentism?

This entry was posted in Commentary Writer ethics Writing and tagged grammar language writing on by

Recently I replied to an online point that said that if the US enacts laws that enforce Christian views, the country will be a theocracy. I pointed out that all or nearly all European countries for most of history have met that criterion and that the USA itself was a “theocracy” by that measure until at least the 1960s. The person making the post rebuked me for being a “prescriptivist” and implied it’s consistent with being a libertarian.

First, it’s not a political issue. I don’t advocate laws requiring people to use words with standard meanings, except in legal documents. Aside from that, I’m not exactly a prescriptivist. I prefer to consider myself a “consistentist.” Whatever meaning you give to a word, stick with it and don’t conflate it with other definitions. If you want to use “glory” to mean “a nice knock-down argument,” don’t use it to mean “splendor” at the same time.
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