writing

Virtually absurd

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

When you don’t see people face to face and all your interactions are by phone or over the Internet, life can take on an unreal quality. It feels as if we’re living virtual lives, not real ones. Maybe that’s why writers put the adjective “virtual” on virtually everything. Instead of real learning, we have “virtual learning.” There was talk of the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates having a “virtual debate,” apparently in lieu of actually debating. Yet perversely, people we barely know on Facebook are “friends,” not “virtual friends.”

We need to hang on to the reality of life. The term “virtual” means being not quite something or being simulated. If something is “virtually impossible,” it still has a glimmer of possibility.

Many things are now simulated on the Internet because we can’t do them in real life; there are virtual meetings, virtual classrooms, virtual attendance, etc. That’s legitimate. But the outcomes ought to be real. Virtual classrooms should result in real learning, or what’s the point? Distance doesn’t make things less real. People have debated by correspondence for thousands of years; why does distance suddenly make debates “virtual”?

The word “virtual” is an antonym of “literal.” Maybe the long history of abusing “literal” has made the abuse of its opposite inevitable. If you can say someone “literally exploded” when there was no explosion, then why not say you “virtually learned” when you actually learned?

“Virtual,” like “algorithm,” is a trendy word to stick everywhere because it makes the writer sound computer-smart. But it’s virtual smartness, just the appearance of it. Let’s hold on to what’s real in life and not dismiss everything we do at a distance as “virtual.”

California governor signs bill exempting freelance writers from AB-5

This entry was posted in Writing Writing as business and tagged business California writing on by

Governor Gavin Newsom of California has signed a bill exempting freelance writers and some other businesses from the draconian restrictions which state bill AB-5 had placed on contract work. Previously, AB-5 had limited writers to 35 articles a year to the same customer. That made it impossible, for instance, to contract for a weekly column.

California may be an insane place, but sanity prevails now and then.

Is Constant Content stiffing its foreign writers?

This entry was posted in Writing Writing as business and tagged business Constant Content scams writing on by

The news for Constant Content’s foreign writers doesn’t look good. This Reddit discussion, as of the time I’m writing this post, suggests that no one is getting paid. (The company is based in Canada, but it doesn’t treat US writers as foreign, and at least some of them are getting paid.)

Constant Content is months behind in paying these writers. Its website still doesn’t acknowledge the existence of a payment problem. Its FAQ contains blatantly false information, still claiming “Payments are made through Paypal.” It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the company’s only guiding principle is what it can get away with.

Update #2 on Constant Content

This entry was posted in Writing Writing as business and tagged Constant Content scams writing on by

The situation with Constant Content remains the same. Payments to writers are long past due, and I’ve seen no indication anyone has been paid recently. Some people have received an email instructing them to set up payments through Stripe. Others say they haven’t received it. They can’t find this information on the website. I used my old account to log in and couldn’t find any information indicating a change of ownership or payment method.

The writers’ FAQ says, “Payment is made the first week of the beginning of each month.” It doesn’t say the first full week, so I take that to mean writers should have been paid last week. Comments on Reddit and elsewhere indicate that’s been their past practice. I let the following Monday go by to be generous, but I’m still seeing no reports of people getting paid.
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Update on Constant Content

This entry was posted in Writing Writing as business and tagged Constant Content writing on by

There’s a tiny but important change to constant-content.com: The page footer now says it’s “A Division of Moresby Media Inc.” As I mentioned in my earlier post, the footer previously identified RevenueWire as the parent company. The FTC fined RevenueWire for helping shady “tech support” companies to scam people.

Writers are saying that Constant Content has sent out an email telling them they will soon be getting payment through Stripe. Others say they didn’t get the email. It’s plausible that the mail had trouble with spam filters; bulk email promising payment tends to be viewed as spam. Alternatively, CC may be sending the mail out in batches.

Setting up to receive payments by Stripe is straightforward; payments can go to a bank account or a debit card. However, it’s not available in all countries, and that could be an issue for some writers.
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The return of lily-white writing? 1

This entry was posted in Commentary Writing and tagged race writing on by

Boskone 58 pocket program coverBack in the “Golden Age of Science Fiction,” all the leading characters were light-skinned by implication. Well, all the human characters. The aliens were often green or blue. It wasn’t that the authors set out to portray white-only casts or mentioned every character’s appearance; it was just the default, and most writers (themselves light-skinned) rarely thought about it.

The situation slowly changed. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, published in 1959, presented a thoroughly international and multi-ethnic military. We’ve reached the point where characters of all physical types and ethnic origins appear in SF. It’s happened in nearly all kinds of fiction; I’m focusing on SF because it’s what I’m familiar with.

But now there’s a nasty push back. Some people want fiction re-segregated. At first I thought it was just a fringe movement with no significance, but it’s gaining in influence. I keep seeing would-be writers apologetically posting to Reddit, asking whether it’s OK for their stories to have characters whose skin color doesn’t match their own. The responses are overwhelmingly “yes,” so it’s still on the fringe, but it’s a toxic idea that needs firm rejection.
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Writing accurately about exponential functions

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

“The number A is exponentially greater than the number B!” What does this mean? Nearly nothing. If it has a meaning, it’s that there’s some number x such that Bx = A. But that’s true of any two numbers, as long as they’re both greater than 1 and A > B. Please don’t use that expression in your writing.

You could also say that A is “linearly greater” or “quadratically greater” than B. They’re just as true and just as meaningless. “Exponentially greater” sounds more impressive because exponential curves rise really fast. In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, the number of cases followed something close to an exponential curve. But a single data point doesn’t establish a curve.
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The Magic Battery: Now on Smashwords!

This entry was posted in My writing Personal Writing and tagged fantasy fiction magic battery writing on by

My novel The Magic Battery is now available as an e-book on Smashwords. As an expression of thanks for reading my blog, I’m offering it for $1.99, instead of the usual $2.99, with the coupon code RW83R through the end of June.

This is a novel for fans of thoughtful historical fantasy. It presents an alternate Germany where magic works, and where the authorities allow only Christian men to practice it. Thomas Lorenz discovers a way to store magic spells in gadgets that people can buy or rent, putting magic in the hands of anyone with a little money. The conflict that develops parallels the effects of the real-life innovations of Luther, Paracelsus, Copernicus, and others.

In sixteenth-century Saxony, magic is a trade. Mages draw power from the World Behind, but they don’t understand it. Thomas knows that magic needs to be scientific, that it follows mathematical laws. He draws inspiration from his master Albrecht Ritter, who knows nothing is ever “good enough,” his teacher Johan Brandt, who is hiding an infamous past, and later his wife Frieda, who sees the prospect of a more enlightened future. He faces the persistent opposition of Heinrich Gottesmann, a fanatical lawyer and witch hunter. He learns that there is more at stake than just a new way of making lamps.

I’ve been to some of the places used in the book: Heidelberg, Wernigerode, Quedlinburg, Hildesheim. I’ve engaged in considerable historical research to get the period right. Apart from the magical elements, the setting is as close to the historical Germany of the 1540s as I could make it. None of the characters hold 21st-century ideas; that would be absurd. However, Thomas and especially Frieda see beyond their time.

Links, reviews, and shares will help to get the word out. You can link to the Smashwords page or to my page on this site.

Podcasts vs. text blogs

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

It probably won’t surprise you that I’m a fan of text blogs. It wouldn’t surprise me if many of you are too, since my target audience here is writers. There are some podcasts with excellent content, but I rarely have the patience for them. Music podcasts are an exception. If an essential part of the content is musical, words don’t do the job. A podcast that interviews interesting people has a justification, though transcripts mostly work fine. But if the podcaster is just going to talk about something, it’s rarely worth my time.

The top podcasts (at least according to this list, which mercifully starts with #1 instead of starting with #100 and making me scroll to the bottom) are a mix of news, interviews, and commentary. No doubt they include a lot of interesting material, but it’s so time-consuming!

Let’s look at a few of the reasons why text blogs are better than podcasts:
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