The Writing Life: April 2006 Archives

Visitors to this site that use Internet Explorer will have noticed what I call a "Lame Browser Warning" (LBW) that shows up just special for them. I hesitated to put it there, because I know how people get when you insinuate that Micro$oft may not actually give a flying fig about creating secure, community-friendly products. But in terms that us programmers speak in all day:

MarketShare != Quality

Microsoft controls something like 70-80% of the consumer computational device market. Congrats to them. But that doesn't mean that their product for surfing the Internet is very good.

I have a hard enough time just getting my blog entries posted. I don't have time to prop this site up with the various hacks and contrivances required to make it fully compatible in both IE and all the other browsers that access this site (browsers that I myself use, since I'm one of those Apple snobs as well as a browser snob). I've given it the old college try, but if I've failed, then the LBW is there as my excuse for not giving a flying fig myself.

I use to be one of the silent minority that felt this way. Now, as bloggers proliferate, and consequently so do the number of people finding out what us web developers have known for years, I'm suddenly not alone in my browser snobbery:

"If 95% of the people in the world drove Yugos, would that make it the best car in the world?" —JCF, White Moments

You really should read the whole thing: What's With All This Firefox Business, Anyway?

Besides, I'm doing this for free and you're reading it for free. What incentive, other than my own good will, do I have to ensure this site works properly in all browsers that access it? You don't stipulate to your friends how they should arrange their house so that when you visit, things are arranged properly to suit you. You use their toilet that may not be as clean as yours and their living room may be a mess and their kids may not pick up their toys; but do you specify that before you enjoy their company they must make everything comfortable for you, which may (or may not, if you're a tired parent like me) include cleaning the house and picking up all foreign objects from the floor?

See, there I go again. Not being a good host. Pardon so much. I'm sorry if my LBW offends you. Please, come into my house, sit and stay for a visit. I only ask that you accept me as I am and not as you'd like me to be.

Chuck Colson has some interesting things to say about the state of Christian-ized fiction:

For years, most Christian authors wrote only to an audience that was familiar with a certain brand of Christian terminology. At the same time, these authors were so caught up in trying to spread the message of Christ through their work that their novels sounded like propaganda. They clearly considered things like plot and characterization unimportant. The unfortunate result was a rash of novels designed to push the Christian message to an unbelieving world, but written in a way that ended up turning off unbelievers.

What a difference we’re seeing now! Many of the best Christian novels being published these days, such as Gilead, Abide with Me, and Leif Enger’s wonderful Peace Like a River, are rich in plot and characterization as well as faith. These books are about good but flawed people struggling through tough situations, just like many of us do. God’s grace is a real and powerful presence in these books, yet it’s not some kind of magic medicine automatically making everything all better.

Modern-Day Renaissance by Chuck Colson

I just wanted to draw your attention to a new link I added to my blogroll: T.L. Hines' blog.

I had the opportunity to read his Waking Lazarus manuscript before it was published, so I feel an especial connection to the work. It's great to see authors getting thrillers into CBA.

[tags]tl hines, waking lazarus, inspirational thriller, cba, aba[/tags]

Tennessee Williams characterizes "reality" through Stanley Kowalski as a ravenous consumer. If Stanley is Williams' representation of reality, then reality is undeniable in it's passion and unconcerned with the consequences. When Job says of God: "I know no plan of yours can be thwarted," he could just have easily been speaking about Stanley Kowalski. Reality will devour everything and either turn it into itself, like Stanley and his friends, or destroy it, like Blanche.

There are no "finer things of life" in Stanley. When Blanche brings them into his home, through her person, he desires to remove or despoil them and eventually succeeds in doing both. In "reality," those softer and more genteel things are obsolete shadows from a life that never really was—but even if it had, it most certainly hasn't been in a long time. Stanley, not Blanche's dream-world, is the only thing that was. But reality never was either, because with him, there's only is. The past is non-existent. There's no Blanche before she came into his home and nothing she ever did matters but for what she does now. It never happened and doesn't matter. There's only today, right now, and the next five minutes. His disregard of anything that's already happened contributes to his execution of the rape he commits against his sister-in-law. If the past doesn't matter, then in the future, when now becomes the past, that won't matter either. Reality doesn't care about the consequences because when the is becomes the was, it ceases to exist.

The world that Blanche had her mind in, that world of respectability, light summer dresses, social occasions, and an aristocratic legacy, doesn't exist in Stanley's world. He begins to despoil those notions when he rifles through her trunk, complaining about the money spent to purchase those things; as if it could have been spent more wisely. At least could have been spent by him, if not wisely. He scoffs at them because they represent things that have no relevance to Stanley's world. No polite manners or aristocratic legacy are necessary (in fact they and their proxy Blanche are scoffed at by the men) to drink beer and play cards with the neighbors.

Williams seems to feel, through his characterization of Stanley, that realistic characters have limited effectiveness and that, to evoke an emotional reaction in the reader or viewer that is worthy of the thing, a "realistic" character must become unrealistic in the sense that they characterize real emotions and passions, but do so more forcefully than a character that simply mimics one from everyday life. Stanley wouldn't be the emotional heavyweight that he is if he didn't consume things so passionately to fulfill his desires. Stella doesn't seem to evoke the same emotional reaction from the viewer or reader as does Stanley. Certainly we feel sympathy for her situation, but her forgiving of Stanley for sexual pleasure leaves us feeling like she doesn't really mind that Stanley is the way he is. As if, in reality, we don't have a choice but to submit to it. While his use of Stanley is an aspect of realism, Stanley's heightened emotions, actions, and passions seem to evoke in the reader or viewer heightened emotions and passions that we don't normally feel in everyday life. In that sense, Williams wasn't satisfied with that limitation of the realistic point-of-view.

[tags]streetcar named desire, tennessee williams, stanley kowalski[/tags]

There's a new literary journal in town:

Communiqué: an online literary and arts journal

Looks like subscriptions are free so far and the content is pretty good. You might want to check them out.

Here's their submission guidelines:

http://www.communiquejournal.org/standing/call.html

I especially like this part in their submission guidelines:

Unsolicited submissions are welcome and are our lifeblood

From Guy Kawasaki's blog (via Performancing.com):

1. The more popular a person thinks he is in the blogosphere, the thinner his skin and the thicker his hypocrisy. This should be exactly the opposite: the higher you go the thicker the skin and thinner the hypocrisy.

2. The more a blogger uses the pronoun “I,” the less he has to say. Many bloggers apparently believe that people not only give a shiitake about everything they say, but that these people are hanging on to every word.

[etc . . .]

Yeah, I used to pay my $40 a year for a book I hardly ever had the guts to use. Now I subscribe to the online version and I must say, I doubt I'll ever go back to the paperback.

I like being able to search for specific things. Genre, topic, target auidience. It's all there. They have a $4 monthly subscription too, so there's no excuse for you to not have plenty of opportunities to submit your work and get your rejections just like everyone else.

Happy submitting and may you be encouraged by your rejection letters!

WritersMarket.com

[tags]writing, writers market, publishing[/tags]

I enjoy reading a site I link to from my blogroll: The Religious Policeman. He's a Saudi living in the UK and keeps us up to date on just how sweet and loving our good dear Saudi friends are in the Land of Black Gold. Forgive my sarcasm, but I'm particularly sensitive because I've experienced that fascism first-hand while in the U.S. Air Force. It seems that the religion of peace, which we all know Islam to be, continues to be consternated by religious freedom:

Although the Christian church is being physically attacked in a number of countries, for example Pakistan, Iraq and Nigeria, nowhere is it actually underground. Or is it?

Well (and you already know the answer) yes, it is. In Saudi Archaica, the Land That Forgot Time, it is illegal to worship in any religion other than Islam. In public, that is. In private, in theory, you are free to do as you wish. But theories are of course just theories.

Starting this Friday (April 7th), I'll be serializing a fairly long short story I wrote. I really like the story and I think it will be a great fit for serializing here.

I get a little tired of Windoze flunkies saying that Apple is just a hardware company, its OS doesn't add value to the computer, blah blah. Why don't you actually learn a little about what you talk before doing said thing?

I have used all major operating systems in the course of work and play. Windoze, Unix/Linux/BSD, MacOS, OS X. I can definitively state that OS X is a superior operating system because it helps you get things done.

"Well that's fine for you because you're prejudiced."

Whatever. Should people who know nothing about wine attempt to elucidate the finer points of wine tasting to a critic? As a computer programmer and power user of computers, I have seen that anyone who says that Mac OS X isn't the real value of Apple Computer and not the hardware has:

A) Never used OS X in a work environment where things must get done.
B) Isn't familiar with OS X and Windows environments enough to speak authoritatively.

or
C) Would rather suck up to The Man and label afficionados "snobs" because we know more than they do.

By the way, most users of Apple and OS X are business power users. People who don't have time to muck around with something that doesn't fit their needs. If Windows was really that great an environment to work in, then the advertising and movie industries would overwhelmingly choose that platform instead of Apple. But they choose Apple. And not because they're snobs, but because it makes good business sense.

It also makes good business sense to have Apple hardware dual-boot Windows (although I would prefer to have it run inside OS X so I could cut and paste between Windows and OS X apps) because power users often need to move between the two environments, even though we'd rather not be saddled by that requirement.

And for what platform is the ENTIRE computer security industry grown up to support? Virus scanning? Email attachment scanning? Malicious software removal? Is that an example of the superiority of the Windows platform and a good business reason to "choose" that over OS X?

OS X is the most important part of the Apple computer. Sure, having 2MB of cache on the processor and being able to trounce any other hardware competitor in the processing tasks that take the most time is important, but in the end, it's OS X that makes using that hardware better than using something else.

[tags]macintosh, os x, apple computer, microsoft[/tags]

I'm reading Khalil Gibran's The Prophet. I found this quote quite applicable to us writer types:

And then a scholar said, Speak of Talking.

And he answered, saying:
You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts;

And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime.

And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered.

For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.

There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone.
The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape.

And there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand.

And there are those who have the truth within them, but they tell it not in words.

In the bosom of such as these the spirit dwells in rhythmic silence.