Posts by BenWilson
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I bet they don't get the big fights!
Edit: Tangentially, what you describe sounds more like an Aikido dojo. I've been in both, boxing gyms full of prizefighters, and dojos full of people who have never thrown a punch of any kind, even in the dojo. Funny thing is, I found the boxers to be both the more fearsome as fighters, and the more humble too. But Aikido allows exploration of a side of martial arts that simply can't thrive in a competitive environment. There's a place for both. I got so sick of people who thought all other martial arts than the one they did was lame and weak. Curiously, that was the most prevalent amongst the ones which fought the least.
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And as I predicted, nobody likes the message.
You're getting a bit victimy here. I liked the message, apart from the personal slights at David, who is expressing an opinion on how things could be done. You code words like "whinging", which are calculated to offend. Why not just stick to your point, without making it so personal?
Oh, and don't be silly at Danielle. It was obviously hyperbole that she would wield a knife at anyone who didn't like the novel she hasn't written.
I am rather a fan of the former and not so much of the latter.
Sure, but I doubt very many people who have to make a living from publishing will worry so much about that, considering that you don't even plan to write a book.
Now, I'd like to make a distinction. What might be appropriate to say to people in Mike's office, isn't necessarily appropriate here.
Also, writing is not like working in an office, where you can by right expect good manners from your colleagues. It's much more like acting, where you can expect people to tell you you suck every single day, whether you do actually suck or not. So douchiness is just different in that context. Much like how violence just works differently in a boxing gym.
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Being douchey to authors is just part of the thrust and parry of book publishing in capitalist society? Nice.
The number of dreamers in the business is probably more than you think, and sometimes just being hard-arse about what you are saying catches people's attention better than worrying about their feelings. If they can't handle even that, they sure aren't cut out to have their words thrown out to the critic wolves.
I'm sure there's plenty that are very 'softly, softly' with the authors, but I'm not sure if they actually do the authors any favors that way. The relationship between an author and a publisher should be open and frank, I'd have thought.
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Have you worked in publishing, though?
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If I was an author, and my publisher talked about me like Mike just talked about 'Haywood', I'd be feeling a tad patronised at this point. (And possibly knife-wieldingly enraged.)
Don't become an author then! I expect being cut down is a pretty common experience and part of the traditional animosity between authors and publishers. It's also probably pretty necessary from the publisher's point of view - they're the business person who has to show the real figures behind books to their potential authors, and it's something that's always going to be hard to hear. Capitalism really is a bugger like that sometimes.
Taking on some of the business risk oneself is a way of doing things, and it's nice to hear David and Emma can make livings doing it. But it's not the way it's usually done for a reason - authors are generally not business people, particularly not authors who are not aiming for a large commercial audiences. They wouldn't have even got into writing that kind of stuff if they were driven by business savvy. If they were, they'd have done market research first, then written a book for a targeted audience, in much the way other product development is done. And, as Lucy notes, they'll end up writing boilerplate stuff in the main commercial genres.
But, having chosen not to write 'fantasy creature porn', it seems like David's approach could work for quite a few aspiring authors who have been unable to secure a publisher. I doubt a huge living would be made out of it, unless you had immense talent and/or a stroke of luck, but you'd be able to write the books you want to write.
It seems to me the main thing in the way of most authors making a decent living is that they just aren't prolific enough. The more you write, the more you are known, and the better you get too. But that initial barrier of surviving the first years is huge. If you can only sell 2000 of a book, write another one. That makes 4000 books out there. Keep going. Expecting to live off one book isn't realistic, it's wishful thinking (although of course it does occasionally happen).
Yeah, it's hard work. But look on the bright side, so is most paid employment, but seldom is it a labor of love.
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I'd just seen it as focusing too heavily on the purity of a metaphor which was ultimately made up by a guy with a stick up his arse, who thought that arguments were polite things you had at dinner parties (or at least, the participants ought to behave like they were).
They're also polite things we have on PAS too, and I don't think saying one of the other commentators has a stick up their arse is warranted. He's just trying to make a point about making points, and abusing him because he can be misrepresented as apologizing for Paul Henry, is actually very much playing into the point he was making, that once you start claiming that abuse is a point, there's no end to it, abuse is all that's left, and the "marketplace of ideas" becomes a farce. Does this thread really need to go Kiwiblog?
But I'm pretty sure that was actually some of Keith's point in even pursuing this line. If Paul Henry abusing someone can be held up as a point, then abusing Paul Henry can be too. It was a reductio ad absurdum on the "free speech has been damaged" line. Graeme was just trying to straighten the point out - because the reductio is a valid criticism, that means the negation of the point holds - Paul Henry abusing someone is not a point, and nor is abusing Paul Henry. It's an ad hominem attack, an invalid line of argument.
That does not mean that ad hominem should never be used, nor do I think that Graeme was saying that. He was merely trying to make it crystal clear that it's not an argument, any more than many other informal fallacies would be. If PH said something like that to my face about me at a dinner party, however polite, I expect that some form of ad baculum (like standing up in a threatening way and talking extremely loudly about how offensive I found it) would be quite normal, which is part of the reason PH doesn't do that - bullies are usually cowards, and I've never even seen him take on someone with a sharp tongue, much less a sharp eating implement in their hand.
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If I understand Graeme's point correctly, he's just saying that abuse is not a statement of an idea. I don't think he's saying that means it's not ever justified.
I guess you get finicky about these things as a lawyer. You can't really use "PH is a @$%#" as a point in a courtroom. It would be struck from the record and you'd probably get threatened by the judge.
I'm not so sure outside of a court whether it's so clear. Rules of argumentative engagement are just different. For instance, if a bully is calling you names, yes, they're being illogical and offensive, but failing to stand up to them just on account of that is simply weak and will encourage them, in a lot of cases. Sometimes it's much better to use peer pressure, something that's not exactly rational either, to get them to stop. Cast them in a bad light. Make some cutting comment that puts them in fear of social ostracism. In the circumstances, it's often justified.
Sure, free speech is the loser in this kind of scenario, but I doubt the bully was all about free speech.
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@Tamara, yes it's too harsh for mine, now that I've come to know her. I just like the joke, whilst people scratch their heads over what the O stands for.
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I'm going to go with the cloud mind and my own intuition to say that the barriers to this idea are not likely to be technological.
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In terms of higher oil prices, we could probably have a whole thread on them - but keeping things really short I think it's pretty obvious that in the longer run prices will be higher than they are now, not lower.
Yes. They are bounded above by the price of biofuel, though. If we ever reach that point, I actually expect the only direction would be down, as production becomes more and more efficient. Cars could actually be here to stay. But for a city to grow, it's obvious that it needs well developed public transport.
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