New Year's Resolution: Keep It Simple

This is what I keep coming back to when I think about publishing my wip: keep it simple. I've read all the arguments for and against publishing through legacy publishers, and I can't imagine going the traditional route. Translation: I can't see sending out tons of query emails to agents only for them to turn me down (because my book is weird), can't imagine finally finding that one agent who'll take a chance on me after a year of searching only for no publishers to show interest.


I can imagine lots of things, but this I can't.


What I can envisage is this: finishing my wip, editing it to a pulp, rebuilding it into something beautiful, showing it to writers I trust, re-editing it, and then publishing it myself. This is all I can actually see doing.


Am I insane?


I've gotten to a point in my life where patience is no longer a virtue. I can be patient; that's not the issue--it's that I'm worried that if I'm too patient, I'll die being patient and not being a published writer.


So this is my New Year's resolution: keep it simple. Publish your vision. See if anyone catches on. And then keep writing.

RIP Hitchens

I've lost a teacher today. I'm sure lots and lots of people feel the same way. I never fully accepted all of Christopher Hitchens' viewpoints (I've probably seen every single one of his YouTube videos and read tons of his Vanity Fair pieces, so I have some idea of his positions on just about everything).


I believe there is a God. Or, to put it better, I don't believe there cannot be a God, as he did right up to the end. I think his intolerance of religion is just as weird as I find the intolerance of very religious people towards secularism. His stance on Iraq, blind as it was to the subtleties on the ground, has always mystified me. Etc. etc.


But I don't think anyone can fully accept every single stance of another person. We're all too complex. And Hitchens was way more complex than most people. Not that I ever met him, obviously. But all you had to do was listen to him for three minutes to realize the staggering breadth of his knowledge. He'd read everything, and could recite it off the top of his head. Or so it seemed.


I don't want to make this long, since there are people who actually knew him who are grieving right now, and I have no place in that process. But I just wanted to say that I loved him as dearly as anyone can love someone they've never met, as much as one can love a Dickens or a Lucas or a Hafez. He was a genius, and I'm much smarter and I care about the truth that much more passionately for having read him.

Spammer of the Year Finalist: Tish

For this gem:

Your cranium must be prtoetcing some very valuable brains.

Yes, Tish. It is.


I love my spammers. I don't care what anyone says about bots: they have feelings too. And Tish, your brain must be "prtoetcing" some very valuable brains too.