Friday Ephemera (655)
Best not to look down just yet. || Big trees. || Just breathe. || Coffee substitute. || Thirst quenched. || Selling lemonade. || It’s a thing, apparently. || I’ll just leave this here. || Legally haunted. || At last, a practical application for fluid dynamics. || The pretending can get competitive. || How to land a plane, a big one. || Go on, tickle his belly. || It’s noisy, but the view’s not bad. || “Observing whiteness.” It’s intersectional science, baby. || A day at the beach, 1928. || The thrill of Green Shield Stamps and “instant mashed potato,” 1977. || Incoming. || Outgoing. || It wasn’t me. || Attention, Seattle taxpayers. || Toy ads of yesteryear. || An uncanny transformation. || And finally, for the love of God, don’t tell your mother.
Is college worth it?
A bit of a BFO for the Useless and Angry Studies types, but interesting to see how useless.
Oh my God, that thread… Whatever happened to Minnow?
Naming calls. [ Directs stern look at Aitch. ]
I suppose we can be thankful that Minnow accepted his banishment and did return to annoy us under a series of new names.
Blog format question…those two icons, the lightning bolt and the fire thingy…”most reacted” and “hottest thread” …without up/down voting do they do anything? Also, would it be possible to have a “jump to last comment” link at the bottom of the OP? As a mostly-iPad user that would save a lot of scrolling. Plus I think it would be helpful for jumping to the last page of comments on those awesome posts that elicit hundreds of responses.
Is college worth it?
“But most programs in fields such as art, music, philosophy, religion, and psychology leave students financially worse off than if they had never gone to college at all.”
Many successful writers have said in my presence that would-be writers should avoid all college degree programs that purport to train one to be a novelist, poet, etc.: They are worse than a waste of time. The best way to maximize one’s changes of becoming a successful writer is to read very widely, pay attention the technical aspects of successful literature, and practice practice practice. But will a college professor give such advice? Not likely, I’ll bet, but those programs are geared towards cranking out more professors not writers who create works people want to read.
Perhaps. But the best way to maximize one’s chances of becoming a useful writer is to get a real job and/or have other interesting and challenging experiences/adventures in the real world. That other stuff might help you make money at being useless, and perhaps given the general stupidity of the target audience that could be a financially viable option. If financial viability is your goal. But then there are many, many better and higher probability career option/paths to financial viability. Which brings me back to my first point…
WTP: “Perhaps. But the best way to maximize one’s chances of becoming a useful writer is to get a real job and/or have other interesting and challenging experiences/adventures in the real world.”
True. But what I mentioned is equally necessary: You need to have something to say and you need to be able to say it well.
“That other stuff might help you make money at being useless…”
Are we talking past each other? Because otherwise you are failing to understand my point about how to develop writing skills: All those successful novelists and short story writers I met said the key to their success was reading widely (in order to learn techniques and styles) and writing daily to develop skills. They said that writing programs hardly ever helped and usually harmed.
“…If financial viability is your goal.”
People do not choose to become novelists in order to get rich. They do so because they have a usually inexplicable but strong desire to tell stories. At least that is what nearly all the writers I have read or met have said. (And they have said that if your drive is not strong enough then you should probably do something else.)
Somewhat. But not entirely. We need more writers like we need more lawyers. There’s a significant busybody cross-over there. Which leads to…
Journalists. The profession consists significantly of two types of people, failed lawyers and failed novelists. We can debate the money thing somewhat but novelists, especially the failed ones, crave fame. Moderate fame is a form of financial viability to some degree.
Er… no. And I’m glad you spotted that totally intentional oversight. You passed my little test. Well done, that man.
[ Quietly disables lightning bolt and fire thingy. ]
[ Resists urge to enable comment up/down voting. ]
If I discover a way to add one, I will. Until then, use Recent Comments.
David: A google search of your new site fails to yield results. Is there anything you can do to ask Google and other search engine services to index your entire site?
[ Adds to list. ]
The list was getting shorter at one point.
Er… no. And I’m glad you spotted that totally intentional oversight. You passed my little test. Well done, that man.
I cleverly refrained from mentioning them last week. Figured you had more than enough questions to answer and problems to fix.
[ Adds to list. ]
The list was getting shorter at one point.
See how ephemeral my clever reticence is?
[ Resists urge to enable comment up/down voting. ]
Thank you.
There are only two hard problems.
Is college worth it? Part II. H/T to my wife.
The .
Baceseras: Er, what?
Bseceras. Whatever will be will be.
Sorry, I had to.
Da-vid! Baceseras is being incomprehensible again! Make him stop!
Playing with these marvelous buttons.
On a balky device, with my [adjectives?] fingers
Sorry, I had to
Uncle Leo!?
My sister lives in Seattle. I’m 99% sure she’d be absolutely thrilled that those grifters are getting extra goodies, because
Her husband, who pays the other 70% of the taxes in that household, would probably be less enthusiastic, but he certainly wouldn’t tolerate any criticism of the local religion.
I won’t call them to confirm. You don’t discuss politics with these people.