My brain is pretty worn out this week, so commentary is going to be pretty minimal.
- Strange Horizons Reviews: Menial: Skilled Labor in Science Fiction
- Songwriting on Demand I really love the way there were constraints placed on the topics each week and it got me thinking about my writing workshops in college and how we were just told to go write a poem or short story. That’s pretty daunting and I have a feeling that I would have done better if there had been constraints.
- The Glamazon Way (you’ll get a 18+ page, there is no nudity but may not be safe for work)
- Can Male Writers Successfully Write Female Characters? I don’t know, Rod Rees. Why don’t you tell us what you think? Since you are obviously so very, very, very good at it. Jiggling untethered breasts MY ASS. (Edit 6/30: Jo Fletcher Books has taken down this blog post. I was able to grab a screencap from the Google cache. Also, here’s a screencap of a post about free speech that also disappeared.)
- Rageblogging: The Rod Rees Edition FOZ YOU ARE THE BEST.
- Got my first rude-yet-hilarious response to a rejection sent out today!
- The Decline and Fall of the English Major
- US writer uses self-publishing to get past industry ‘racism’
- Get Your Geiger Counter Out (ebook royalties are back, and this time they’re toxic)
- Embellishing Poverty Itself This really made me think.
- Pouncing on a Neologism
- Dear Old White Southern Woman
- The Guileless ‘Accidental Racism’ of Paula Deen
- What I Wish I Had Said To The Guy On the Street In Louisville
- On SB5 and Words I Do Not Use Lightly
- Rivers of London has been optioned for television!
- Chris Kluwe: Here’s what’s wrong with Ayn Rand, libertarians I don’t agree with everything Kluwe says in this piece (mainly the bits about welfare mothers having more children to get more in their checks–is that a thing that actually happens or is it just a socialism boogeyman?) but I find him consistently an interesting thinker and pretty darned good writer.
- This is possibly the best negative review of a book I’ve read in a long time. It’s a PDF and not very long and definitely worth the time.
- Yes, this is about marriage I am so glad that I found this site. Thanks, Mala!
- How typeface influences the way we read and think
- 1980s Feminism in Lois McMaster Bujold’s Shards of Honor
- Six Words: ‘Black Babies Cost Less To Adopt’
- BEA 2013, Day Two: BEA Blogger Convention I thought this was a really good overview of the BEA Blogger Convention–and makes me question if it’s worth my time or not.
- Moscato finds a younger, hipper–and browner–audience As a person who can’t drink red wine and who doesn’t care for dry whites, I am pleased at the popularity of moscato.
- The Plagiarizing of Tammara Webber’s Easy by @JordinBWilliams Plagiarizers: You will always get caught, eventually. Always. Teresa Mummert has more.
- WTF Bad Fantasy Covers and WTF Bad Romance Covers Delightful. Especially this one. (You’re all very welcome.)
- Boys Don’t Cry: In Praise of Sentiment
- The Shirley Jackson Lottery Letters This is incredibly interesting.
- Unlooted 1,200 Year Old Royal Tomb Found in Peru
- “Wallpaper”, by Mary Ann Rivers. I need to know what happens next. Get on it, Rivers.
Constraints are strangely important to creativity. Science now tells us this, but people still believe that if they have no boundaries they create best, which isn’t the case at all.
A counterpoint to the decline and fall of the english major: Why I Hire English MAjors: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-strauss/hiring-english-majors_b_3484409.html
On the welfare mothers stigma, I was seated next to Deevia Bhana, from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, involved in a large research project on teenage pregnancy, sexuality and schools in KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape (IIRC), at a dinner a few months ago, and she mentioned that one of the major findings is that the widely held myth (in South Africa) that teenage girls become pregnant to access the Child Support Grant is just that, a myth (and I found this abstract of a paper that supports that: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03768351003740498#.UdAoq9JHJ0Q). This is of course in a specific national context, but I think the findings are universally applicable in that they call into question the widespread assumption of moral risk attendant on welfare provision.
On another note, I found that disgust review hilarious, but I wonder to what extent disgust is, or can be understood as, socially constructed and not simply “an emotion whose principal function is to help us avoid contaminants and disease”. I’m not at all familiar with the literature here so this is very much a layperson’s perspective.
Thanks 🙂
@Cherri Porter: It certainly wasn’t the case for me! The idea of constraints in writing is also, I think, why romance is so successful. You have a basic formula but it’s how the characters get from meet cute to HEA that’s so interesting.
@Rosary: Thanks for this! Those are definitely all strengths of the English major! I wish more employers would consider people with humanities degrees; I don’t know if pigeon holing people into careers from a very young age is really where we want to go.
@Aisha: Thank you for finding a citation for this. It’s one of those things that has always felt like a myth and it’s good to have some data to back up that feeling. I never understood why anyone would think that a woman would want to go through pregnancy, childbirth, and then the responsibility of being a parent simply for the sake of a (slightly?) larger welfare check. It seems like it would be more complicated than that. I’m glad you found the disgust review hilarious–obviously, I’m coming at this from a layperson’s perspective, too.