NaNoWriMo, You Hurt Me

I was going to try really hard to shut up about NaNoWriMo for October.  I was, because we all know that anything I find time to post on here in November is likely going to be NaNo-related graphs or complaints that I have writer's block.

But.

I was reading Chuck Wendig's 25 Things You Should Know About NaNoWriMo (which you should check out) and came across some text off the NaNo website.  I honestly thought Mr. Wendig was using hyperbole, but I went and looked and it turns out that, in fact, the following is a direct quote from the NaNo in a Nutshell page of the site.

What: Writing one 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month's time.
Who: You! We can't do this unless we have some other people trying it as well. Let's write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together.
Why: The reasons are endless! To actively participate in one of our era's most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work.

This hurts me. I mean, I get that it's supposed to be glib, but really.

... laughably awful yet lengthy... Yes, I agree that NaNoWriMo does not inspire the best writing an author can produce, yes, it forces one to rush things a bit  - but even rushed prose should at least attempt to be decent - otherwise what's the point?  If you're planning to write something awful, your time could probably be better spent.  And no, 50,000 words is not lengthy, not when you're talking about novels.

To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties. Translation: To give us an excuse to act like pompous douchebags.

...mock real novelists... My issues with this one are twofold.  One, why would you mock anyone who is making a career out of something they love? - and two, who the f--k told you I'm not a real novelist? NaNoWriMo isn't just a waste of a month for me; I actually plan on doing something with what I write during November.  A lot of us do.*

I really do like NaNoWriMo.  I like the basic idea and I'm in awe of the amount of time and effort that the administrative staff put in every year.  The philanthropic aspects of NaNoWriMo are wonderful and so is the sense of community you get from joining hundreds of thousands of writers, all working toward the same goal.

NaNoWriMo's own description of itself really got to me.  I guess I don't like the idea that the same people who make it possible are encouraging people not to care what kind of writing it produces.

Of course I still plan to participate this year, but I'd be lying if I said that a little of the magic hasn't been lost.

*I don't think there's anything wrong with doing NaNo just for fun, but I don't like the assumption that that's the only reason anyone would want to participate.

I was reading Terrible Minds when I came across a link to this article in the Wall Street Journal, which made my blood a little boily.

For one thing, I think the author is getting confused about what a young adult is; she indiscriminately switch between the terms adolescents and children, as if authors of YA fiction are out there giving their books away to five year olds.

I'm not saying everything that's on the market labeled YA is good. Hell, a lot of it is awful, poorly-written crap that I wouldn't want to line a hamster cage with, for fear the hamster might read it and lose IQ points - but that usually has more to do with poor grammar and syntax and overused story lines than it does with the content being too dark or explicit.

One of the things that caught my eye is the assertion that 40 years ago, young adult fiction didn't exist. Heinlein's Red Planet came out in 1949, Have Spacesuit, Will Travel in 1958. Those are only two examples from one author - but I think Mrs. Gurdon is right in the sense that, 40+ years ago, young adults didn't have a great deal of special fiction - because they were considered mature enough to deal with the same ideas and themes as old adults.

What I find really funny is that, right after the bit that draws attention to the past (I'm honestly not sure if it is meant to point out the good old days, when controversial YA fiction wasn't available, or highlight a misguided past when young adults didn't have their own genre), there's a little sidebar thing with Books we can Recommend for Young Adult Readers - that, I get. If you're going to write something tearing down what you seem to be claiming is the vast majority of YA fiction, it only makes sense to point out where the wholesome stuff can be found. The funny bit is that the sidebar goes on to list Books for Young Men and Books for Young Women. I'm sorry, I thought we were done with the 40 years ago thing... is that still going on? And then, of course, if you read the descriptions of the books they're suggesting, the first one is described as gruelling and is set in a post-apocalyptic world, the next one is about WWII - I'm thinking neither of those are on the light and fluffy side.

My favourite part of the article (and by favourite, I mean the part that brought me the most joy through its sheer ridiculousness) is the very end :

... it may be that the book industry's ever-more-appalling offerings for adolescent readers spring from a desperate desire to keep books relevant for the young... The book business exists to sell books; parents exist to rear children, and oughtn't be daunted by cries of censorship. No family is obliged to acquiesce when publishers use the vehicle of fundamental free-expression principles to try to bulldoze coarseness or misery into their children's lives.

to try to bulldoze coarseness or misery into their children's lives. Yeah. Publishers and their agents are out in the world right now, stopping kids on the streets and saying, "This is about freedom of expression. And you'd better read this, because if you don't, you're condoning censorship. In fact, anyone who doesn't read dark, gritty fiction is a Nazi. Read this book, or I'll beat you to death with it."

Alas, literary culture is not sympathetic to adults who object either to the words or story lines in young-adult books.

Here's a thought for parents who are anal about what their teenagers read/parents of actual children who read YA stuff: DO SOME RESEARCH. It is your job to take care of this stuff. If you have a kid who is allergic to peanuts, you don't demand that stores stop selling them, you teach your kid to avoid them. If you, for whatever reason, believe that certain writing is going to be somehow harmful to your offspring, you need to take care of that from your end.

I know, I know, I'm ranting. I just hate the idea of the next generation being wrapped in any more bubble wrap than it already has been.

I think I'll end it there. If I think of anything else, I'll add it - and I may go back and edit this when I'm a little calmer, but for right now, here it is, 100% censorship free.

Blame it on Cinderella

There are two problems that I can see with overnight success, the first being: it doesn't really exist. The second is, it can be proven to exist.

This sucks for writers because, no matter how much we say we know it won't be easy and that we're willing to put the work in (and in fact, no matter how truthful we're being when we say it), all of us hope - and I would say that deep down, a lot of us believe - that somewhere along the way, somewhere in the midst of the sweat and tears and restless nights, something will just go whoosh and we'll wake up one morning to a book deal on our front step and a talk show host begging for a prime time interview.

Of course, it doesn't really work like that. It can't, unless you know someone, or at the very least, know someone who knows someone, and even then there are no guarantees. But we keep hoping, because after all, overnight success can be proven. This is because, to the public, every success seems like it happened overnight. Take someone who is ludicrously rich and famous. Say, Lady Gaga. She seemed, to the majority of people, to spring out of nowhere. First, there was nothing, then there was Just Dance and Poker Face and suddenly everyone knew who she was - but she'd been performing for years before that. It's pretty much the same way with all celebrities (including celebrity authors), because most of us don't know anything about them until they're already famous - so to us, they go from 0-famous in, at the very most, two seconds. Proof that overnight successes not only happen, they happen every day.

Part of this proof, I think, can also be attributed to the fact that we as writers (and the more I think about this, the more I think I should say we as Westerners) really, really want to believe that by tomorrow, we could have everything we've ever wanted - so even if famous authors come out and say, I did X for years and years and I worked really hard to get an agent and then I did Y, we tend to only catch the end of it. The bit that goes, And then Z was published and the next thing I knew, the phone was ringing off the hook.

I blame it all on Cinderella. Here's a girl whose life sucked, who worked hard, who learned all sorts of useful skills like sewing and communicating with animals, but who was ultimately content to stay where she was - and what we're supposed to remember about her isn't that she worked hard or faced injustice bravely; it's that one day, her problems magically disappeared and she got everything she'd ever dreamed of. Stupid fairy tales, filling our heads with fluff.

... of course, they were right about true love and the prince...

...so we can hope.

Character Deaths and How To Deal With Them

Right.

So, having spent the large majority of the night laughing our asses off at the worst fanfic that has ever happened to anything, anywhere (see Bean's post below), we watched some canned TV. I won't divulge the series, in case of spoilers, and while it seems that rambling about TV at twenty after one in the a.m* seems...random...it does have a point. About characters. And killing them off.

Now, I get that it's not always possible to keep actors from season to season, due to contracts, and other jobs, and life stuff, and...maybe they're horrible bastards/bitches to work with and no one likes them in real life. Or maybe not. Sometimes the writers are just assholes. Whatever. There are times when a writer has to make a decision about what to do with a character, and it usually boils down to a few options:

a) Send them on a 'vacation' that lasts a very long, long time
b) Kill them off
c) ...I had a 'c', but I can't remember it right now.

How a writer (for anything, TV show, book, short story, etc) handles that character's departure is a delicate, delicate thing. Especially if you've got vocal fans, and especially if you're going with option b).

I don't want to say that there are rules, but there are...sort of. Well, guidelines. Like 'Be Consistent'. If a well-loved character is about to get offed, at least make it make some sort of sense. Don't do it because you think ratings will go up, or to sensationalize it, because that just cheapens the experience. And it cheapens the characters.

If your characters are really that good, your audience will (on some level) believe that they're real. It's how our minds work. We personify everything. This doesn't mean they'll write horrific fanfic about it, or even good fanfic, but they'll keep watching the show/reading the book. They'll keep searching for that connection they felt.

Removing that connection will leave a hole, even just a tiny one. We all want our own deaths to mean something - it's another consequence of being human. A beloved character dying, seemingly at the whim of an author and for no other purpose...there is no meaning there. It leaves the audience confused, hurt, angry, and a little afraid. Then they stop reading/watching, which is the exact opposite of what you, as an author, want.

This leads naturally into 'Remember Your Canon'**. If you're going to turn a character into (for example) the murderous sidekick of an recurring cannibalistic villain because you don't want to bother developing him any more***, at least make sure there isn't an episode earlier in the series that won't make it extremely obvious what you're doing.

Art, in any form, is about evoking emotional responses from your audience. There's also a very close tie to our biological need to reproduce, but that can be a topic for a different post. Even if you're in it only to make money off the masses, you should still remember that 'art=emotion'. Killing a character will trigger that emotional response very quickly, and if that's what you're going for, then yeah...it works. It can just as easily backfire, though. So be careful.

Oh! I remembered option c) have them switch sides long enough for people to begin to hate them, and then kill them off****. This, too, has to be done delicately. If there's no basis for having them become turncoats, then your audience won't believe it. And if they can't believe it, they won't keep watching/reading. Their emotional ties will be severed.

Whatever. Sometimes, killing your own characters is unavoidable. Sometimes, you've killed them off before you've even realized what you were doing, sometimes it's a premeditated removal of a character. Whichever it ends up being, and whatever comes after, do it well. You owe your characters that much.

* It was 1:20 am when I started writing this, but...I was much too tired to finish it, so now it's the next day.
** Not the explosive device. The other one. I can never remember which one has two 'n's.
*** I'm looking at you, Bones.
**** Goddamnit, Joss Whedon

Help Me Obi 1 Enoby ur mi only hop!!!!1

I'm not usually pro-flaming, but I just had to post this, if nothing else, as an example of how not to write. From what I understand, this is one of the best-known fanfics in the world. It is a Harry Potter Mary-Sue which takes place mostly at Hogwarts. From what I can tell, all of the main characters are Satanists and goths, except Snape (aka Snap), who is a pedophilic prep, who, despite the fact that he's gay frequently fantasizes about and spies on the female protaganist.

My favourite quotes include:

I’m not related to Gerard Way but I wish I was because he’s a major fucking hottie.

I was wearing red Satanist sings on my nails in red nail polish (AN: c doez dat sound lik a Maru Sue 2 u?).

And, my all-time personal favourite:

And then…………… suddenly just as I Draco kissed me passionately. Draco climbed on top of me and we started to make out keenly against a tree. He took of my top and I took of his clothes. I even took of my bra. Then he put his thingie into my you-know-what and we did it for the first time.

I really, really, almost hope that this was written by someone who was eleven or younger, because somehow that would make it better... I think. Maybe not.

Scary Stuff for Writers

I've just found about a new Irish law that makes blasphemy illegal (read the article below for more explanation) - and to be honest, I'm worried.

It isn't my intention to start a religious or moral debate here, because this really isn't the forum for that. The reason I'm posting this on Devereaux Court is that I feel this law has far-reaching implications for writers; if this kind of thing catches on on a global scale, it will give governing bodies the ability to censor everything from the arts to print news, arbitrarily and without accountability (or even the necessity for it).

I'm not saying we should all run out and start trashing other peoples' religious beliefs, or that writers shouldn't be conscientious and consider the feelings of their potential audiences, but what I am saying is that it should be up to an individual writer whether or not he chooses to say something that might insult someone else, and it should be up to that someone else whether or not she chooses to read or support that writer.

Anyway, without getting into questioning why people need their governments to hold their hands and shield them from anything even remotely controversial (that's a whole other article's worth of ranting), I'll post the article. The original can be found here.

From today, 1 January 2010, the new Irish blasphemy law becomes operational, and we begin our campaign to have it repealed. Blasphemy is now a crime punishable by a €25,000 fine. The new law defines blasphemy as publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion, with some defences permitted.

This new law is both silly and dangerous. It is silly because medieval religious laws have no place in a modern secular republic, where the criminal law should protect people and not ideas. And it is dangerous because it incentivises religious outrage, and because Islamic States led by Pakistan are already using the wording of this Irish law to promote new blasphemy laws at UN level.

We believe in the golden rule: that we have a right to be treated justly, and that we have a responsibility to treat other people justly. Blasphemy laws are unjust: they silence people in order to protect ideas. In a civilised society, people have a right to to express and to hear ideas about religion even if other people find those ideas to be outrageous.

Publication of 25 blasphemous quotes

In this context we now publish a list of 25 blasphemous quotes, which have previously been published by or uttered by or attributed to Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Mark Twain, Tom Lehrer, Randy Newman, James Kirkup, Monty Python, Rev Ian Paisley, Conor Cruise O’Brien, Frank Zappa, Salman Rushdie, Bjork, Amanda Donohoe, George Carlin, Paul Woodfull, Jerry Springer the Opera, Tim Minchin, Richard Dawkins, Pope Benedict XVI, Christopher Hitchens, PZ Myers, Ian O’Doherty, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor and Dermot Ahern.

Despite these quotes being abusive and insulting in relation to matters held sacred by various religions, we unreservedly support the right of these people to have published or uttered them, and we unreservedly support the right of any Irish citizen to make comparable statements about matters held sacred by any religion without fear of being criminalised, and without having to prove to a court that a reasonable person would find any particular value in the statement.

Campaign begins to repeal the Irish blasphemy law

We ask Fianna Fail and the Green Party to repeal their anachronistic blasphemy law, as part of the revision of the Defamation Act that is included within the Act. We ask them to hold a referendum to remove the reference to blasphemy from the Irish Constitution.

We also ask all TDs and Senators to support a referendum to remove references to God from the Irish Constitution, including the clauses that prevent atheists from being appointed as President of Ireland or as a Judge without swearing a religious oath asking God to direct them in their work.

If you run a website, blog or other media publication, please feel free to republish this statement and the list of quotes yourself, in order to show your support for the campaign to repeal the Irish blasphemy law and to promote a rational, ethical, secular Ireland.

List of 25 Blasphemous Quotes Published by Atheist Ireland

1. Jesus Christ, when asked if he was the son of God, in Matthew 26:64: “Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.” According to the Christian Bible, the Jewish chief priests and elders and council deemed this statement by Jesus to be blasphemous, and they sentenced Jesus to death for saying it.

2. Jesus Christ, talking to Jews about their God, in John 8:44: “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.” This is one of several chapters in the Christian Bible that can give a scriptural foundation to Christian anti-Semitism. The first part of John 8, the story of “whoever is without sin cast the first stone”, was not in the original version, but was added centuries later. The original John 8 is a debate between Jesus and some Jews. In brief, Jesus calls the Jews who disbelieve him sons of the Devil, the Jews try to stone him, and Jesus runs away and hides.

3. Muhammad, quoted in Hadith of Bukhari, Vol 1 Book 8 Hadith 427: “May Allah curse the Jews and Christians for they built the places of worship at the graves of their prophets.” This quote is attributed to Muhammad on his death-bed as a warning to Muslims not to copy this practice of the Jews and Christians. It is one of several passages in the Koran and in Hadith that can give a scriptural foundation to Islamic anti-Semitism, including the assertion in Sura 5:60 that Allah cursed Jews and turned some of them into apes and swine.

4. Mark Twain, describing the Christian Bible in Letters from the Earth, 1909: “Also it has another name – The Word of God. For the Christian thinks every word of it was dictated by God. It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies… But you notice that when the Lord God of Heaven and Earth, adored Father of Man, goes to war, there is no limit. He is totally without mercy – he, who is called the Fountain of Mercy. He slays, slays, slays! All the men, all the beasts, all the boys, all the babies; also all the women and all the girls, except those that have not been deflowered. He makes no distinction between innocent and guilty… What the insane Father required was blood and misery; he was indifferent as to who furnished it.” Twain’s book was published posthumously in 1939. His daughter, Clara Clemens, at first objected to it being published, but later changed her mind in 1960 when she believed that public opinion had grown more tolerant of the expression of such ideas. That was half a century before Fianna Fail and the Green Party imposed a new blasphemy law on the people of Ireland.

5. Tom Lehrer, The Vatican Rag, 1963: “Get in line in that processional, step into that small confessional. There, the guy who’s got religion’ll tell you if your sin’s original. If it is, try playing it safer, drink the wine and chew the wafer. Two, four, six, eight, time to transubstantiate!”

6. Randy Newman, God’s Song, 1972: “And the Lord said: I burn down your cities – how blind you must be. I take from you your children, and you say how blessed are we. You all must be crazy to put your faith in me. That’s why I love mankind.”

7. James Kirkup, The Love That Dares to Speak its Name, 1976: “While they prepared the tomb I kept guard over him. His mother and the Magdalen had gone to fetch clean linen to shroud his nakedness. I was alone with him… I laid my lips around the tip of that great cock, the instrument of our salvation, our eternal joy. The shaft, still throbbed, anointed with death’s final ejaculation.” This extract is from a poem that led to the last successful blasphemy prosecution in Britain, when Denis Lemon was given a suspended prison sentence after he published it in the now-defunct magazine Gay News. In 2002, a public reading of the poem, on the steps of St. Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square, failed to lead to any prosecution. In 2008, the British Parliament abolished the common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel.

8. Matthias, son of Deuteronomy of Gath, in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, 1979: “Look, I had a lovely supper, and all I said to my wife was that piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah.”

9. Rev Ian Paisley MEP to the Pope in the European Parliament, 1988: “I denounce you as the Antichrist.” Paisley’s website describes the Antichrist as being “a liar, the true son of the father of lies, the original liar from the beginning… he will imitate Christ, a diabolical imitation, Satan transformed into an angel of light, which will deceive the world.”

10. Conor Cruise O’Brien, 1989: “In the last century the Arab thinker Jamal al-Afghani wrote: ‘Every Muslim is sick and his only remedy is in the Koran.’ Unfortunately the sickness gets worse the more the remedy is taken.”

11. Frank Zappa, 1989: “If you want to get together in any exclusive situation and have people love you, fine – but to hang all this desperate sociology on the idea of The Cloud-Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you’ve been bad or good – and cares about any of it – to hang it all on that, folks, is the chimpanzee part of the brain working.”

12. Salman Rushdie, 1990: “The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas – uncertainty, progress, change – into crimes.” In 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie because of blasphemous passages in Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses.

13. Bjork, 1995: “I do not believe in religion, but if I had to choose one it would be Buddhism. It seems more livable, closer to men… I’ve been reading about reincarnation, and the Buddhists say we come back as animals and they refer to them as lesser beings. Well, animals aren’t lesser beings, they’re just like us. So I say fuck the Buddhists.”

14. Amanda Donohoe on her role in the Ken Russell movie Lair of the White Worm, 1995: “Spitting on Christ was a great deal of fun. I can’t embrace a male god who has persecuted female sexuality throughout the ages, and that persecution still goes on today all over the world.”

15. George Carlin, 1999: “Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time! But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can’t handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!”

16. Paul Woodfull as Ding Dong Denny O’Reilly, The Ballad of Jaysus Christ, 2000: “He said me ma’s a virgin and sure no one disagreed, Cause they knew a lad who walks on water’s handy with his feet… Jaysus oh Jaysus, as cool as bleedin’ ice, With all the scrubbers in Israel he could not be enticed, Jaysus oh Jaysus, it’s funny you never rode, Cause it’s you I do be shoutin’ for each time I shoot me load.”

17. Jesus Christ, in Jerry Springer The Opera, 2003: “Actually, I’m a bit gay.” In 2005, the Christian Institute tried to bring a prosecution against the BBC for screening Jerry Springer the Opera, but the UK courts refused to issue a summons.

18. Tim Minchin, Ten-foot Cock and a Few Hundred Virgins, 2005: “So you’re gonna live in paradise, With a ten-foot cock and a few hundred virgins, So you’re gonna sacrifice your life, For a shot at the greener grass, And when the Lord comes down with his shiny rod of judgment, He’s gonna kick my heathen ass.”

19. Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, 2006: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” In 2007 Turkish publisher Erol Karaaslan was charged with the crime of insulting believers for publishing a Turkish translation of The God Delusion. He was acquitted in 2008, but another charge was brought in 2009. Karaaslan told the court that “it is a right to criticise religions and beliefs as part of the freedom of thought and expression.”

20. Pope Benedict XVI quoting a 14th century Byzantine emperor, 2006: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” This statement has already led to both outrage and condemnation of the outrage. The Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the world’s largest Muslim body, said it was a “character assassination of the prophet Muhammad”. The Malaysian Prime Minister said that “the Pope must not take lightly the spread of outrage that has been created.” Pakistan’s foreign Ministry spokesperson said that “anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence”. The European Commission said that “reactions which are disproportionate and which are tantamount to rejecting freedom of speech are unacceptable.”

21. Christopher Hitchens in God is not Great, 2007: “There is some question as to whether Islam is a separate religion at all… Islam when examined is not much more than a rather obvious and ill-arranged set of plagiarisms, helping itself from earlier books and traditions as occasion appeared to require… It makes immense claims for itself, invokes prostrate submission or ‘surrender’ as a maxim to its adherents, and demands deference and respect from nonbelievers into the bargain. There is nothing-absolutely nothing-in its teachings that can even begin to justify such arrogance and presumption.”

22. PZ Myers, on the Roman Catholic communion host, 2008: “You would not believe how many people are writing to me, insisting that these horrible little crackers (they look like flattened bits of styrofoam) are literally pieces of their god, and that this omnipotent being who created the universe can actually be seriously harmed by some third-rate liberal intellectual at a third-rate university… However, inspired by an old woodcut of Jews stabbing the host, I thought of a simple, quick thing to do: I pierced it with a rusty nail (I hope Jesus’s tetanus shots are up to date). And then I simply threw it in the trash, followed by the classic, decorative items of trash cans everywhere, old coffeegrounds and a banana peel.”

23. Ian O’Doherty, 2009: “(If defamation of religion was illegal) it would be a crime for me to say that the notion of transubstantiation is so ridiculous that even a small child should be able to see the insanity and utter physical impossibility of a piece of bread and some wine somehow taking on corporeal form. It would be a crime for me to say that Islam is a backward desert superstition that has no place in modern, enlightened Europe and it would be a crime to point out that Jewish settlers in Israel who believe they have a God given right to take the land are, frankly, mad. All the above assertions will, no doubt, offend someone or other.”

24. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, 2009: “Whether a person is atheist or any other, there is in fact in my view something not totally human if they leave out the transcendent… we call it God… I think that if you leave that out you are not fully human.” Because atheism is not a religion, the Irish blasphemy law does not protect atheists from abusive and insulting statements about their fundamental beliefs. While atheists are not seeking such protection, we include the statement here to point out that it is discriminatory that this law does not hold all citizens equal.

25. Dermot Ahern, Irish Minister for Justice, introducing his blasphemy law at an Oireachtas Justice Committee meeting, 2009, and referring to comments made about him personally: “They are blasphemous.” Deputy Pat Rabbitte replied: “Given the Minister’s self-image, it could very well be that we are blaspheming,” and Minister Ahern replied: “Deputy Rabbitte says that I am close to the baby Jesus, I am so pure.” So here we have an Irish Justice Minister joking about himself being blasphemed, at a parliamentary Justice Committee discussing his own blasphemy law, that could make his own jokes illegal.

Finally, as a bonus, Micheal Martin, Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, opposing attempts by Islamic States to make defamation of religion a crime at UN level, 2009: “We believe that the concept of defamation of religion is not consistent with the promotion and protection of human rights. It can be used to justify arbitrary limitations on, or the denial of, freedom of expression. Indeed, Ireland considers that freedom of expression is a key and inherent element in the manifestation of freedom of thought and conscience and as such is complementary to freedom of religion or belief.” Just months after Minister Martin made this comment, his colleague Dermot Ahern introduced Ireland’s new blasphemy law.

A Writing Tip from Holly Lisle: learn the tools of your trade

So I received this e-mail...

"were not haven trouble written sences and its two of us written
it... thats why it dnt really get boring i mean like theres alot of
action... were never really bored.... everyone thats read it tells
us to hurry up and finish it.. but we are calling it exspect the
unexspected.. its good. we know how were going to end it so we can
start the next book.what all does it take to get a book published?"

That was the complete email, except for the writer's name, which
I'm withholding out of kindness, to protect the identity of the
creator of this monstrosity.

You want to know why editors and agents take to drinking?

That e-mail---and the million others like it---is why.

This writer---plus one colleague---have committed fiction with
intent to publish.  And now they want to know how sell the beast
they have created.

And yet...

There is no rule of professional writing (or even simple writing
with intent to communicate) that is not broken in that one
paragraph.  Capitalization, punctuation, spelling, grammar,
content, actual creation of actual sentences, even basic coherence
---it doesn't have ANY of them.

Imagine yourself as en editor, as an agent, or as a publisher, and
imagine that you receive not just one entire book written at the
level of that one paragraph in the mail, but dozens of them every
day.  Plus countless query letters, e-mails, and proposals.

You would find yourself expecting the imminent fall of civilization.
Maybe even wishing for it.

If you are currently writing anything that looks even remotely like
the paragraph above, stop worrying about publication.  "I want to
sell my book" has no business in your vocabulary yet.

First, learn the tools of your trade, because until you can write
coherent, meaningful sentences one after another, punctuate them
correctly, put capital letters in the right places, spell the words
properly, use apostrophes well, and in all other ways present your
work in a professional manner, you have not written something good,
no matter what you might think.

Writing is first and foremost about communication.  Before you can
communicate anything of value, you first have to be able to
communicate at all.  You have to be able to make yourself
understood, and capital letters, spelling, punctuation, and grammar
are the ways we have agreed upon to standardize the presentation of
communication so that we can transfer meaning, and expect it to be
understood by the recipient.

When you write, you are putting the products of your mind into
symbols.  When someone else decodes those symbols, he is reading
your mind.  Mindreading is a delicate, tricky business, and you want to
make the path from your thoughts to your reader's brain as clear,
simple, and litter-free as possible. If you don't use the code correctly,
don't expect to your thoughts to be understood.

Educate yourself, raise your standards, and present yourself as a
professional if you wish to be treated as a professional.

This article is Copyright (C) Holly Lisle, from Holly Lisle's Writing Updates: http://hollylisle.com/newsletter.php All Rights Reserved. Reprinted with direct written permission from the author.

Editing

Does anyone else hate editing as much as I do?

Edits

So, editing is underway for Aigaion Girl. I'm taking Moloch, one of my characters, and giving him more of a unique voice by having him speak like he's a romantic era revolutionary (he's a demon, so this makes a certain degree of sense). Moloch has his own character, obviously, so it's more just changing his vocabulary and syntax around. Oddly enough, people didn't really speak all that differently in the 1790s than they do now (except their grammar was better). Nonetheless, I'm finding it very difficult to completely reword everything one of my main characters has ever said, especially because I want to keep so much of his personality in tact. On the other hand, it is a little cool. I'm mostly taking from William Godwin, because he had a very clear way of explaining exactly what he was thinking, and I kind of like that.

Once I'm done with Moloch (sixteen pages from his PoV, plus all of his dialogue from everyone else's PoVs), I'm going to make Camael a little more Philadelphian and Cheryl-Lee a little more consistant. Then I get to start the additions to the actual story. Eek, this is going to be a lot of work.

This shamelss plug was brought to you by the letter H.

Ugh.

I've been trying to write the last chapter of Aigaion Girl for ten days now, and I'm completely blocked. I even started writing a numberless chapterette, so my fictionpress readers would have something to read while I'm getting out of this funk - and even that is giving me trouble.

I think it's just because of the build up. I've written things this long before, and I've written for fictionpress, with next-to-live updates, but I've never written anything that I worked on and updated so consistantly - or anything that's gotten as many good reactions from people - or anything that I myself have liked this much. I feel an inordinant amount of pressure to get the ending perfect, and I'm terrified it won't live up to anyone's (including my own) expectations.

I honestly am not sure what to do about it. I've written the whole thing thus far gin-free, and it would be a shame to start relying on my trusted writing aid now - but at the same time, if I don't post the last chapter for ever and ever, I'm going to lose the interest this story has generated, not to mention delay editing it for publication.

Anyway, I don't mean to whine. I guess it will come to me when it comes to me and until then, about all I can do is keep my mind fresh and clear. That being said, if anyone has any advice, I'd be more than happy to hear it.

That's it for me. Time to go work out (*ambivalent aski face*)