I'm on a couple of writers' groups and I read blogs, and I am astonished at the comfort some would-be-published writers take in the idea that "readers today" are stupid or illiterate or lazy.

Maybe, if you can't get published, it makes you feel better to pretend that the problem lies in all those drooling morons out there who are too dumb to appreciate your gleaming prose. And of course, maybe you really are too good for the average reader.

But.

It's unlikely. There's probably more than one bright, perceptive, and literate person on earth, and if there really is only one left, you are almost certainly not it. The odds are against you. And I suppose it's possible to be bright and perceptive and irritatingly arrogant, but I have found that arrogance tends to reduce the bearer's IQ by at least ten points. Something to do with underestimating everyone else, and overestimating yourself.

And the thing I wonder is this: if everyone reading books today is a drooling moron, why do you want to write for these people?

There is some kind of fiction that should probably be kept for a notebook in one's sock drawer. Revenge fantasies about people who picked on you in high school is one. Inept vampire pornography is vehemently another. And stories intended to demonstrate how much smarter you are than everyone else is a third.

Because the problem with demonstrating how much smarter you are than everyone else is this:

Usually, you aren't. And everyone knows it.

Because, believe it or not, everyone else in the world is not an idiot. And most of them are smart enough to realize that.

Hmm. This is less a comment than a rant, isn't it? I do like aspiring writers, truly I do. But some of us need to learn to express ourselves better in writing.

green_knight linked to this rant against blogging. She also linked to a discussion on the rant.

Best comment from the linked discussion? The guy who quoted the statistic that "99% of all arguments boil down to shocked cries of 'you're not me!'" I love that one, actually. Because the rant, if you read it, is prescriptive: "you must do this, you must not do that." (Which pretty much boils down to, "you should do this because it's what I would do.")

And somewhat to my own shock, having grown up as the compliant, obedient "good daughter"--as a middle-aged cat lady, I find that nothing gets my back up faster than having someone tell me I "have to" do this or that. Outside of my work, I mean.

So the rant? Gets my back up.

I shall take my revenge in the form of long, witty blog posts!

Just as soon as I get over this cold and my brain stops feeling so mushy. You think blogging is the enemy of fiction writing? Try cold medicine!

This is the second time they've cancelled my favourite show out from under me, leaving at least one character in a hell of a fix.

And the horse you rode in on, CBC!

In trying to find out whether there is, in fact, a breeding-for-slaughter industry in Canada...

...I learned that contrary to what I read some years back, there are now horse-slaughter sites in the United States.

Which I guess means the rescue that pissed me off this morning had better start keeping track of all production sales all over the US, too. I mean, if you assume that all horses sold at auction end up at the killers... that is a lot of auctions.

And now I am nearly as tired as you all are, so perhaps I can let this one go.

We can all live in hope.

Edited to add: See comments for correction on this one. Turns out what I read some years ago was actually correct.

The original post that got me all annoyed this morning? The one that worried about horses going to auction in Canada ending up at the killer buyers?

I just noticed the initial post claimed the broodmares could end up slaughtered--or else "broodmares in the slaughter industry."

Does that even make sense? No, really. Anyone out there who knows more about horse slaughter than I do--does anyone actually breed horses for meat in North America? I mean, it's not like we eat much of it over here.

Or should I just get all pissed off all over again?

I mean, seriously--WTF?

Edited to add: My initial post addressed the Web site I posted, and I perceive that I have now crossed the line into remarking on what someone in the community said, outside of the community. I don't know if that's kosher or not, but I don't really want to go back and start a fight. I just wanted to point out--WTF?

Buying a PMU baby is not automatically rescuing it. The Nova Scotia rescue site said clearly, "This is a rescue, not a place to buy a cheap horse." Okay, but the production sales of PMU horses? And the folks who bought them for resale, as people will do at any other production sale? Definitely sales of inexpensive (sometimes) horses.

If you go to a sale and personally outbid the killer buyer, you're rescuing that horse (sort of, since you are also purchasing the horse.) If you go to a sale and plain old buy a horse, you plain old bought a horse. If you divert a herd that was being shipped directly to the packers to your rescue, you rescued those horses. If you offer to list them for sale on your site as an alternative to the owner sending them to auction, you're listing them for sale. You aren't rescuing them. I do not see the point of people subsidizing the sale price of these horses through contributions, so somebody else pays less when they buy the horse. That isn't rescue work by any definition I can imagine.

I asked the question: "Do they also rescue horses in the US from being sold at auction"?

Because it's not exactly the same thing as delivering the horse directly to a packing plant.

And I would be willing to bet that they don't ask who buys these horses at sales in Canada. I would be willing to bet they assume all purchasers in Canada are killer buyers.

I do not need to begin my day all pissy and defensive.

I just decided not to respond to a post on a community about horses. Yes, here I am displaying unusual maturity, but now I am going to Ruin Everything by posting about it here.

See, someone posted a message about a rescue called The Animali Farm, which supposedly works to find homes for PMU horses now that the Premarin industry has collapsed. A lot of those farms are in Canada (which has led to some nasty comments on other horse communities I no longer frequent, about the moral fibre of Canadians. Which leads me to ask, was it only Canadian women who ever took Premarin? But I digress.)

Okay. There was a PMU rescue down here in Nova Scotia for a while, and they placed a bunch of young horses in the aftermath of the initial collapse. I contributed to them. As far as I can see, they're no longer active. And there's a lady down by Liverpool who, as far as I can tell, has done a nice line in buying PMU horses, starting them, and selling them on at reasonable prices. (I thought of contacting her about a couple of youngsters before I met Mitzi.) TeePee, Mitzi's boyfriend, is a PMU baby, as was Dallas, a Paint who lived in our barn. They weren't rescues, though, they were babies who were born to PMU mares and then sold to someone who brought them to Nova Scotia and resold them.

Which brings me back to this rescue. If you look at the site, there are sale horses, including broke Canadian (the in-demand breed) geldings, listed there for several thousand dollars, as well as a lot of other horses who might get sent to an auction if they aren't sold privately, and the thing is, the site seems to assume that any horse run through a sale in Canada is going to end up dog food.

There are big production sales all over the US, and breeders on lists I'm on have complained at different times about the glut on the market and the low prices youngsters, and even broke horses, are bringing. Why does nobody assume American horses are going to end up at the killers? I mean, putting a horse through a sale is always risky. And yeah, I've heard that there are no equine slaughterhouses in the US, but there is such a thing as a big truck.

This California rescue? Seems to me confused about the difference between adoption and sale. And they also seem to be engaging in a little incitement of panic by suggesting that a horse sold in CANADA is obviously going to end up meat.

Which does not exactly make me feel like getting out my wallet.

...both on the Internets and in "real life"--

Dude, "I would never" is not a valid argument against the existence of something unless you are specifically speaking about yourself.

So, for instance, the Robert Miller article linked in my previous post talks about things that people really do. Saying that you would never do such things doesn't mean they don't happen. It just means that someone else is doing them.

Likewise, don't be too quick to assign your own good qualities to everyone in your "group" and defend them holus-bolus. I can see your being angry because some people say mean things about folks who show. But it's incorrect to contend that people who show do not look down on backyard types who just train and work with our horses for our own pleasure. Because some show people do look down on non-show-people. Just like some people look down on App fanciers, western riders, jumpers, and anything else you care to mention.

Conversely, when you say "I would never" to mean, "I would never own a little Arab-App cross" (or whatever) the correct and reasonable response is, "Who asked you to?"

Or possibly, if it's me: "Good, because this one is not for sale!"

God knows, I have been known to over-identify with the groups I am part of or the things I like. But I am not representative of every other horse person, Canadian, lefty, or whatever. (Or left-handed Canadian horse person.) So just because I would not do a particular skunky thing doesn't mean nobody would do it. And just because I see no need to jump or show or own a seventeen-hand warmblood does not mean nobody else should want to.

And the reverse, so to speak, is also true.

It's important to pick your battles, but it's also important to fight them fairly.

And my reality is not the only reality that's real.

Edited to add: Okay, that came out as if it was directed at a specific person, and really, it's not. I can think of several cases of people whose only frame of reference is their own, and so nobody else should ever do X because they wouldn't, or in circumstance Y the only correct response is C because that is what they would do... It's sloppy thinking and poor logic. I apologize for using solely horse-world examples and making it look like I meant a specific person. I really only used them because I was already thinking about horses. I wasn't intending to target one person, its just a style of argument/relating to the world that bothers me because in extreme cases it can sound very self-centred. As I said above--my reality is not the only reality that is real. Neither is yours. You know?

No, I don't have the CD in my hot little hands yet, but that will come.

Owing to time constraints at the public library, I had to sort of truncate my Divorcees post. And after I logged out it occurred to me that regular readers of this journal might have looked at that post title and though, "Okay, since when do you use "sissy-boy" as an insult?"

True, all true. But the thing is, so much New Country these days makes me want to kick someone to death that I don't mind what you say about it as long as it's negative.

Don't get me wrong: there's some good stuff there. And I have a big soft spot for people like Tim McGraw. But I still routinely change the radio station when I come into the barn because Mitzi doesn't react well when I'm all pissed off, and...

Okay, I've mentioned in book posts that I have gotten to sort of hate Man With A Code books, just because so often the Man With A Code is so insufferable about it. (I have finally quit on Spenser, because the character's self-righteousness has finally taken over completely.) In New Country, you get Values songs, where the singer brays about how he (it's nearly always he) has Values that are the most Valuable Values ever and this makes him superior to all those other shameful folk who have none, all expressed in Republican National Convention-speak that makes me furious. I mean, for some reason smug just does me in.

Kick kick kick!!!

And then there are those screwed-up relationship songs that... okay, the old outlaw country songs featured a lot of bad men doing bad things in relationships, but they tended to own it, you know? Like, "Good-Hearted Woman" is impressed that the woman finds it in her heart to overlook the guy's faults. By contrast, when Mitzi was at the trainer's I used to be in the arena longeing her and this song kept coming on the radio where the guy was whining about "why do I always say things that I know will hurt you and never tell you I love you and treat you badly" blah blah blah, the implication being "Oh I love you so much but I just can't say it."

Here's a thought, arsewipe: maybe the problem is that you're an abusive shithead and you really don't love her at all, okay?

Kick kick kick!!!

I tell you what, I used to have to practice deep calming breaths when that damn song came on so as not to get all filled with rage and scare Mitzi half to death.

Also, there's that fucking Toby Keith song "How Do You Like Me Now" which initially sounded like a perfectly fair "we broke up and aren't you sorry" song, but which on listening closely turns out to be "I harassed you in high school and you wisely ignored me, so now I am going to feel pleasure that you're going through hard times even though you never did a thing to me." I thought it was impossible to hate Toby Keith more than I do, but apparently I was wrong. I even resent his duet with Willie Nelson (especially since their lynch-mob song is so stupid in and of itself.)

Kick, kick, kick!!!

Plus, the tunes are so generic and indistinguishable from moronic pop half the time, what the hell is the point?

Ahem.

Why no, I will not be attending the Keith Urban show this summer, unless someone really stellar (by which I mean dirty) is added to the bill.

And thank you for letting me get that off my chest!

I just tried to log into my Blogspot/Google account to read someone's journal. (It's the equivalent of friends-only.) Blogspot would not let me log in because it didn't accept my password, so I clicked the "reset password" link and got a message saying an email with a re-set link was being sent to me.

I got the email, which contained only the link, and clicked on it. I was then told to "follow the instructions from the email, or click here." Since there were no instructions in the email, I clicked. This took me to a page that explained how to search my email folders to find the message.

I have the message. It just doesn't tell me anything useful.

No wonder there's no feedback method on their Help site. This is ridiculous.

I ever I do get published, and I start to refer to my books as "my children," promise you'll smack me one? Although I do promise I will try very hard not to become quite that much of a wanker.

(It was a post on a mailing list that set me off. I've mentioned this same overaggressive and ridiculously precious author before. He's an excellent example of how not to convince people to buy your books!)

I know a lot of people on my friends-list head right to the barn after work, and I can see the mental health benefits. But yesterday, after staring at a computer screen (often talking bewildered students through searches) from 7:30 AM until 5:00 PM, I had such a case of eye strain that halfway to the barn I turned around, went home, and was in bed by 8:30. The good news is, my headache went away.

I'm leaving today while the leaving's good--maybe I'll actually get to the barn before I head out to the bar!

Also, all my reading/writing discussion groups eventually feature discussions of why e-books will eventually completely replace paper. Should that ever be the case I plan to become illiterate. Fair warning.

...Not always. I just responded to a thread on a discussion list and accidentally sent my response privately to someone instead of to the whole list. And then when I realized my mistake I sent another copy to the same person, as well as to the list. And to make matters worse, the person who receives the message will think I am annoyed at her comment.

Well, actually I am. I just kind of hate to hurt her feelings.

But really, it was a discussion about how authors should respond to the question, "Where do you get your ideas?" and this person suggested the famous, "Out of my head" as a response.

Maybe I'm just an old reference librarian, but I think a reply like that is dismissive and stinking rude. Readers know the ideas come out of the author's head. What they want to know is how the ideas got in there in the first place. They want to know how you thought of a specific idea for a specific plot, and how frigging hard is it to think of a little store of anecdotes about your current story and pull one out when the question comes up?

Yeah, I know. Authors get tired of the same old questions. I'm sure they do, and I am normally a font of sympathy about authors' problems. But having someone interested in you, and your book, and your creative process, is not a frigging problem, okay?

And if you want to be tired of a question, come over here and answer "my professor put this book on reserve, how do I find it?" a hundred times in the course of fall term. With a smile on your face, because it is a sincere question being asked by someone who really needs to know.

Or, of course, you could be dismissive of and rude to your readers if you prefer. Only don't come crying to me when your sales are down and your series gets dropped, okay?

...I'm given to understand a bunch of them are coming up from Arkansas with someone who was just down there. I hope they're not all spoken for, because, well, see, I loaned my copy to my cousin, who had it in his car stereo.

And presumably it's still in the stereo, but since his car was broken into over the weekend the stereo is no longer in the car... and I'm out a CD.

Which I'm not even ticked about since, between the stereo and a few things belonging to my brother that were stolen from the trunk of the car, I'm out the least of anyone involved.

Bummer all around though.

As I have mentioned before, I'm on a discussion list for mystery readers. There are quite a few writers on this list as well, most of whom generally participate as fans of the genre. Some of them are writers whose work I already liked before I knew they were on this list, others are people I'd never heard of before. Occasionally, all of them indulge in what's jokingly referred to as "BSP" or "Blatant Self-Promotion." As long as they don't go overboard (dragging their books into every post they make) nobody really minds. I've checked out a few books by fellow members of the list, and had mixed results, as you would, but I still enjoy reading books by someone I sort of "know."

The list mix is usually good fun, but you know, every once in a while it seems like the authors lose sight of the purpose of the list. It's not that I blame the poor dears for being insecure--because hey!--but you wish someone would tell them that acting as if readers in general owe them something is just not productive. Especially if they aren't their readers yet.

I've addressed this before, although I can't find the post right now--a while back there was a big kerfuffle about whether buying used books was a horrible thing to do and basically the same thing as stealing bread right out of the author's mouth. Lending people your books also turned out to be a major no-no ("Make them buy their own copy!"--yeah, right, I'd like to see what my friends and colleagues would do to me if I tried to "make" them spend ten bucks on a book just because I happened to like it!) Public libraries also came in for their share of abuse.

I mean, honestly. It was clear that by reading a couple of hundred books a year, I was committing some grave transgression. Far, far better if I, as a reader, stuck to only the couple of dozen books I would normally buy, by authors I already know I like, and completely avoid the new worlds that open up when I get to try a book for a couple of dollars used or free at a library. (And then often buy copies of new works by those same authors I've tried, or my own copies of the books I've read. Because the best saleperson for a book is--the book itself.)

Essentially what seemed to be happening in that thread was a disconnect in the heads of some authors: it didn't seem to occur to them that readers existed as individual, real people with agendas and needs of their own. No, to these writers (not a lot of them, but enough to make me think) a reader was sort of a thing who simply existed to serve the author. Not that I get into the whole "you authors would be nothing without us readers!" headspace either, but... okay, it all makes me tired. And less inclined to read some people's books.

As I said in my post about this subject back when it happened, I don't fault authors for taking their careers personally. What I do fault them for is expecting every reader to take their careers personally. It can't be done. We can't buy every book out there, and we may not want to buy yours. As I did not say on the discussion list, when a reader says "I got your book used, and I enjoyed it" you should probably not ask, "Why didn't you buy it new?" because the answer might well be, "Oh, I didn't enjoy it that much!"

Readers are under no obligation to buy any one book by any one author. They are also under no obligation to buy your next book, even if they bought the last one. It's presumptuous, rude, and stupid to act as if they are. Readers have lives of their own, and other obligations, and as I said in my original post about the subject, I have a certain amount of unassigned spending money, and I will often spend it on books--sometimes new ones by authors I don't know if I like yet, because I do know that if authors don't sell books they can't keep being authors. I do try to do my bit. But that same unassigned spending money is also what goes to pay for concert tickets and meals out and CDs and miscellaneous cool stuff for Mitzi and the like. It's not limitless. And although I will certainly make a point of purchasing a new book by a writer I like and whose career I do take personally, if it's down to supporting some writer from far far away and, say, Joel Plaskett... well, the writer may in fact be cuter than a basket of kittens, but the guy from across the harbour is going to win out. Every. Damned. Time.

Matt Mays? Same category. Gloryhound, when they release their CD? What do you think? Does that mean I won't be buying a book that week? Probably. Do I feel guilty about that? Oh hell no. They're local, and I'm rooting for them, and that's the way it goes.

And here's the other thing: that's where the personal part really does come into it. All right, having a couple of friendly conversations with the keyboardist from El Torpedo, and discovering his mother reads my LJ and enjoys it, probably did not make me any more likely to buy their next record, but only because I planned to already. If he (or Matt himself, when I had that chat with him a few weeks ago about a mutual friend and Facebook) had been a rank arsehole, that might have affected my opinion on the matter. The fact that they both seem to be very nice does not hurt, though.

Now, the night back in March when I had sort of planned to go see The Junction play Hells' Kitchen, with Gloryhound opening, I admit I was only partly motivated by actually wanting to see The Junction. I was also partly motivated by sort of wanting Gloryhound to have their own fans there--I don't know if I wanted them to look good in front of the band from away, but I suspect that was part of it. But we had a vicious ice storm that night and I just didn't have the nerve to go out in it. I confessed as much to Dave the following Tuesday, and if he'd teased me for being chicken I would not have held it against him. But I do sort of wish some of the self-involved authors I've just been bitching about had been there to hear his response, which was, "Oh no, it's good you didn't try, I was terrified the whole drive home myself. It wouldn't have been worth it." Which, frankly, was such a sensible thing to say to someone about driving in an ice storm that I kind of forgot about it until I was reminded that there are probably authors out there who would try to make me feel guilty for making them sit at a signing alone under the same conditions.

But that's not what I came to tell you about.

I came to tell you that, should I ever be published, I will do my level best to avoid emulating this one guy who's starting posting to this discussion list and who keeps trying to elevate himself to the position of Final Authority On Everything, Because I Have Written Several Books And I Am Going To Tell You How It Is.

I mean, last time we were in the latest round of the admittedly tiresome discussion of why some readers really, really hate it if you kill the pet, a few humble readers mentioned that they have pretty strong relationships with their pets.

So this arsehole posts a long lecture about how important it is to have relationships with humans, and how rewarding human relationships can be, and honest to dog-spelled-backwards I got the impression the pompous fool thought the rest of us had been raised by wolves and had never interacted with another human being in our lives.

And he's kept on in that vein, just being really pompous and presumptuous and full of himself. Before I realized this about him I put one of his books on hold at the public library, and even after I figured out that I do not like his online persona, I signed it out and read it. But my impression of his personality was such that I was glad to learn that he's a hack writer of tripe. It made me happy to dislike his main character and be bored by his work. He's just that annoying.

Just recently he posted a message that recommended a specific hard-sell tactic that a few other list members, including a bunch of other authors, found pushy and rude. And once that was pointed out to him he posted several hostile and accusatory messages about how his message was being taken wrong and how charming he is in real life (and you know, maybe he's correct and the problem is he just doesn't express himself very well in writing) and how all of us are jerks for not taking his message as gospel, and if I hadn't already removed this guy from my Check Him Out Someday list because I have and I didn't like his writing, I'd have taken him off the same list for the Appears To Be A Real Arsehole factor.

So, after wasting far too many pixels or whatever as well as the time of whoever is reading this, I guess the lesson learned, and the things I need to add to my Avoid This Behaviour Should I Ever Get Published list, boil down to:

1) Remember that other people are people, and not merely supporting characters in the novel of my life, and

2) Try not to appear to be an absolute self-centred self-important prick. (Based on the Matt Mays experience I am sorely tempted to suggest behaving like a rock star but then I think of Nickelback--who have, God knows, never done me any harm--and I hesitate.)

I am so self-centred today that I'm not even going to put this behind a cut right now. That's how self-centred I am.

According to the CBC, it's supposed to snow again this weekend!

Oh, and for any Texan friends who might be reading this--I understand the snowstorm that hit you guys came down from Canada. Well, the last snowstorm that hit me came up the eastern seaboard from the States (which actually is the route most of the bad storms take to get here.) We are therefore even.

Yeah, yeah, I hear some of you going "but the storm that hit you didn't come from Texas!" And the storm that hit you didn't come from Nova Scotia, either. If "Canada" as an entity gets blamed for your bad weather, then by golly "the US" as an entity can take the blame for ours, and don't even try protesting that it was Yankee snow!

Hee. Now I feel better.

...but can I just comment that I am heartily sick of people who do something wrong and then try to deflect attention on someone else's unrelated wrongdoing? In this case, Imus (a radio personality) made a racist (and sexist) comment about the members of a women's basketball team. In the course of one of his "apologies" he asked, "Why doesn't anyone get mad when African-American rappers say the same things?"

Well, Don, some people do. But more to the point, if I am arrested for breaking into your house, it doesn't really make sense for me to point out that maybe someone else broke into three houses. What I did was still wrong. Okay, maybe there are other people in the world who say ugly things about women (or any other group you care to name.) That doesn't mean it's okay. We're not talking about them right now, Don. We're talking about you.

So speaks the voice of my inner third-grade teacher.

I had to put Mitzi's blanket back on last night because it was supposed to get cold today. And now it's snowing! Happy frigging Easter!

Ahem. On the plus side I got quite a lot of writing done today while I was cooking a turkey roll thing that took several hours. Jordy is in the middle of being interviewed by the detectives, he's realized that the female detective looks more like a math teacher than a cop, and he's remembered that, as a terrible math student, he's always been nervous around math teachers.

I also got my taxes done--they're very uncomplicated. And once again, my taxes owed comes to an appalling number, but my taxes paid comes to an even more appalling number, so I'm okay. I think. I'm not much good at math, myself.

It's supposed to get dirty out tonight but it turns out the Battle of the Bands thing is happening next week, not tonight, so I don't need to worry. Surely spring will have arrived by the fourteenth of fucking April????

Ahem. And now I'm off to the barn. Later!