The Author Is Not The Character

I saw something today asserting that you could tell J. K. Rowling’s real political beliefs by something Harry Potter does several times in the series.  This is utter motherfucking nonsense.

Yes, you can sometimes glean an author’s politics from their works, but not from the actions of one character, even if that character is the viewpoint character!  You see — and I know this confuses the fuck out of some people, but I swear it’s true — what fiction writers do is ~gasp~ make shit up.  Just because Harry is never punished or made to realize one particular action is wrong doesn’t mean it’s one Rowling would endorse in real life.  It means that it’s what she thinks Harry Potter — this dude she made up — would do.

I don’t get it.  The story I started earlier this week opens with a girl shooting the ground between her ex-fiancé’s feet and telling him that if doesn’t leave her family’s ranch immediately, she’ll shoot him next.  Does this mean that I’m a gun loving conservative who thinks everyone should go armed at all times and shoot people who piss them off?  No.  It means that it was the accurate action for the character to take at that time and place.

What would I have done in her place?  Given that he did keep approaching her after she’d told him to leave repeatedly, I could see hitting him, or, at the very, absolute least, calling the cops.  But I’m not on a ranch in the year 2274 in another galaxy.  She’s not me, and I’m not her.  Our circumstances are very different; the societies we live in are drastically different as well.  Our reactions to things should be different.

But, I can hear you saying, Rowling was writing a story set in the modern day!  Yes, but she was still writing about someone who wasn’t her.  Now, if she’d written lots and lots of stories any they all had viewpoint characters with the same attitude as Harry, then maybe there’s a case for that being how she really feels.

Or it could just mean that she thinks characters who feel that way are interesting to write about.

I’ve written a whole novel and a short story from the perspective of someone that I think needs a good slap upside the head.  Do I think like him?  In some ways that were uncomfortable for me to realize, yes, actually . . . the difference is, I went “Shit.  That’s a horrible attitude; I should work on changing it” and he went “So what?”  Do my stories show that his attitudes are wrong?  Sometimes.  Not as much as they would if I were trying to write some kind of moral thing, but I’m not.

Yes, I know, I know:  I created the character and world.  I chose to put or not put certain things into it, and by those choices you can see what I think is important.  Not really.  You can tell what I thought needed to be there.  Or what was there when the character sprung into my mind, talking.  If I had complete control over what I wrote, I’d be writing Tolkien-esque fantasy, not things about a ninja/assassin/comic book geek with attitude problems falling in love with a woman who happens to live on the planet he grew up on, or what seems to be a series about his father:  an orphaned ranch hand turned spacer turned heavily decorated and respected military officer.

I don’t know why it surprised me to see people lobbing this accusation at Rowling though.  I’ve seen people seriously saying that obviously GRRM thinks monarchy is the correct form of government, otherwise why would it be such a big deal in his series?  Hell, I once saw a science fiction author saying that all fantasy authors were conservative just because they write about stuff that was in the past . . . because, clearly, you can’t write about horses and knights and castles and elves and believe in things like socialism and LGBT+ rights and other such stuff, right?

I just don’t fucking get it.  I’m not my characters.  They’re not me.  I’m an author in rural Massachusetts in 2018.  The viewpoint characters of my current works-in-progress include:

• a “perfectly honest merchant captain” who looks like a bipedal wolf, from somewhere in another galaxy that I haven’t named yet, in 2330
• his first mate, a middle-aged Human man who’s been a spacer since he was 14, who was from Earth, but left it when he was 7
• his chief pilot, a Human woman in her early 30’s, from a world that was pretty much founded to be an attempt at a directly democratic utopia and is so far doing fairly well at it
• an asexual teen male with superstrength in 1998 in rural Massachusetts in a reality where superheroes have been a thing long enough there’s legislation about them

These characters do share some attitudes and beliefs with me, but not all.  And, as I said before, if there’s anything that all of them believe . . . and there probably is . . . then it’s a pretty good bet that it’s something I believe too.  But, even if I write seven books about just one of them, you can’t look at just that one character and go “Ah ha!  I knew Shannon wasn’t really a <whatever>!”  All you know is how I wrote that character.

And I’m getting obnoxiously repetitive, so I’m going to stop there and go write about a teen male spacer in a distant galaxy 200 years from now getting in a bar fight.

The Dumbest Author Blog Post Ideas I’ve Found

I was looking for the list I was working through and mostly mocking last year as I’d misplaced where I’d copied down the ones I wanted to do.  I couldn’t find it, but I did find some spectacularly dumb ideas.

And, yes, all of these were from lists allegedly targeting authors.

 

1. “Hijack the news . . . avoiding horrible stuff of course.”  I guess this could actually be effective, but it seems a little too cold and calculated for my tastes.

2.  “Moments and pictures from your vacation.”  First of all, look at the built in class/income assumption!  Who the fuck can afford a vacation any more?  Secondly, most of the time when I read or even here people talking about their vacations, it’s very much a “you had to be there” thing.  Some events really lose something in the re-telling.

3.  “Day in the life.”  Every single list I found suggested this!  I don’t fucking understand it!  Look, authors are generally pretty boring people.  I’m pretty sure that even if I was ever Rowling or King famous and rich, my ordinary day wouldn’t be that different than it is now . . . except maybe it wouldn’t have been a store brand English muffin I had for breakfast.

I got up, I played with the kitten, I had tea I let steep too long and an English muffin for breakfast, I played with the kitten again, I thought about writing a different blog post and decided not to, and now I’m writing this post . . . this is fascinating stuff, truly.

4.  “Pics of household improvements.”  What the hell?!  I thought that was a specialized niche of blogging.  Unless it’s something really cool.  And who needs a list to be prompted to share something really cool on their blog?  Which reminds me, I have a picture where my kitten looks like an eldritch horror.  (I caught him mid-stretch in bad lighting.)  I should post that some day.

5.  “Craft-y stuff you’ve done.”  I hate the assumption that just because someone is good at/interested in one art form they are good at/interested in all others.  I write.  I take pictures.  I sometimes dabble in cover design . . . and generally end up swearing at Photoshop in languages that may or may not actually exist.  That’s the extent of my artistic skillsets. Oh, I can draw stick figures.  That’s it!  I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this.

6.  “Talk about and show pictures from your weekend.”  This assumes you have interesting weekends.  I guess I could post screenshots from whatever video game I was sucking at that weekend, or the cover of the book I was reading, or pictures of the grocery store I went to, but that really doesn’t seem worth the time and effort.

Also, this . . . as well as most of the ones above . . . if followed would make a blog much more a lifestyle blog than an author’s blog.  I guess I could post cat pictures every weekend.  That’s a thing author’s do.

7.  “What you wear while writing.”  Why is this a thing anyone cares about?!  I mean, I’m amused to discover — via Twitter and across several unrelated conversations — that I’m far from the only author who has to change out of jeans before they write to be comfortable, but a whole blogpost about what I wear when I write?!

8.  “Best free apps.”  For what?  Or just in general?  And if so, why is this specifically a thing on a list of things for authors to blog about?  Again, this seems like really generic blogging advice.

9.  “The eulogy you want read at your funeral.”  Because that’s not creepy and morbid!

10.  “Photos from hometown.”  I haven’t been to my hometown in over a decade and have no intention to go back any time soon.  So why the fuck should I do this?  I mean, I could make a post about my hometown and how it’s affected how I turned out . . . but that’s mostly going to be a post about why I don’t trust the criminal justice system and how stupid I find evangelical Christianity and how stupid the whole Satanic Panic thing was.  I don’t think that’s what this sort of advice is going for.  (Google “West Memphis Three” and you’ll at least understand what I’m talking about.)

11.  “Photos from family reunion.”  First, not everyone has or goes to family reunions.  Second, it’s not cool to share people’s pictures online without their permission.  Third . . . how is this author blog related?!

I get the feeling that a lot of these are supposed to be “things you can blog about besides doing constant book promotion” but they seem way too generic to be on a list that’s specifically for author blogs.

12.  “How to set up a blog.”  I am not google.

13.  (This one is a direct quote).  “How to research keywords for effective blog post SEO.”  I’m not even one hundred percent sure what this means.  I understand that there are a lot of self-pubbed authors who for some unfathomable reason think that having a blog that is likely to come up high in searches for various things will lead to book sales.  I don’t understand how this is supposed to work though.  I suspect it’s about as useful as the “follow other authors on social media and increase your sales” advice.

14.  “List of things to do when bored.”  More generic blog advice!  Also, if I’m bored, I write.  Or go see what the kitten has gotten himself into because I shouldn’t have the opportunity to be bored if he’s awake.  He’s a rather mischievous and clever little dude.

15.  “Pre-moving checklist.”  First, I don’t understand people who need checklists for every goddamned thing they do.  I like making checklists, but I don’t need them.  Second, how in the hell is this related to an author blog?!

16.  “What you’ve learned during a move.”  Again, generic.  Also, I don’t think I’ve ever learned anything during a move beyond “moving sucks” and “We own a lot of books.”

Oh, no wait.  During a recent move I did learn something useful:  Dropping a box of hardback books on your toe can bruise the nail so badly that it takes most of a year to look normal again.  I don’t think I can make that into a whole blogpost.  Maybe if I’d taken pictures documenting it . . . but I really don’t think that’s anything anyone would want to see anyway.

17.  “Photo a day for a typical week.”  Sunday: picture of the cats.  Monday:  picture of the ten zillion inches of snow outside.  Tuesday:  picture of the cats sleeping.  Wednesday:  picture of the ten zillion inches of snow taken from the office window.  Thursday . . . you get the idea, right?  My typical week is not exciting.

Now, I do take pictures most days, but I understand that not everybody is as fascinated by things like “the way the light was shining through that glass onto the tabletop” as I am, so I don’t inflict them on others.

18.  “A to do list from your daily life.”  What is with all these generic and boring as hell ideas?!  I don’t want to read anyone else’s to do list, and I don’t assume anyone else wants to read mine!

19.  “Using astrological signs to create deeper characters.”  Okay, this one is author specific.  It’s just also stupid.

20.  “Explain analytics.”  I cannot write a blogpost about something I don’t understand, nor have no interest in.  Also, I’m not google.

21.  “How to write the opposite sex.”  I could, maybe, write a blogpost about how obnoxious I find the idea that people need advice on how to write characters whose gender is different than theirs.  But the last time I tried it turned into me pretty much doing nothing but swearing and abusing caps lock and bold.  So I probably won’t.

Also, what’s the opposite of nonbinary?  Gender has more than two options, people!

22.  “Capitalize on Twitter trends.”  Same as with the very first thing in this list, I can see how it would be useful, but it feels too cold and calculated.

Besides, let’s go see what’s trending on Twitter right now, shall we?  “#St.Patrick’sDay”.  Nope, don’t have anything interesting to post about that.  “Cambridge Analytica.”  No idea what that’s about so can’t blog about it.  “BetsyDeVosSchoolImprovements”.  That’s probably one of those allegedly funny hashtags where people make really dumb jokes.  Not interested.  “#EvacuationDay.”  Don’t know what this one’s about either.  “McCabeFired.”  I don’t do politics except in the general sense on my blog.  “John Dowd.”  Don’t know who this is.  “John Brennan.”  Don’t know who this is either.  “#powerofculture.”  Don’t know what that’s about, but maybe it could be something that would make an interesting blogpost.  I’ll investigate in a minute.  “#crdh.”  No idea.  “#ImLuckyThat.”  This is either a sarcastic or saccharine hashtag.  Sarcastic, it’s better suited to something tweet length.  Saccharine, I’m not interested.

So, “#powerofculture” is the only one that might, possibly, be a trend I could capitalize on.  So I’m going to go see what it is.  It’s about some event going on near-ish by.  Can’t capitalize on that either then.  Also, twitter trends change much faster than I write blogposts, so this is useless advice anyway.

Really, given how short posts for most of the ideas in this list would be, I wonder if they aren’t assuming much, much shorter posts than I write.

23.  “Create a cartoon about writing.”  See above for rant about assuming good at one art form equals good at all.

24.  “Bookmark design.”  I know that giving out bookmarks is supposed to be a good form of marketing.  I also know that most people who are going to give a self-pubbed author a chance read mostly ebooks, and that most readers have plenty of bookmarks anyway.  And there’s that whole “good at one art form does not mean good at all” thing again too.

25.  “Business card design.”  I’m pretty sure authors don’t need business cards.  I know they’re supposed to be useful as a promotion tool, but I’m pretty sure that whole idea was made up by someone who makes business cards.  And . . . do I need to say the other part again?

In addition to these stupid ideas, one site specified that author’s should never rant on their blogs, they should always try to keep things inspiring or no one would come back.

I, obviously, think that’s a bunch of bullshit.  I’m not interested in inspiring anyone.  I’m in the business of entertaining people, and my “brand” (for lack of a better word) is sarcastic and ranty.  It’s what my narrators are like for the most part too.  If I wrote blogposts that were all inspirational and shit, what you’d get when you read my books would be a totally jarring experience.

But my reasons for blogging so many rants and so sarcastically isn’t a calculated marketing thing.  That’s just who I am.  I’m not sure I could be inspirational if I tried, honestly.

 

The Patreon Bullshit

(And probably other stuff because it will be a miracle if I ever make a blogpost that doesn’t wander all over the place.)

So, for those who don’t know Patreon is a site that basically lets you pay people various amounts of money on a recurring basis in return for various rewards . . . or sometimes just for the knowledge that you’re helping a creator you like keep the lights on while they make more stuff.

Long story short, they recently decided to charge an additional 2.9% plus 35 cents on each payment someone made to creators they’re supporting.  That was bad enough because many people pledge $1 to lots of different creators, meaning that, for example, what had once been one $10 charge that gave $1 to ten people would now be ten different $1.38 charges.

This was supposed to be for the good of the creators, because now instead of 80 to 88 cents per dollar people gave them they’d get 95 cents per dollar.

Yeah, you’d pay 38 cents more for each $1 pledge and the creator gets between 7 and 15 cents more and the credit card processors get the rest, and this is somehow supposed to be a change to benefit the creator.

Anyway, that was bad enough.  To stay within my budget I was going to have to end my support for one creator and spent most of an afternoon trying to decide which one.

Then I saw this:  https://twitter.com/juliedillon/status/939210129261473792

If the link should happen to not work, it’s a quote from Patreon’s growth manager saying — in marketing speak — they don’t want to have lots of creators who only make a little money.  The linked blogpost talks more about this sort of thing and the general gist of it is that they don’t mind losing creators who aren’t making much because having only the ones making lots of money will make them look more attractive to other artists who are already making lots of money.

In other words, “Screw the little guys” is pretty damned close to official company policy.

Now, you see, I’d been planning on launching a Patreon this year.  People don’t want my stories when they’re 99 cents but do when they’re free, and all Universal Nexus stories are under a Creative Commons license anyway, so I really can’t bring myself to charge for the stuff I write anymore.  But, as much as I hate it, we do live in a society where money is a useful and needed thing.  So I was basically going to say “Hey, give me a dollar a month, and I’ll let you read stuff before it’s published.”  You’d be paying for early access.  Or just because you liked the idea of me having a little bit more spending money.  (And there would’ve been niftier benefits for giving me more per month than that.)

But, I don’t write marketable stuff.  Unless there’s an untapped market out there for character-focused, slice-of-life stories in a space opera setting, I’m never going to make a lot of money at this.

And Patreon said they don’t want people like me.

So — while I’ll still find some way to get money to the creators I was supporting — I’m not using Patreon at all any more.  If they don’t want me as a creator because I’d make them look bad, then I don’t want to give them 5 cents from every dollar I gave a creator on there.

I’ve seen people criticizing withdrawing your support for creators, saying that doing so is “putting your politics ahead of people being able to make a living”.  No. Because this isn’t an empty political statement.  This is refusing to support a company that has said it doesn’t want my business.  They don’t want my business, they don’t get my business in any fashion.  That’s not politics, that’s principles.

Besides, it’s not like I’ve gone “Well, I guess I have more spending money now since I’m not using Patreon any more.”  It’s changed what method I use to get money to creators, but I’ll do everything I can to get money to them.  Because I still care about them.  Even if Patreon doesn’t.

As for my plans to make a Patreon for myself this year . . . I don’t know what I’m going to do now.  There aren’t any alternative sites (yet, apparently there’s one that’s in invite-only beta right now) that have all the things that made Patreon a better idea than just putting up a PayPal or Ko-fi or whatever link.  The closest alternative doesn’t let you give your supporters any rewards, and that doesn’t appeal to me.  I feel like — even if you are just paying me because you like me and don’t give a damn about my stories — I should be able to give you something as a thank you, even if it’s just a picture of my cats or something.  The suggestion I’ve seen to get around that by setting up an email list of your supporters and emailing them the rewards sounds like the sort of thing I’d utterly fuck up.  So, that’s on hold for now.

(Though if anyone does feel like sending me money, just tell me and I will find a way for you to get it to me.)