I am a novelist with work published in science fiction, fantasy, mystery and historical "novelized biography". I've won the Prometheus award and the Dragon award. I also write under the names Elise Hyatt and Sarah D'Almeida. http://sarahahoyt.com/
It’s a truism in homesteading and prepper forums, or was back in the early aughts, that TEOTWAWKI–The End Of The World As We Know It–happens to someone every single day. Sometimes it happens to a lot of someones: things like The Fall of the Berlin Wall, 9/11, the world as we knew it ended.
In March of 2020, the entire world ended.
Not uniformly, as best I can tell quite a few places noticed very little beyond the end of tourism and a few corrupt fat cats getting even fatter and smugger. Some places took a few weeks off and then got back to normal. Some made some modifications and got back to normal. Some places seem to have decided that normal is impossible. (If you’re in one of those, please get out. Life’s too short to voluntarily commit yourself to an insane asylum.)
Here’s the problem: we all stopped. Just stopped. Stopped doing the things we’d always done. Stopped eating out. Stopped seeing the dentist. Stopped seeing the doctor. Stopped going to church, the library, the park, the farmer’s market, the parades, the concerts, the theaters . . . the list is long. Yes, yes, we couldn’t do those things because they were closed, canceled, banned, restricted to only certain folks, etc. Stopping is understandable.
It’s time to start again. Start taking care of yourself and your loved ones’ health. Start doing the things that you enjoyed before. Start minding your business the way you used to.
Now, a lot of us can’t start again, not exactly. A lot of us fled to new places, to places that weren’t quite so crazy as where we’d been. Time to meet new people, find a new church, a new coffee shop, new haunts and new friends. A lot of us learned that certain people, certain places, in our overall all right location, just plain don’t want us, and so we reciprocate. Time to find new people, new haunts, right where we always were.
It’s hard. I know it’s hard. I know I’m blessed to live in a place where people didn’t go very crazy, to not have to move to escape. I need you to do this, though. We need you to do this. We’re losing too many, too fast, too soon.
We need to start again.
Make a list of the things you did before. It seems a lifetime ago. Church, doctor, dentist, gym, clubs, associations, restaurants, everything. Go through your calendar. Make a list of the things your family did before. You can’t trust half those people, I know. I lost friends too. But you can find new friends. People you can trust. People you can love. People who will show up.
It feels safe at home, on line, and the connections are good. The people are good. People will show up in every way they can online. I’m not saying you should abandon these people. I’m saying we have to start living life again. In fact, I think you should take a road trip and meet the online people in person, maybe move closer to them even. Many of our number have done just that. It’s a good thing.
We can’t build under and build around if we’re sick, injured, out of shape, exhausted mentally, spiritually, and physically. We can’t build under and build around if we’re isolated. Isn’t that the point? People who think they’re alone might at most try the crazy lone suicidal route; people who know they are not alone are an actual threat to those who want power and don’t care who they hurt to get it.
Pick up the phone and call a doctor. Make that appointment. Go see a play. Go to church, even if it’s not your old church. Go to the park. Get a coffee. Try that gym. Take the plant identification class. It’s time and past time.
We have to start living again.
(From Sarah- Dan and I were talking about this this weekend. We had a plan when we moved here. It involved his convertible and driving around exploring our new surroundings. Last summer went by without doing this. And we know we should. And we’re trying to get ourselves to do it. We know it’s hard, but she’s right.)
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Bob did the neighborly thing, and helped out some folks with a problem. You know it can’t be that easy, right? Things get a little sporty when it comes to how people want to reward him for his actions. Come see how Bob deals with notoriety.
A chance meeting between Nikola Tesla and Jules Verne catapulted the world into a new kind of power. Using meteor fragments from a comet named Uriel, they created a world powered not by combustion but by steam. The incredible inventions that followed launched the world into an industrial revolution ahead of its time… a steampunk revolution.
While Tesla’s inventions were designed to ease people’s day-to-day burdens, Thomas Edison’s ERP Corporation used their power and influence to ensure people paid for their modern miracles.
One man brought hope to the people as he pursued Tesla’s dream of invention for the everyday person. His exploits were legendary, his crew infamous, and his airship a vision of the future . . . Corsair and the Sky Pirates!
When Ned Templin rode out of the desert to the Last Hope Ranch, Lisbeth Stanton was grateful, because he saved her from having to kill a man. But when Templin told her he was staying, and that he was an outlaw, and that a posse was on his trail looking to hang him for murder, her opinion changed a little.
And it kept changing, for Templin was an enigma, with secrets and motivations she never could have guessed. And, it turned out, so was her father, whom she had been with her whole life but never really known. Between Sheriff Norton and his posse, and Blaisdell’s Raiders, secrets would out, and bullets would fly, at the Last Hope Ranch!
This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving genre and historical context to the novel.
Even among the lawyers of his elite firm, Anatole Drake has a well-earned reputation for ruthless ambition. For this he will sacrifice everything, even the love of the beautiful Gwen Marina. But when his defense of an infamous cult leader ends in violence and scandal, he finds himself on the brink of ruin. In desperation, he turns to dark forces and unwittingly summons Raum, an ancient demon of near limitless power and hostility. With Raum’s powers his to command, Drake takes control of his life, raining revenge on those who have wronged him. But as success exceeds beyond even his many ambitions, a dangerous cult pursues the secrets of his newfound abilities. Worse, the furious demon, chafing at his subjugation to a human’s whims, plots against him, seeking vengeance for this indignity. Only Gwen stands by his side, unaware of the darkness consuming him. But as Drake slips further down the road to damnation, will her loyalties be toward the man she loved… or will Raum open her eyes to his true nature, seducing her to a new and darker allegiance? With events spiraling out of control, innocent lives become the currency in this battle between malevolent beings, both human and demonic. Be careful what you wish for…
Unlucky jerk Tom Beadle was on watch at NASA when the collision alert sounded: a new asteroid, bigger than the dino-killer, headed for Earth. Big problem, but that’s why we have NASA, right? Except, after decades of budget cuts, NASA has no way to shove it off course. That job has to be contracted out. Will the private sector company his best friend from college works at succeed where the government option failed? Might be best to have a backup plan, just in case…
In Stalin’s Soviet Union, Tikhon Grigoriev lives a precarious life. He knows too much. He’s seen too much. A single misstep could destroy him, and if he stumbles, he will take his family down with him. With Leningrad besieged by Nazi armies, the danger has only increased.
He’s not a man who wants to come to the notice of those in high places. But when he solved a murder that seemed supernatural, impossible, he attracted the attention of Leningrad’s First Party Secretary.
So when a plot of land grows vegetables of unusual size and vigor, and anyone who eats them goes mad, who should be called upon to solve the mystery but Tikhon Grigoriev. However, these secrets could get him far worse than a bullet in the head. For during the White Nights the boundaries between worlds grow thin, and in some of those worlds humanity can have no place.
Having met the Innumerable and joined their cause against the Architects, Barbarella must clandestinely return to the home of the Architects in order to retrieve Vix, left behind when Barbarella was extracted by an agent of the Innumerable. See? We’ve come full circle! As is often the case, it’s not what you see that’s the danger, it’s what you can’t see, and Barbarella sees plenty of that wherever she sees an Architect. And lest we forget, there is the small matter of the Unnamable out there…
Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.
So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.
We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.
I don’t think it came across on my Seventies post that it wasn’t “real”. The point is not that the seventies are returning, but that the people that be are hard forcing a replay of it, in appearance.
It doesn’t work with the people on the ground because “we’re running out of oil” is now seen to be a blatant lie. We remember when they shut down the pipeline and fracking. And we saw that both under Reagan and Trump prices and availability of oil came back, which means it’s not “we’re running out of oil.”
In the same way no one really believes the dooms that either were general opinion in the seventies, or I believed in because I was a little kid. (Could be either.) So what we’re seeing is a large scale replay with (natch) media amplification but the people on the ground are somewhere between unconvinced and ignoring it.
So they try to run with climate doom, and you know…. the last time — other than the commenter, and honestly, he might very well be from the for-pay troll farm — that I heard someone genuinely concerned about the doom, gloom, we’re all frying soon, was mid-nineties. Other than that, the climate doomers are stuck scaring little kids and talking about how the kids have climate anxiety.
So, why am I bringing that up?
Well, the seventies were a form of decadence. Has it occurred to you that the other forms of decadence in society are also cosplay? No?
Oh, please. Let’s talk decadence.
Yes, I do know that the US has lots of the signs of decadence of the late Roman EMPIRE. (Which the US isn’t.)
So, pull up a rock. Has it occurred to you that the left ALSO knows the signs of decadence you know, because it all goes back to Robert Graves’ book?
Yeah. Cool fact. The Left is also all in on “America is a decaying empire” because the USSR used this as a form of psy-war on both us and their people. Oh, you’re jealous of Americans who have family cars? Don’t be. Abundance leads to decadence.
You should — by now — be suspicious that our supposed “decadence” is exactly the same as ancient Rome’s supposedly was (what we have are accounts, some highly doubtful) despite the difference between our societies? Or that they’re both covalent with the “kids these days” taken up to eleventy?
But Sarah, you’ll say, we really have a passel of useless morons who just want to be taken care of, and there’s teh gay thing, teh trans thing, teh slut thing, etc. etc. etc.
Yeah. Every society has had that. Also, be aware of when things are pushed and echoed into massive by the press. Also, most of the useless morons in our society are made so by indoctrination in the schools. (And some get over it.)
But you know that the powers that be are actively and with malice aforethought pushing both drug addiction, homeless lifestyles invading everything AND transsexualism. Because to them, that’s what decadence looks like, and they know “capitalism” has to lead to decadence, so it can fall and emerge as the glorious socialist republic.
This is the same reason they are — as in the seventies — not punishing crime in cities, from petty to major. Because increased crime is “decline and fall” stuff. (And the morons who think it is race — besides the fact that the US thinks race is one drop of anything other than white, which is laughable — have the burden of explaining how the demographics changed since the lockdowns to that level. Let alone that it’s always culture, not race that’s a problem. Did we get a landing of extraterrestrials in massive ships? No? Then it’s the laws. And the morons at the top trying to hasten the decline and fall, so they can have their glorious socialism. Most of those morons, with some exceptions, are white. The ones who aren’t have credentials from the best schools, which are Marxist, and still mostly white. Take a powder. Think, for a change.)
So you know, letting homeless camp and poop in public. Not confining people who are too drug addled/insane to be a danger to themselves and others, allowing petty theft to be decriminalized (and it’s all petty theft, it turns out) or doing fast no bail turn around for all crimes?
It doesn’t actually increase the number of people doing that. It just makes them do it more/more publicly and without interruption due to being taken up for being dangers to themselves and others.
That’s how you get San Francisco, for instance (Where the demographics are still mostly white, for those following from home, and too stupid to actually think for themselves.)
You know this. You know all of this. So, no matter how attractive “Those darn kids” is, you shouldn’t be falling for the idea that this kind of thing is getting worse. It’s merely being encouraged, becoming more visible. Or more frequent because the people who were doing it can do it more often.
The left bases a lot of their attacks on books, or the memory of books other people read and talked about. (Hence using 1984 as a manual. The author depicts no consequences for the authoritarian stuff and they think it’s how things go. So, why not?)
You are not required to believe it.
You are, however, as a free individual, required to do things that will be visible to others and go against the narrative. Because that encourages others.
So, on the small things front? Politeness, dressing decently and cleanly, and holding down a job are the minimum.
The large things, well, you see the parents protesting the sexualization of children in schools. You see the boycott of Bud Light. And you see the viral nature of Let’s Go Brandon.
These break through the “decadence” cosplay and make it obvious it is a cosplay.
The person back there who finished with “of Jedis” before I completed the title, to you too, happy May 4th. Now, the rest of you, tie him, gag him, and put him in the screen room with the Star Wars Holiday Special on endless loop.
The rest of us…are going to discuss consequences.
All actions have consequences. Some of them are even intended.
Say I get up from here, walk over there and kick the cat. If I intended hurting the cat, that was accomplished. First order of consequences, on the nose, done and dusted. And tomorrow morning when I find a massive pile of poo in my shoe, it will be second order consequences. And if I were a Marxist — or a statist in general — this would SHOCK me.
Because they’re known, KNOWN for understanding first order of consequences, if that much. (And often not that much.)
It’s like they think nothing has real existence outside them and their will. So, you know, they want people to stop burning fossil fuels? Tax them through the nose. It never occurs to them that the cat will most surely poop on the shoe, not just in terms of inflation, but also because people cannot stop making and using things. So as it happens, the burning of fossil fuels is outsourced to other countries, which care far less about things like pollution, and which don’t bother with scrubbers on their factory chimneys, and overall, pollution worldwide gets much worse. The local economy also gets worse, the economy we’re buying from has no qualms about slave labor which our statists claim to CARE so much about. Etc. etc. etc.
As I said, during COVIDiocy when finding how different the standards were, nation wide, for ‘lockdown’ or ‘distancing’: IF this were a truly lethal virus, we’d all already be dead.
In the same way, if carbon caused runaway global warming global cooling climate change, we’d already have burned of freezing to death, or however the hell that’s supposed to work this week. Because all the increased “environmental regulations” do in the US is send manufacturing to China, and China is a super-poluter. (China don’t care. China is a’hole.)
I honestly don’t understand this “So it is written, so it must be” mentality. I mean…. Murder has been illegal in most societies ever, and it still hasn’t stopped, so the heck actually do they think?
Oh, wait, think is not a part of it. It’s more…. They say it, and think reality will comply.
And because they only have minimal contact with reality…. And most of them are in positions of power, we are all strapped into this accelerating basket with them, while it gets mighty hot and the “unintended” accumulate out there.
Our consolation must be that wile the world is ending, it is their world. And that what can’t go on, won’t.
In the end we win, they lose. Because we know the rule of the shoe-pooping cat and can prepare for it. And understand the best governments govern very little.
Build under, build over, build around. And be not afraid.
So About That King Harv Guy… – A Guest Post by Ashen Baron
Life can be odd sometimes. If you’d told me I’d drink half a pot of coffee every morning seven years ago, the last time I tried it on account of moving from overnight to early morning shift, I’d have told you that you were crazy. Same for a few other accomplishments in the meantime, like moving halfway across the country but those are stories for another time.
Anyway, the last time I tried early morning coffee it left me nauseous and wondering how anyone could stand anything other than some of the fancy more candy than coffee frappes at a few places in the old hometown. Of course I took note of the posts our hostess did promoting King Harv’s Imperial Coffees and got a chuckle out of their Astonishing Coffee Stories but never thought I’d be drinking any of their products. Yet years later I found myself dragging some mornings and saw where some people who intermittent fast (something I continue to do to keep my weight down) drank black coffee and thought I’d give King Harv’s a chance with the encouragement of a few Huns.
Needless to say it was the right decision! I started with Saturn from their Planets line, which sounded good in terms of taste from the roasting and blending and was noted as being low acidity. I figured something like that would be a good starting point, went for it, and was hooked! I quickly figured out that it was the creamer and sugar that I had been using that was making me sick and black coffee, especially of this quality, was not only great for getting me ready for an early shift at my previous employer but it’s actually awesome to drink! It took me a bit to find a proportion of coffee to water that worked for me but since then King Harv’s been a staple of my mornings! I do drink coffee from other businesses too – I’ll be covering Harmony Coffee Roasters’ signature offerings at some point – but the King has so much to offer it’s hard to go elsewhere!
Anyway, as I drank more of their coffee I began sharing my thoughts on it on the Discord Sarah mentions sometimes. Me being able to taste the flavor notes in the black coffee that King Harv’s (and other companies I’ve bought from, including Harmony) is apparently just unusual enough among the Huns (and what does that tell you about my brand of Odd =P) that some of them – a certain minotaur in particular – had been asking me to compile them into some form of writing for public consumption! I’m still not sure if a blog of my own, or a book, is a good idea but guest posts for our hostess are certainly something I can do so here we are! Since that’s one of their smaller sections I figure I’d better start with the one that proved most useful for those mornings where I had to drag myself out of bed at 4:00 AM for work: High Caffeine!
One last thing before we get to the good stuff. My coffee setup isn’t anything special by any means. It’s a Black and Decker drip that I’ve had around for a while. The manual says it’s a 2015 model but I could have sworn my mom and I brought it from our old house to my previous one. I do plan to invest in a grinder and French Press at some point but I’ve got several things to take care of before then. Needless to say I always order drip grind and the most I can do to help the coffee’s flavor is use filtered water with a ZeroWater pitcher, which I do. I prefer using 2 tbsp coffee to every 8 oz of water when I make coffee, too. I’m sure there are things I could do to make it better but for now this suits me just fine. Also, even though it’s going to be some time before I can do a post on the Planets line and give all of you proper details on it, Saturn remains my prime recommendation for newbies to King Harv’s or to coffee in general. It really does get everything right. Also, as part of this series I did ask Sarah to share any thoughts she might have about the coffees in this and any future posts in her usual editor’s notes style. Coffee taste is a very subjective thing, after all. Anyway, on to the high-octane fun!
Bengal Tiger – This one’s for the light roast fans who need something fierce in the morning! It’s from South India, hence the name, and King Harv’s describes it as being rustic and earthy with a strong hint of single malt scotch in the finish. Not being much of a drinker I wouldn’t know about whether or not it tastes like scotch. Rather I got more of a vanilla flavor from it after drinking it. It definitely passed the test for getting me going at 4:00 AM regardless, and at a little under half a pot at that! I recommended it to a few of my former co-workers who favor light roasts, and they both survived and enjoyed it, even if it wasn’t the sort of thing one could have on a regular basis! All in all, it gets good marks from me and some others I know!
Camel Spider – The subject of an Astonishing Coffee Story, I figured I could use something out of their high caffeine line when Jupiter proved to be more suitable for a relaxing day with the cats than for a long shift at my previous employer. I figured why not give it a try? This was my first of this line and I did proceed with caution, not going up to my eventual not quite half a pot until I was sure it wouldn’t be too much. Don’t take that to mean that Camel Spider is lacking in that area, though! It’s a great coffee for those days when you really have to get things done. It’s got a nice, pleasant flavor to it as well, with the best description I can think of is good, high-quality coffee that didn’t taste bitter to me at all. Don’t just take my word for it, though, I recommended it to a serious coffee fiend that I used to work with and it quickly became his favorite out of King Harv’s selection! It was definitely worth the trouble the King Harv’s crew went through to get it so give it a drink! I do plan on ordering this one again at some point.
Nuclear – Just the name alone invokes all sorts of feelings and mental imagery relating to raw power, doesn’t it? Some people would look at the name in awe and terror, wondering just who would drink that, and others would be itching to put it through their brewing method of choice in order to take on the megatons of caffeine challenge! So how did I fare? The best way I can describe this one is nothing fancy but it gets the job done. It had the strength needed to get me through one of those long work days and was safe for me to drink at not quite half a pot for whatever that says about my caffeine tolerance. The flavor I’d say is more normal coffee than anything, for lack of better phrasing at the moment. The others are more flavorful if that’s important to you but if you want no frills coffee to wake you up, or perhaps one that might work better with your creamer or other flavor of choice, this is the one for you!
Rocket Fuel – Heh… Where to start on this one? If there’s any coffee that made me think “Holy (scat), this is too much!” and “But it’s so, so damn good!” at the same time it’s this one! I actually did have to cut back to about a quarter of a pot because of how strong it was! Then again, I was able to drink my usual amount after completing the move so who knows how much that was affecting me? But yeah, this one is far and away the strongest out of this lineup, at least in the way it hit me back then. It doesn’t disappoint in terms of flavor, either! Curiously it had more of a chocolate flavor to it in using the old hometown’s water but more of a blueberry flavor using water from my new home. One of the Huns (Holly Chism) actually noticed a blueberry smell when I shared a small bag’s worth with her knowing this is exactly the sort of coffee she could use so this one has two of us vouching for its awesome taste and strength! It’s not one for the faint-hearted but if you can manage the caffeine kick it’s absolutely worth it!
Zaté – This one is a blend of never specified South American coffees with yerba maté added in for extra strength. King Harv’s describes it as being good for concentration so I figured it was worrth a shot and it certainly was! It does get you going and I do feel like my mental processes were notably sharper. It had a vanilla taste to me as well when I drank it yet when I shared my last few bits with a co-worker he said he didn’t taste that, saying it was more of a high quality coffee flavor to him. He thoroughly enjoyed it, though! That said, for those who prefer grinding their own, this one only comes pre-ground because of the yerba maté so keep that in mind. It’s another one I’d be happy to try again at some point!
That’s it for the King’s high-octane lineup! If you need something good to get you going for a long day you won’t be disappointed! King Harv’s offers a variety pack if you’re not sure what to try, though Zaté isn’t included. I should also note that these half pound variety packs do count towards their monthly buy three pounds, get a free half pound promotion so if you order the variety pack and the Zaté you’d be eligible for whichever one they’re offering that month. In any case, happy caffeination!
Blame this one on Larry Correia, who got exercised over some internet Marxist (TM) which is totally fair.
Unfortunately it hit me with my first cup of coffee when I was vulnerable, and it got me thinking just how stupid that take on entrepreneurship was. I mean Larry hit most of it, but I’ll…. rolls up sleeves… will carry the rest. Because, honestly, you can’t hit internet Marxists ENOUGH.
So, this was the snowflake’s hot take:
And this is so stupid. For one, kindly look around yourself: How many kids of privilege do you see making it big in… well… anything?
Oh, there are some — and yes, sorry, Trump is one of them — upper class kids who manage to make good. I attribute this to good parenting. But most generational wealth goes down a magnitude per generation and is the source of various things like “Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations.” (Most take more than three.)
Actually the smart generational wealth? Just don’t try to be entrepreneurs. They sit pretty on their piles of money and become professional heirs. The money goes down slower that way.
In writing, think about it — have you heard of Agatha Christie’s descendants? I saw Dickens, the other day in an article, for some celebration of him, but that was it.
Are there “heirs” in writing? Sure, but I wouldn’t call them entrepreneurs. Mostly they continue their “ancestors” series. (So do non-blood relatives.) Which is more like inheriting a going concern and being smart enough not to mess it up. (How do you mess it up? Look up sequel to Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, published in the 90s. Or, you know, the fourth of the Earthsea… Oh, wait, that was Ursula, not knowing why the books sold. Never mind.)
And it’s sort of the same in other enterprises. There are heirs that do well by keeping up the good thing, but very few that break out wildly and unexpectedly. A few. Sure. A few. BUT not many.
Most of the people I know from a level of comfort (class is appropriate, sort of, for where I was born and raised but not here) above mine (and yes, my parents were very poor when I was little, but they got better) just sort of…. peter out. They don’t miss a meal. Which in turn makes it “Why bother to struggle?”
Or as Heinlein would say “Never ruin your children by making their life too easy.”
In a way I was lucky I threw all my connections and pull away when I moved here, including my largely useless here but highly respected (in Portugal) degree. I mean, we started out dirt poor (maybe not as poor as Larry, because it wasn’t generational. Parents just had the bad luck to be descended from the kid that didn’t do well.) But my parents saved and scraped and worked their fingers off and tried everything they could try. And learned to invest even though they started out clueless. And my generation, of which I am BY FAR the youngest made good, and went to college, and made contacts. So if I’d stayed in Portugal, I’d probably have coasted. I’d probably have ended up as some kind of UN delegate or working with one of the embassies.
The one good thing about it is that I’d never have had my hands in dish soap.
The bad… Oh, the bad. Well, I wouldn’t be me. And I don’t mean that in the sense of I wouldn’t be who I’m now. I mean, I’d be an NPC going through the script, in my place in the game.
Luckily — and I do mean that — I felt about as comfortable as a fish out of water. So…. well, I fell in love with a foreigner and moved away. Best thing I could ever have done.
Am I better off materially? Oh, probably. Have I achieved more? Undoubtedly.
Glenn Reynolds, who actually comes from a more or less affluent background, years ago, when I met him, at a party, was asked “How did you become instapundit?” and he said “Well, like most important things in my life, more or less by accident.”
Looking at my own life, he’s not wrong. He’s not right either. But he’s not wrong.
Because it’s not quite an accident. He cared enough to start a blog, and he had a vision for excellence. But I’m sure he had other things he did and started, and that was just the one that took off, through being at the right place, at the right time.
There were probably a bunch of things he did also which vanished without a trace.
Look, I’ve talked of this before: it’s not just being rich or poor. That’s crazy Marxist thought. (For definitions of thought.) If you think in terms of rich and poor then the poor have a slight advantage, because they have, again to quote Heinlein, to “root, hog of die.”
BUT most of the poor like most of the rich, just… sit and spin where they were placed.
People keep trying to come up with reasons why the poor don’t all, as one, spring out of poverty. And there are excuses — like the stupid beesting theory — and berating — like they’re just not that hard working — but the fact is most humans, rich or poor just go on along the same track they were put in.
And there’s us…. the few, the broken few. The ones who can’t help pushing. The ones who want something different. The ones who need to try and do.
Broken? Well, hell yes, because think about it. In prehistory, the overachieving bunny who goes out and kills more animals than he’ll eat is just depleting the game game and ensuring the tribe starves next winter. I think that’s instinctively, why normal people hate those who stick out.
But eventually one of those broken people invented smoking meat. And that changed everything. Which is what entrepreneurs do.
For the record, I don’t think of myself as one. I keep trying to retool mentally, since I realized I am one. But for me it was just “Must tell stories. Must find audience.” I’m still confused as to how the blog got here. But it did. And there is posting at instapundit, which sort of still shocks me, even, because– How did it get there.
Though the blog was one of about a hundred side things I tried. Writing was just the one thing I continued to try because that’s my particular insanity. However, there’s art, and crafts and… well, and it all feeds back into the writing.
Which if you read Larry’s post you’ll find is part of it. You try and learn, and try and learn some more. Often led by dire need. (I have said many times, I’d have quit, if baby didn’t need shoes. And food.) Sometimes simply because “Effe this, it’s not working.”
People keep trying different things. And each time you fail, it does make it more likely you’ll succeed. (Provided you’re not failing at the same thing in the same way every time. Because the burned hand teaches. And besides learning what not to do, you pick up abilities, knacks, knowledge, ways of doing things. And all of that makes it more likely you’ll succeed next time. Because you’re a better, improved, more knowledgeable version of you.
The Marxists are wrong. I’ve succeeded (I know, but you should see the other guys) in writing, despite no contacts, no money, beginning with no clue, and writing in my third language. So, you don’t need “privilege” to succeed.
And husband and I started with nothing. We’ve had some help in dire need, from my parents, but not … significant (and mostly for the kids.) Not in the sense you’d think. For one, my parents live in a much poorer country, so they might make sure we had a decent Christmas, but they couldn’t buy us a house. All we have is ours, made by us. And we’re okay. Except for that scary bit when we were moving (And if my brain had been functioning, I’d have realized I was spending more than I could in getting the house ready for sale. In addition to having made some things worse, I swear) we’ve managed. Yeah, sometimes we lived on rice (or pancakes) but we’ve never gone on public assistance. And we’ve managed.
One of the things that makes me relatively confident on the kids’ future is that they seem to have the same bug we have. They keep trying. They sometimes fail upwards, into a completely different thing. Already, they’ve taken kicks to the teeth, and came back stronger and trying something else, harder. So, I think they’ll be okay. Because you can never give your kids enough materially or enough preparation to know they’ll be all right. But if they’re broken and keep trying, you know they’ll be okay. Maybe no rich. Maybe not star-successful, but okay.
Which brings us back to idiot Marxist. Yeah, success is like throwing darts at a moving target. In pretty much everything. Because success is the intersection of you and the world. And the world gets a VOTE. Like becoming a mega bestseller, you can only control “write a good book” but its finding a market depends on where the world is at at the time, and seemingly random things like “seen by the right person.” (J. K. Rowling is a study in this.) All you can do is write a good book and KEEP TRYING. Which means you’ll succeed at SOME level, but the mega type? Yeah. Moving target.
However, it has zero to do with social class. To go with his analogy, the kids working the carnie have a better chance of hitting the target, because they know things and have seen how things work, so it’s not just chance.
Where he goes wrong is the usual Marxist thing: fixed pie. There’s only one center target and you must HIT what is there. You can’t create more targets, more opportunities and hit those.
Well, I prefer Kevin J. Anderson’s analogy to express the intersection of effort and luck:
Success at least in writing is like popping popcorn.
You can take one kernel, selected for looking perfect. Put it in just the right amount and temperature of oil. And coddle it to popping.
And if it is a dud, you got nothing. And if it’s a good kernel? Well, you’ll have ONE perfect popped kernel. How long will that last you?
Or you can grab a pot about the same size, throw some oil in it, shake a bunch of kernels into it. Put lid on, turn on the gas and listen for the pops.
Sure, some kernels won’t pop. Some will pop halfway and be weird and crunchy. And some will just burn. But you’ll still have a lot of perfect kernels to eat on.
Which is the right analogy for entrepreneurship and market. (Which includes writing.)
Because entrepreneurs create their own “targets”; their own success. Which is why we’re not all competing for three stone tools and some lizard someone caught for dinner.
Most of the people who got very rich created a market that didn’t exist before.
And same goes for books. You write it, and people realize it’s the book they can’t live without. But they didn’t know that before. The target wasn’t there.
And your chances of doing that improve the more things you try, the more things you do, the more things you learn. Which is not limited by how much money you have, or even how many contacts/resources. Larry (and I, for that matter) are living proof of that. It’s limited by nothing but your ability to keep getting up, to keep trying, to try some unlikely things, and to keep going. The opposite of the despondence that stupid Marxist is selling.
It’s the end of the world. Again. And I still feel fine.
I grew up very at home with the idea that there would be an end of the world, because most of the people around me seemed to think the world would end in two thousand. Which begs the question of why they were working, saving, having children and planning for retirement, etc, less than 30 years away. Never mind. People are weird.
I used to worry about it but grandma told me a very old story of who knows what origin, that after the delluge, G-d had said “Till 2000 you’ll last, and from there you’ll not pass.” And then our lady took a handful of sand and tossed it into the Earth and said “I add these many more.” Theologically, this is not the Judeo Christian G-d, of course. The story had the feel of an old legend, but who knows from where and when. And definitely the year wouldn’t be 2000.
Having tried to count the grains of sand in one of MY — admittedly not adult — handful, I decided there were way more than a thousand grains, and it was my far distant descendants look out.
Having survived the apocalypse, thus, mentally, at 10, I went on to be just jaded.
Most of the stories I read at the time, the authors knew we’d all die in a nuclear exchange. (If you’re not aware of this, it’s time to inform you most of the nuclear panic was fueled by USSR propaganda. Being far behind us in arsenal — if you don’t know that, please do some research — they tried to use what they could do — propaganda — to get us to surrender.) I remember worrying about it for maybe a summer, but it just didn’t seem plausible. Oh, sure, maybe some cities would get hit. But most of the world would just have to do the best they could after. The overblown after effects always felt overblown. Not plausible.
Then at some point I read Paul Ehrlich — the world’s most accomplished false prophet — saying by 1980 we’d have no potable water, or the like. It didn’t hit as hard as it could. Look, by then it was 75? 78? I was worried for a while, and then Dad read it, laughed and pointed out this jerkoff had completely missed the water cycle.
Then there was overpopulation. My fear over that lasted until I was in my thirties, but by then it didn’t ring true. Where were these masses of humanity? Everywhere in the world, including places that claimed otherwise, people were having fewer kids. These endless kids seemed to only exist for the purpose of getting welfare, whether at a country or personal level. Which is one of those things that make you go “um”.
By the time the ice age panic hit, I was uber-jaded. Like, so jaded I realized that the prescription to save us from that was like the prescription to save you from everything else dire was “more socialism.”
(Hums “If the world is ending tomorrow, it’s a scam; If capitalism causes sorrow, it’s a scam; If there is no escape but socialism, it’s a scam; If you can die of individualism, it’s a scam.”)
I read the articles, and then all the anthologies from science fiction, all the stories talking about how we’d all freeze to death in like twenty years, and raised my eyebrow and thought “It’s a scam.”
Because, you see, I had some idea of geological time, and how fast things move in a system as large as Earth. Or how slow.
I mean, if we are to believe things, we got hit with such a large asteroid circa 1500 BC it destroyed civilization such as it was then, but–
But not humanity and not the Earth. And again, why was the solution always “socialism”?
And then suddenly we were all going to burn, unless we were going to freeze because it was so hot, and we had to go full on commies to survive.
There are still idiots, most of them in government and academia, running around with their head on fire about this.
That’s nice. I hope they enjoy their little freak out. And no, I’m not freaking out about nuclear war, either. I don’t believe any of our enemies has an arsenal maintained well enough to be worth the name. Heck, I’m not sure we do.
I’m not convinced that freezing to death while baking or whatever the heck it is today (by people who can’t even predict weather that ALREADY happened) , or even being nuked is worth all that panic. It certainly isn’t worth socialism/communism
Communism — which the Green Nude Heel is — well, that is for real and absolutely deadly. I enjoin you to reach The Black Book of Communism, if you don’t believe me.
To quote Shakespeare, we all owe G-d a death. But I’d like to leave the world in a shape that my grand kids (at this point all adopted) can write their own stories.
Warming/cooling/nuclear war, anything short of a crash big enough to wipe out the biosphere, and that’s not something we’d do, there’s a chance we’d survive all “ends of the world.”
I mean, the world ends a little with each generation. But a new one is born. Sometimes the birth pangs are more intense and a lot of people die, that’s all. (I’m looking at the Black Death here.)
But socialism/communism? Those kill. Fast or slow, they kill. And they destroy civilization from within.
Cataclysm move at such a pace all humans can survive and adapt.
Any “cataclysm” that can only be cured by more socialism and communism and government control?
It’s a scam.
And we’re not at home to scams.
We’ve survived enough ends of the world to laugh in the face of them.
Let free humans face whatever comes. If it needs socialism? It’s a scam. A stupid one.
If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo,please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months(unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying.– SAH
Having met the Innumerable and joined their cause against the Architects, Barbarella must clandestinely return to the home of the Architects in order to retrieve Vix, left behind when Barbarella was extracted by an agent of the Innumerable. See? We’ve come full circle! As is often the case, it’s not what you see that’s the danger, it’s what you can’t see, and Barbarella sees plenty of that wherever she sees an Architect. And lest we forget, there is the small matter of the Unnamable out there…
Darker than dark, ruinous and ravening, the realm of Hades ravages its lord . . .
As ruler of the damned, Lord Dìs sustains the bounds of hell that prevent its shades from escaping to batten on the living. But the drain on his strength, immense as it is, requires him to steal life from the innocent. When Dìs’ wife Persephone insists he refrain from his cruel ritual theft—and he fails—she leaves him.
Alone and broken, Dìs renews his vow to fulfill his duties without the replenishment he craves. But the burdens of judging the newly dead and preserving them from extinction, all while anchoring hell itself, inexorably grind Dìs beneath a crushing weight.
Dìs must learn that merely refraining from evil redeems nothing. Unless he can restore those he destroyed, madness will claim him and the bounds of hell will implode.
Illumine Hades is the concluding tale in the exhilarating Hades Cycle. If you seek heroic sacrifice, redemptive love, and the terror of the ancient gods, you’ll love J.M. Ney-Grimm’s cathartic finale in which all the series threads weave together toward glory.
In the midst of preparations for a critical mission, Leland Andersen can’t afford the return of a childhood nightmare. Yet night after night the vision torments him, of an astronaut dying in flames.
Nora McKinzie is a Houston police officer — and a member of an ancient order founded to fight eldritch entities wherever they might flee. When she receives a warning that a sworn enemy is on the move again, her obligations come into conflict with each other.
Both of them are present when Johnson Space Center comes under attack by terrorists. And they both know that the official explanations don’t hold together.
Two people, one deadly secret — and an enemy from beyond time and space.
A novel of the Grissom timeline.
Previously serialized under the title A Separate War.
Jacob Zvi has turned his back on everything he was taught to value. His faith, his family, his citizenship, and even his morals. Yet seemingly divine fate introduces Jacob to the struggling members of an Orthodox congregation in the middle of a ghetto in New Orleans while terrorists explode a purloined Soviet nuclear artillery shell atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
This is what I call my work biography. It’s about how to survive in the business world and, inevitably also about the changes in technology that I went through in 40 years of software development from punch cards to Artificial Intelligence. If you’re young and reading this, I hope it shows you what to expect–not how to climb the corporate ladder, but how to contribute to making things people want while making life better for you, your family, your fellow employees, and the company you work for–whether they want you to or not. If you’re farther along in your career and reading this, I hope you nod in recognition at many of the things I’ve been through.
Enchanted pools, shadowy dragons, wolves that spring from the mists and vanish into them again, paths that are longer, or shorter, than they should be, given where they went. . . the Misty Hills were filled with marvels.
Madeleine still left the hills, years ago, to marry against her father’s will. If her husband’s family is less than welcoming, she still is glad she married him, and they have a son, two years old.
But her husband’s overlord has fallen afoul of the king. And all his men fall with him, including her husband.
She sets out, to seek the queen and try to bypass the king — and the Misty Hills.
AN ERRANT CHILD WITH DISASTROUS POWERS AND NO ONE TO STAND IN HER WAY.
Penrys, the wizard with a chain and an unknown past, is drafted to find out what has happened to an entire clan of the nomadic Zannib. Nothing but their empty tents remain, abandoned on the autumn steppe with their herds.
This wasn’t a detour she’d planned on making, but there’s little choice. Winter is coming, and hundreds are missing.
The locals don’t trust her, but that’s nothing new. The question is, can she trust herself, when she discovers what her life might have been? Assuming, of course, that the price of so many dead was worth paying for it.
Kate Thomason, twenty-first century healer, is snatched from an eight-handed clone massage in twenty-ninety-seven by H. G. Wells’ time machine to awaken in Wells’ bedroom in eighteen-ninety-seven, her modesty guarded only by a sheer peignoir. Whatever could be Wells’ plan for her? He can’t send her back; entrapped in a world wholly alien to her, how shall she survive? She can think of only one asset – in a Victorian world of surging libidos she’s a beautiful woman with a ‘pragmatic’ take on sex. In any era that will get a woman far. Wells presents her at dinner to playwright Oscar Wilde, newspaperman Frank Harris, Professor Aronnax and others. Kate’s scandalous bodice isn’t the only thing on the guests’ minds that evening; Professor Aronnax proposes taking the Nautilus to hunt for the Loch Ness Monster.
Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.
So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.
We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.
And I Can’t Get Up – A Blast From The Past From April 2019
If you’re like me, you have trouble with the usual encouragement and sayings that are meant to give you strength/courage/optimism.
You know perfectly well what I mean. I’m not going to give sources for these, because I hear them from everywhere, and my mind isn’t really good at buying anything wholesale. Hint, my mind buys it even less if it comes with a cute kitten. I think I started hating motivational posters before I had my first job (Which this being the eighties was PLASTERED in them). (Though at one time I did have the “hang in there” poster because the kitten was adorable. So, I’m inconsistent. Deal with it.) We are naturally attracted to demotivational posts out of frustration with the easy pollyannaish motivational posts, and annoyance with the people who believe in them. Hold on to that thought. It’s important. Seeing people for whom things seem to work, particularly things that our annoying brains tell us are far more complex than the poster/maxim/story is making them out to be causes annoyance. Frustrated annoyance. And a desire to believe the opposite. If people tell you “Hang in there” you know you’re going to drop hard. You just know it.
Some of it is born of experience, sure, but be honest with yourself, you expected it all along. Remember that too, it’s important.
One of the things that annoys me most is the saying that “the best predictor of whether you’ll succeed is how many times you fail.” Mostly because that’s not how that works. That’s not how any of that works.
That saying is sort of the incarnation of survivor bias. The more you’ve gotten knocked down AND still managed to get up, the more likely you are to succeed, sure. But that’s because you’re already by any definition a fairly exceptional person.
I’ll use writing for a bunch of this because it’s THE experience I have, but honestly, you could use anything, from your love life to your attempts and being the world’s best tiddly winks player. (Why am I obsessed with tiddly winks? Well, my eidetic, brilliant brother spent something like 12 years devoting all his free time to playing tiddly winks, a game that in Portugal, usually was left behind at age six or so (for boys. Girls didn’t play it.) In retrospect, it was an addictive behavior. If he’d had video games, he’d probably have been addicted to that. It’s not unusual for very, very bright people to need to dull the pain of… well… of the world not being made for them. And if they have an addictive personality, even if they don’t fall into drugs or alcohol, they’ll get addicted to something REALLY weird. For one of the worst times of my life, I was addicted to fanfic for a TV series that I never watched. Why? Well, it kept the brain minimally occupied so I could dream my life away without DOING anything. Yes, brother eventually stopped it. But meanwhile my parents kept joking his ambition in life was to be the world’s best tiddly winks player.)
Most people who want to be writers never start. Laziness? Maybe. Perhaps. Sitting down and putting fingers on keyboard is not physical work, but it is work.
I’d argue though that most of the time the problem is not so much laziness as the fear of never getting better. I know that’s true for almost everyone who tries to draw anything.
And trying to write a story is a series of compromises. In your mind the thing is multicolored and gigantic, with 100 actors and 1000 elephants. But you can’t write that. It’s simply not something you can put on a page. No one is going to follow that sort of diffuse action. So you compromise. You’ll tell this person’s story. Maybe 10 actors. And one elephant.
And even then, if you’re a beginner you’re going to botch it. For instance, it’s perfectly normal for beginning authors not to be able to handle more than two characters on the page at a time.
So most people give up. Our model as humans seems to be “perfect first time, or I’m no good” but also most people don’t believe they can get THAT much better. (Hint, you can.)
I no longer remember the statistics, and since I don’t know how they collect them anyway, they’re probably meaningless, but it’s something like:of a million people who ever thought to write a book, one actually does it. Of course, there’s no way of measuring how seriously they thought of it, so again, it’s just a vague indication.
We do have more solid ground for people who actually wrote anything significant AND submitted it, ever getting accepted. The ratio is something astronomical like 100000 to one.
Why? Because most people give up after the first rejection. On this, I’m going on my experience in many writers’ groups over the years. Any number of people I met along the way wrote ONE NOVEL. It was a good novel, in most cases (two were brilliant.) They then spent the next five, ten, fifteen years trying to sell it, so single mindedly focused on selling it, that they never wrote another. And the novel got rejected. It got EPICALLY rejected. It got rejected by every reputable outfit and a dozen of the oh, 100 or so I knew ended up falling for scams like “pay us to read” or “pay us to publish.” When this failed to obtain success, they stopped writing. Well, honestly, they’d stopped writing years before, in favor of selling the one novel. But that’s something else. The truth is that they looked at that novel as “proof of concept” and since it didn’t sell, they knew nothing would sell and they gave up.
This is understandable, but completely contrary to reality. So contrary it doesn’t even coexist in the same plane. It’s part of the lies we tell ourselves and the world tells us “if your thing is good enough, it will be a bestseller.” Doesn’t work like that. You’re not submitting your novel to some all-knowing perfect judge. You’re submitting it to a person who is flawed and has issues in his own life and views your story through their own lens. And sometimes their lens has bloody nothing to do with anything you could anticipate when writing the novel. For instance, one of my series took SIXTEEN years to sell, because it was weird, but also because the one house who WOULD have bought it rejected it with “we bought something very similar just last week.” You know, in such circumstances I assume they’re lying. But I know what they bought, and yes, it’s very similar. And it went on to be a bestseller.
Let’s assume you’re one of the very resilient few and write a second novel and a third novel, while trying to sell the first. (I wrote nine. Three of those have sold since.)
The fairy of good fortune comes and touches your novel. It sold. YAY.
Good for you. Be aware the chances of its becoming a bestseller is not dependent on quality, but on distribution, cover, and how much the house pushes it. Heck, the chances of it becoming a GOOD seller are minimal.
Most people who sell a book never sell a second. I don’t know how many, but way in excess of half.
By the way, all of this applies to indie. Most people who put a novel up never sell more than a dozen copies. Discoverability is the problem, mostly. Just advertising your novel everywhere is not going to make it a bestseller (for one indie is heavily biased for series.) I’m not in writers’ groups now, but I KNOW just from people who write me and who decided they were “no good” after a novel or a short story that the “drop out because of perceived failure” rate is about the same.
So, what about if you sell a second or a third, or a fourth novel? Yeah. My career has died… eight times now. Utterly dead. At one time it took me almost two years to sell anything to anyone again. I did a full relation of my career here. Well, more or less full. I elided some set backs. And there’s been one more since that was written. Without going into details let’s say my own remaining option — ONLY option — is going indie with both feet. Whether I’ll ever recover my IP is something else again. No, I’m not ecstatic about any of this. More on that later.
One of the most bitterly funny things about me is that most people perceive me as an optimist. One of you in comments yesterday asked where do you master the will and the optimism to try again. Ah!
It has nothing to do with will or optimism. Seriously. Absolutely nothing. It has to do with being alive and wishing to remain so.
My family is notoriously unlucky. I was born knowing that or at least imbibed it with mother’s milk. Seriously “if we made baby bonnets, babies would be born without a head” unlucky. The stories of wars, investments and just general life in which we backed the losing side KNOWING IT WAS THE LOSING SIDE is extensive.
On dad’s side (you don’t want to know about mom’s truly) we tend towards melancholic depression, dark sense of humor and sad poetry. Because I’m half mother’s daughter, my depressions can get way more active and self destructive. Which is why I learned to control them early.
To all this is added a disposition I’ve started calling “born owing money.” (Though in fact I wasn’t, mostly because my parents have a debt-phobia, one they passed on.) You don’t approach the world as though it can give you things. You approach it as though you’re afraid of bothering it, and would much rather it didn’t notice you.
How much are all of these attitudes responsible for the repeated failures in my career. I don’t know. When your lens is flawed, what do you see through.
I don’t believe in affirmations. Sometimes I’d like to, but I don’t. They’re like the motivational posters. It does you no good to write on your mirror “I’m beautiful and everyone loves me” if you know with bone deep certainty that this isn’t true.
And yet, I know from observing others lives that what you start out with really influences the outcome. And by that I don’t mean your gifts, talents, beauty, or even wealth.
A little man who looks like a monkey and smells like a diseased weasel but who believes he’s the master stallion of the world will have women hanging off him. A smart, handsome man who thinks he’ll never get a romantic relationship will die bitter and alone.
Part of it is that if you don’t believe something is possible, you don’t even see the opportunity when offered. Part of it is that when you get it, and attempt it, you keep expecting it to crash. And part of it is that you don’t protest bad treatment, don’t ask for what you deserve.
i.e. Yeah, your beliefs about life and yourself can set you up for failure.
I realized last year I simply did not believe I could be successful in writing. What does that influence? Well, everything. From how much I put in my writing, to how much I write, to how much I promo, to…
“But Sarah,” you say “I’ve really failed over and over and over at thing x. Why should I try again?”
And I’ve failed over and over and over again at becoming spectacularly successful, or at least having a publisher recognize the potential of anything I wrote. (Weirdly a ghost written novel for another writer made her career. Odd, uh?)
So, why not just lay down? Why not give up?
It depends. Is it something you CAN give up? By which I mean without significantly losing part of who you are and what you want from life?
I could give up sewing or art tomorrow. I probably won’t, but I could. They’re “interesting” occupations, not part of what I am and how I’m made to function. Not the thing I’ve wanted all my life.
I’ll eventually have the kids move out of state (probably) and see them only a few times a year. That’s fine. My relationship as a mother is something created to be given up (if successful.) If we’re lucky, we’ll replace it with friendship. But could I give up my marriage? Well, we’ve had our ups and downs, but I fight for it because no I couldn’t. Not without losing a significant part of myself.
The crucial question is “And if you give up, then what?”
For something that’s central to you, the answer is usually “I don’t know. I do nothing.” or perhaps “I’ll just drift.” That might not be the answer, in those words, but it is what will happen.
In the few times I thought I HAD to give up, I undertook bizarre, mind numbing activities. To avoid doing the beloved thing, because that hurt.
So, where do you find the strength — ah! — and the optimism — ahah! — to get up again?
You don’t. You get up because you have to. Because there’s nothing else on the other side of giving up.
Look, we tend to think in static categories. “I’ll just give up.” Or “I’ll succeed.” Or “I’ll fail.”
But none of these are permanent. Nothing stays still, not even our emotional states. All of them are followed by “and then what?”
Even those who succeed will EVENTUALLY experience failure. Trust me, I have a ton of friends who are bestsellers. Most of them have experienced catastrophic failure more times than success.
“The key is to get up one more time than you fall down.” Sure, but how. From what?
From a fear of what happens if you don’t.
I hesitate to write this, because the person might read this blog and know himself. But if he does, perhaps it will help, because it’s high time he understood it. Hell, we saw it happen and we didn’t understand it.
Decades ago, when we were young and green as grass, and Dan was just starting up his career, we met someone about our age (a little older)who wanted more than anything to be a writer. His education and background were different from ours and he thought this was massively important but it wasn’t. When we were all young, he was starting out in a profession with just as much potential as Dan’s, and he was moderately successful and made just a little less than Dan. And hell, he had advantages I never had in writing. For one, he was a native speaker of English. For another, he had some vague idea of how publishing worked. Very vague, but better than mine.
Over the years, I wrote and wrote and wrote. It took me 9 years from first sending anything out to selling a short story at semi-pro rates. It took me 13 to sell a novel (and that series crashed hard.)
I’m not made of iron. I’m naturally pessimistic. Sometimes rejections hit so hard they disabled me for months. Not just being unable to write, but sometimes spending months crying and trying to hide it from Dan and the boys. One day I had 60 some rejections ON MY BIRTHDAY.
But there was nothing else, so I kept writing. Along the way I stopped here and there, tried to give up and got some really spectacularly stupid addictions (fanfic for TV series I’d never watched, for instance.) And carried them on for months/a year before realizing it was not just making me useless, it was making me hate other people/resent them for no good reason. Like, I hated everyone who was still writing — even my closest friends — even though they had NO success. Because they were writing, and I couldn’t/had given it up. When I started being mean to my kids, because I was hurting and someone else had to hurt, is when I realized I had to pull up. Even the stupid addictions are hard to give up. Trust me. It was difficult.
Along the way I had some successes too. Some critical acclaim. A couple of awards. Series that sold well enough I had the income of an underpaid secretary now and then for some years.
Our used-to-be-friend? Not so much.
He had a story accepted and the magazine went under without publishing it (note this happened eight times with the first story I sold. It killed magazines.) and this seemed to be it for him. He wrote a few more stories because all our friends were writing them, but some of them he seemed to think he was being clever and mocking our idea you could just write many stories. He seemed to think he was writing very bad stuff. In fact, that’s some of his best, but never mind.
And he became more and more invested in the idea he’d write a novel, it would be a world-shattering success, he’d be set for life. This is not the way things happen.
I don’t know if he tried it. One of our kids thinks he did. And got rejected. Possibly.
What I know is that year on year, as the “defeats”– and he seemed to view MY successes (such as they were, dear lord) as his defeats — accumulated he did less and less and less. He restricted himself more and more.
And though it took us years to realize it, he came to first resent us, then hate us. It manifested in a hundred different ways, all under the flag of continued friendship. We felt sorry for him and tried to help him, but every time we saw him, it became more unpleasant. Until two years ago at the end of the year he went too far and at a time when we had neither financial nor emotional resources to handle it. He has tried — at least twice — since then to “avenge” himself by bringing crisis into our life, at a time when he thought we were at a party or enjoying ourselves. (We weren’t, but that’s something else again.)
Normally I hate losing friends. I hate cutting off contact with anyone. This time I realized I was ridiculously relieved.
I realized over the years he’d acquired the habit of belittling us, attacking us verbally, inflicting his presence on us at the least wanted times, and generally being a pain in the ass.
Why?
See the thing above. This was an immensely talented individual who fell down a couple of times and decided that was good. He’d just lay down and rot. But he couldn’t help knowing what he’d wasted. And he couldn’t help resenting those of us who had gone on to do ANYTHING. Anything, even my halting, painful, not very profitable career seemed amazing to him, and also like “if there was any justice, I should have had that.”
From the amount of times he tried to bleed us (financial emergencies. Loans never paid. Etc. etc. etc.) he also viewed us as “very wealthy.” (We’re okay. We make do. A little stressed now for reasons that should pass in a year. But mostly through the miracle of living beneath our means, buying from thrift stores, etc.)
You can’t lie there. You can’t just lie there. You’re alive. You can’t stop. Because you can’t. Because that’s not how humans work.
Not getting up is a choice, and not one that ends in a static option. You’re not just going to be there, forever, world without end. No. You’re going to become bitter, resentful, envious of everyone and everything, even JUST those who are still trying. You’re going to say “I wish I had their optimism” without having a clue if they have it, because they must have SOMETHING you lack. You’re going to think it’s their academic education (ah!) or their higher class background (ahah. Doesn’t translate between countries) or that they’re prettier than you, or have better clothes, or … Lord alone knows.
And in the process you’re going to destroy everything, including the regard of people who once cared for you. You’re going to push everyone away. Most of all you’re going to destroy yourself.
The opposite of trying once more isn’t just laying there. The opposite of trying is dying. And a horrible death in bitterness and self-destruction.
The example I gave is NOT the only one I’ve seen, it is just perhaps the most spectacular example of it I’ve ever seen.
When you fall and decide you can’t get up, you’re choosing to reign in hell, rather than serve in heaven. You don’t have to be religious to understand that. Milton knew a thing or two about people. You are NOT lacking strength or optimism. Because those aren’t needed to get up again, and try again. You can do that from nothing but stubbornness.
No. You’re choosing to lie there and die because your pride is hurt. You should have been an amazing success. Don’t they recognize your genius? Fools! you’ll show them.
But the only person you can destroy is yourself. And you do.
This is why I crawl up, on bloodied and hands and knees and try again. Despite total pessimism and lack of strength. Over and over and over again.
If they made a motivational kitten poster of me, it would be too bloodied and gruesome to hang in an office. My spirit animal is Inigo Montoya.
Will I succeed? I don’t know. I am actually trying to convince myself success is possible, because I’ve realized mind set is important.
Will I lie down and die? No. Because that’s not an option. Failure is not just a static state. It’s decaying and bitterness and giving yourself in to evil. And I’m not doing THAT.
So. Up on bloody knees. Despite weakness and despair, up.
According To Hoyt 