--------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 159 WRITING Ref: F5I00015 Date: 05/12/98 From: RICH VERAA Time: 09:21pm \/To: MICHAEL NELLIS (Read 2 times) Subj: A New Thread! In a message to Barbara Shafferman, Michael Nellis wrote: BS> When my writer's group was newly formed--about six or seven years ago-- BS> we were all women. A man (probably the most experienced and most BS> published of all of us) asked to join. [...] BS> Now these were all generous spirited, intelligent BS> women, most of them with views far more liberal than mine, but they all BS> felt that men tend to take over and this lone specimen would somehow BS> disrupt the entire group. MN> They were probably right. All part of that male/female MN> psychological difference thing. Us men are more straight forward MN> about taking charge and very bull-headed about the perogatives of MN> being in charge. It's not so much a matter of being straightforward; it's involuntary. Even a non-chauvinist with the best will in the world, finding himself in a situation with women and no other male to compete with, will _be_ in charge. As long as he's got a nanogram of testosterone in his bloodstream he has no choice. Of course, if he _is_ a man of good will, any woman can easily displace him with very little effort. Nevertheless, the fact that men assume being-in-charge as the default position can be off-putting, as can the male attitude that anyone should be "in charge" at all. MN> Which is probably why a man who is lost doesn't MN> stop and ask for directions. If a man has to ask directions -- or any kind of help -- he loses the encounter. Men are programmed to compete because status in the pack or tribe is determined by each male's win/loss ratio. Civilized men are immured to losing encounters to plumbers, auto repairmen, and so forth, but they still have an instinctual need to avoid losing encounters whenever they can. Asking directions is just about the easiest losing encounter to avoid. MN> I keep several maps around the house so I can look up any street I MN> haven't been to or I'm not sure of the exact location so I don't MN> have to ask for directions, but I will not stop and ask for MN> directions to save my life. Especially if you take the precaution of checking a map. Cheers, Rich http://www.netside.net/~rveraa/ * Origin: Birdsoft - North Miami (1:135/907) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 159 WRITING Ref: F5I00016 Date: 05/12/98 From: RICH VERAA Time: 09:53pm \/To: BARBARA SHAFFERMAN (Read 2 times) Subj: POP PULP & PLAGIARISM In a message to RICH VERAA, BARBARA SHAFFERMAN wrote: BS> I keep butting in here, but if you want a book in a similar vein to BS> "Alias Grace", try "The Maggot" by John Fowles. It's set in 17th BS> Century England and deals with a judicial inquiry about a mysterious BS> crime. He really does a masterful job. I recommend it highly. Thanks. I'm going to the library tomorrow. I'll look for it. Cheers, Rich http://www.netside.net/~rveraa/ * Origin: Birdsoft - North Miami (1:135/907) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 159 WRITING Ref: F5I00017 Date: 05/12/98 From: BARBARA SHAFFERMAN Time: 05:23pm \/To: JACK RUTTAN (Read 2 times) Subj: A NEW THREAD! JR> race is to talk about it a lot). Many famous writers got up in arms JR> over this exclusion, calling it a curtailment of liberties and a JR> rejection of openness and whatnot. They said they wouldn't support JR> it and they cut off their dues. But I think having a little refuge JR> is necessary, where you can commune with people who think as you do, JR> and there's no explaining needed. At least in this world, for the JR> time being. Unfortunate, in some ways, but true. Food for thought there. I agree that a refuge where like can be comfortable with like--applying to sex, ethnicity, etc.--is necessary. But I think this should be a kind of social, voluntary kind of thing. When it's actually a rigidly enforceable thing and it extends into a professional area, you start limiting ideas and cutting into freedom of association. There's a fine line there between camraderie and restriction. Barbara --- * RM 1.3 03095 * barshaff@juno.com * Origin: PC BBS : Massapequa, NY : (516)795-5874 (1:2619/110) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 159 WRITING Ref: F5I00018 Date: 05/12/98 From: BARBARA SHAFFERMAN Time: 05:31pm \/To: JACK RUTTAN (Read 2 times) Subj: CENTURY MAGAZINE JR> Don't know when any of these people would be announced, but reading JR> my Alice Munro and other authors, someone selling nylons in certain JR> areas at certain times could lead to certain erotic interests. Then JR> there was the bible salesman in the O'Connor story "A Good Man is JR> Hard to Find" who stole that woman's wooden leg. You've mentioned two of my favorites. I grew up in New York City and I was always jealous of writers who grew up in isolated rural areas. Somehow the characters there were much more interesting to write about. I'm not sure why exactly, but I think that there's so much stimulation in a big city, that everyone is too busy to delve deeply into themselves and come up with those rural idiosyncracies I love to read about. Barbara --- * RM 1.3 03095 * barshaff@juno.com * Origin: PC BBS : Massapequa, NY : (516)795-5874 (1:2619/110) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 159 WRITING Ref: F5I00019 Date: 05/12/98 From: BARBARA SHAFFERMAN Time: 05:39pm \/To: DON JAMES (Read 2 times) Subj: RE-ENTRY DJ> (terminal) to get these messages. I'll send this reply, and would DJ> appreciate it if you would let me know if you received same. It DJ> appears I am going to have to do all the work myself as Win 95 DJ> doesn't like my 16 bit mail reader. I'll have to look around for a DJ> 32 bit one I guess. Nobody said life was easy, and this new toy was DJ> supposed to make things faster and easier. Don, your message got through to the Echo. At least I got it. What I wondered is which 16 bit mail reader do you use? I'm going to be getting a new computer, I think, by the end of the year. By then Windows 98 should be in use. Anyway, I wonder whether my mail reader will work with that. I use Robomail. It's not great, but I'm used to it and that alone makes me love it. I hope your 16 bit reader isn't Robomail. Barbara --- * RM 1.3 03095 * barshaff@juno.com * Origin: PC BBS : Massapequa, NY : (516)795-5874 (1:2619/110) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 159 WRITING Ref: F5I00020 Date: 05/13/98 From: DON JAMES Time: 05:34pm \/To: ANNE PAGE (Read 2 times) Subj: RE-ENTRY AP>It was waiting for me when I got home from the bridge club at >11:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May 12, 1998. Is that a specific enough >statement? Absolutely, anything further would be to excess. DJ>>appears I am going to have to do all the work myself as Win 95 DJ>>doesn't like my 16 bit mail reader. AP>Don't have any idea what you're talking about since I'm still on >Windows 3.1 and have been happily using the Silly Little Mail Reader >(DOS) since getting my computer in late 1993. Well Windows 95 works on a 32bit platform, and any 16bit programmes you have, now have to be used in DOS for the most part. However for your information the Microsoft Works, and Microsoft Word, included in Win 95 -- allow you to do things that are almost amazing in comparison to what I was using. This is especially true if you invest in a colour printer. It's almost a home form of desk top publishing. DJ>>this new toy was supposed to make things faster and easier. AP>Maybe for the real tekkie types. For the rest of us I think the >learning curve involved in each upgrade makes things more complex and >slower as well as extremely frustrating at the outset. Then, by >the time one learns how to use it and develops one's own shortcuts >and workarounds, another upgrade comes along and the cycle begins >again. Oh that's so true. However it's speed saves a lot of time on the internet, my primary reason for considering an upgrade. I hope this is the last for I bought it with that in mind. It will probably last longer than I will. AP>I decided long ago that newer isn't necessarily faster and better and >like to stick with what I know well and like using. For example, I >used my CP/M Kaypro from 1984 until late 1993 when I moved to this >486/33 PC which has not needed any repairs except replacing a bad >monitor while it was still under full warranty. Likewise I'm happily >driving my 1984 Ford LTD Station Wagon with just over 100,000 miles on >my rebuilt motor (the original was damaged in an accident at 126,000 >miles in 1993), a valve job a few months ago, and a new air-conditioner >evaporator last week. Still have a lot of original parts on it including >the complete electronic ignition system. Have only replaced *one* >sensor since buying the vehicle "new" as a demo with 10,000 miles on it >in November 1994. And I only a few weeks ago finally gave up and junked >my IBM Selectric II Typewriter that I bought in 1977 in favor of a $79 >portable electronic Smith Corona for the occasional quickie typing job >(file folder labels, the occasional envelope) when I don't want to turn >on the computer because the cost to repair it this time would have >exceeded the cost of the portable electronic. The previous repair three >years ago was only $43 so I felt it was a justifiable expense. But $125 >this time was not. You sound a bit like me. I still have an underwood portable typewriter I bought when I got home from WWII and lug it around to the cottage from time to time. Anne I believe it was you who originally flagged me on the Woodside Literary Agency who was ripping off potential writers. Here's four others who are now under investigation by state or federal law enforcement agencies for the same sort of fraudulent action. Edit, Ink (James Leonard), Williamsville, N.Y, Irene Rogers Literary Agency/ Western Publishing Group Mark Maine/ Authors Adventure Assistance Literary Agency New Brand Agency Group There is also one publisher: Commonwealth Publications, Inc., Edmonton, Ontario, Canada. See below: In February 1998 Commonwealth was the target of a CBC television expose' about their use of deceptive claims to lure authors into subsidy publishing contracts. Hundreds of authors have been fleeced, usually for $6000 to $8,000 each. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have advised authors to pursue civil suits. Thought you might be interested. ____ /___/ ________/_____ E | / MAIL | |____/_________| don.james@encode.com DON'S DEN Home of writer's cramp. Don * 1st 2.00 #8648 * Faux pas: Those things at the end of a cat's legs. --- QScan/PCB v1.17b / 01-0313 * Origin: Encode Online Orillia,Ont.705-327-7629 (1:229/107) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 159 WRITING Ref: F5I00021 Date: 05/13/98 From: JACK RUTTAN Time: 01:01am \/To: LAURIE CAMPBELL (Read 2 times) Subj: A New Thread! >I like to write that kind of character, but mine nearly >always come off as jokes, and I'd prefer to explore the >contradictions seriously. That's what cartoons are good for. Since one of their natural features is exaggeration, they absorb a lot of anger and derision, which would seem only petty and overdone if written from an author's point of view. Also, the first thing people look at are the pictures, and so readers immediately transfer whatever opinions are being voiced to the cartoon character -- the author's mask. I've had people who would have punched me in the nose if I had called them a "silly ass," laugh and feel flattered when I draw them as exactly that. I suppose the problem is that people don't take cartoons as seriously. But I want to mix the two in a book I would like to publish -- have the stories to put breathing space between the cartoons, and use the cartoons to make the stories seem a little less outlandish. Jack Ruttan --- Maximus/2 3.01 * Origin: Juxtaposition BBS. Lasalle, Quebec, Canada (1:167/133) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 159 WRITING Ref: F5I00022 Date: 05/13/98 From: JACK RUTTAN Time: 01:04am \/To: CURTIS JOHNSON (Read 2 times) Subj: Pop Pulp & Plagiarism CJ> JR> Ouch! You obviously don't have your "Norton's Anthology" close at > JR> hand. CJ> I have _two_ volumes I, but no Vol. II! I did finally locate > it in the textbook _Poetry_, X.J. Kennedy (which has both poems, > "Sailing to Byzantium" and the correct poem, with the sneaky title, > "The Second Coming." You caught my error before I could correct > myself. I almost didn't reply, expecting half the echo to jump in before I got started. Cheery poem, huh? Jack Ruttan --- Maximus/2 3.01 * Origin: Juxtaposition BBS. Lasalle, Quebec, Canada (1:167/133) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 159 WRITING Ref: F5I00023 Date: 05/13/98 From: JACK RUTTAN Time: 01:15am \/To: CURTIS JOHNSON (Read 2 times) Subj: The Air We Breathe CJ> Tell me about _The Breadlebane_--I can't connect anything > with the name. It's a nineteenth C. ship discovered in the arctic under ice, and documented in some of the same ways they did the "Titanic," only earlier. It's the subject of a MacLelland and Stewart book (that's the publisher -- forget the author, or the true title), and a documentary. It's eerily pristine -- a little like those bodies of sailors they exhumed from the Franklin expedition. CJ> I have _Strange Sa Stories and Legends_, Bill Wisner. It > mentions only two derelict ships, the _Octavius_ and the > _Marlborough_. The first was caught in pack ice somewhere north of I like the story of the [something] light, which still supposedly appears yearly off the coast of Labrador. It was a ship that caught on fire, and if you look closely at the light, it is said you can see figures jumping off the burning ship. Then there was the Seven Hunters lighthouse, which would make a good movie, if it already hasn't been done. Jack R. --- Maximus/2 3.01 * Origin: Juxtaposition BBS. Lasalle, Quebec, Canada (1:167/133) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 159 WRITING Ref: F5J00000 Date: 05/14/98 From: JACK RUTTAN Time: 01:27am \/To: BARBARA SHAFFERMAN (Read 2 times) Subj: A New Thread! BS>Absolutely. The characters in my first novel are so superior and >sophisticated, they would never deign to talk to plain little me. But I >get the last laugh, because without me they're nothing--quite literally! I thought it was funny in "Dune" how superintelligent the characters were there, not from anything they did, but mainly because the author kept reminding us about it. Jack Ruttan --- Maximus/2 3.01 * Origin: Juxtaposition BBS. Lasalle, Quebec, Canada (1:167/133)