Advice for Writers from a Dissatisfied Reader

I love to read. Or, rather, I used to love to read. As I got older, I got more and more frustrated by the heteronormative nature of mainstream books, and TV, and movies. This isn't really about that, though. It's just the introduction.

Because there is gay fiction out there. But, because there's a greater market for heterosexual fiction, the best writers, the best actors -- really, the best of everything -- they go to mainstream fiction. And we're left with slipshod work from people, some of whom have actual talent, but don't seem to be willing to work at it. And with the ease of self-publishing and vanity presses, it keeps getting worse.

So this is my first set of advice for writers. Whether you are writing straight fiction, gay fiction, trans fiction, science fiction, rom-coms, thrillers, whatever your genre, please consider the people you want to read or watch your work.

1. Proofread - For goodness sake, no one wants to pay $15 for a paperback novel where the words strung between two periods make no sense. Yes, when a book says, "Simon gazed deep Harry's eyes," we readers know that the characters aren't Simon and Deep Harry, but that's not our job. It's your job as a writer to write, "Simon gazed deeply into Harry's eyes."
1a. Know your grammar and spelling - This isn't a Facebook post. You are asking people to shell out their hard-earned money for your work. Know the difference between To, Too, and Two; There, Their, and They're; and all those fun grammar memes. And if you're going to use a word, know how to spell it and know what it means. Don't use "sentient" because you want a fancy word for "smart". That's not what it means. But if you do want to use "sentient," and it applies to the situation, please don't type "scentiant."
1b. The Oxford Comma - Honestly? It really doesn't matter. Read your sentence. If it makes sense, use it. If it doesn't, fix it. "We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin to the party" doesn't make sense. Neither does "We invited the strippers, JFK, and Stalin," or "We invited the strippers: JFK and Stalin." I DO NOT want to go to that party. You want to have a party? Invite your brother, your cousin, and your friends from work or school. Or invite your brother, your cousins and your friends from work or school. (See how with or without the Oxford Comma, that still makes sense? Of course, in this case, it's better with the comma because the comma separates the phrases, but leaving out the comma doesn't make it nonsense.) For breakfast this morning, I had a sandwich made from a waffle, egg, sausage and cheese. Yes, I do believe you can tell that I didn't have a sandwich made from a waffle, and then have egg, and then have sausage and cheese. I had all of those things in one sandwich. (It was GOOD!)

2. Descriptions - Some readers just read the words on the page and then turn the page when they get to the bottom, and on it goes. Others cast books using actors, other famous people, even people they know personally, to fill the various roles. For their sakes, please describe characters, and describe them early. I've read books where I had no idea whether a character was blond, brunette or red-head. In some cases, I'll just pick someone, and continue on. In others, I'll pick someone and then find out half-way through the book that the person I picked just is not right.

3. Be consistent - I'm currently reading a book, which I won't name, where two characters changed hair colors half way through. And they didn't go to a salon, or open a box of dye, the writer just apparently forgot what color their hair was and wrote a different word. To solve this, I keep a physical description of all of my major characters. But it's not just appearance. You're writing characters. This is a little trickier: a character can get upset with someone who lied to them and still lie themselves. But a character who was a lousy student probably should not suddenly be able to speak fluent French (for example) or know the chemical formula for Riboflavin. And a character who's left-handed shouldn't then sign his name with his right. If character number 2 picks something up, it should still be in character number 2's hand until you write in a change (he puts it down or she gives it to someone else), or there's a change of scene.

4. Names - Even if all of your friends' names start with the same letter, do not name your characters John, Jeff, Jack, Jay, Jim, Josh, and Jenny. Even if it makes sense that a couple would name their kids that way, it's confusing. And I imagine it will be confusing for you as a writer, as well. Please also consider that your reader may not know how to pronounce Schlaingelhiszczuk. I mean, sometimes you have to do it. Rumanian names are Rumanian, but use caution.

Okay, enough for now. These shouldn't even have to be said, not on a blog post, but my reading history tells me otherwise.

I invented all of the examples above, based on similar reading experiences.

Marvel Movies After Infinity War

Please Make It Stop (Trump waxes ... something on Border Wall)

The image contains actual text from a transcript of Donald Trump's statement on the Border Wall he made on board Air Force One, as reported by bloomberg.com. No, I don't know why there's a transcript of an "off the record" statement. But there is. He said it. Then again, I also don't know why the President of the United States would think a statement to reporters made on board Air Force One would be off the record.

Contradiction

I guess some folks just have to learn the hard way not to make stories up out of whole cloth.

Rolling EyesEmojis

Facebook really needs a rolling eyes emoji / emoticon, especially in these ... trying times. Since they don't have one, I -- well, I kind of swiped an eyes emoji and turned it into rolling eyes. I don't know how to get it submitted as a "sticker" or emoji on facebook ... yet, so I'm putting it here.
gif 1 was done without a background. You can see the one eye trailing. I don't actually like it, but there it is. :

 gif 2 where each part of the animation has a white background, and you don't get the trailing :

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Edited to add reasonable sized giff for Facebook comments:

Call It an Issue I Have With Women's Gymnastics

Okay, here goes: I got into a discussion with two women last night about women's gymnastics and … it's just better that I move my thought processes to my page, because it really was off-topic of that post. Or rather, move it to my blog. Because it's gonna be a long ride.

My women friends understandably support women's gymnastics and are … I really don't want to put words in their mouths, but they're audibly happy that the ladies performed so well, and are miffed at the poor coverage. They believe the women deserve respect. As I said, this is understandable. Because they're right. Those gymnasts do deserve respect and aren't getting their due, and I should have left my comments to my own devices page and my own topic.

Because, meanwhile, I am perpetually miffed at the sexism in the sport, and rather pervy sexism at that, both from the standpoint that the men get insufficient coverage, and the standpoint that men's gymnastics emphasizes “power and strength” whereas women's emphasizes “agility and flexibility”. Or as I like to phrase it, men's gymnastics emphasizes athleticism where women's emphasizes pretty girls dancing.

Please bear in mind, I do not *want* it to be that way. I *see* it as that way. And don't make the mistake of thinking that women getting more coverage is “reverse sexism”. It's actually *not* (in my considered opinion) a victory for women that women's gymnastics gets more attention, but another example of the sexism in sports overall, where men still make all the rules, and men like to look at pretty pixies; where the men on Sports Illustrated are football, baseball, basketball and hockey players, and the women are swimsuit models. (Not all inclusive, and I'm getting off-track. Sorry.)

But enough of the hyperbole. Let's look at the differences between the men's and women's programs, starting with the superficial:
Men wear a sleeveless, satiny (but sometimes just stretch cotton) leotard, with separate pants, on rings, high bar, parallel bars and pommel horse, and they wear the leotard with baggy shorts (covering the pelvis) on the floor and vault. Women wear shiny, sequined leotards with sleeves, with as much of the pelvis and legs exposed as is legally possible.
Women are heavily made up. Men? No.

Men are on average aged 20 to 24. Women are on average aged 16 to 20. This is only because they've prohibited anyone who hasn't turned 15 by the start of the Olympic year from competing*. In 1996, Kerry Strugg was the old woman of that group at 20. This is why I referred to them as “girls” above. And I'm not alone. Although he seems entirely fine with it, American coach John Geddert said “Without sounding condescending to young women, this is a little girl’s sport,” to the Washington Post on November 9, 2012 (and we'll each decide for ourselves whether you're being condescending or not, thanks.) Of course, it wasn't always that way. In the 1950s and 1960s (I can't find records for an Individual All-Around before 1952), the female all-around champions were aged 30, 21, 25, 22, 26, and 20, in order.

* I keep seeing that the age limit was raised to 16 in 1997, but I also saw an article that claimed that all of this year's Chinese girls meet the age requirements, but that same article listed one of those girls as 15.
Oh, and this year's US men are aged 23 through 29.

Men compete on 6 apparatuses: floor, vault, high bar, parallel bars, still rings and pommel horse. Women compete in 4 apparatuses: floor, vault, uneven bars and balance beam. The vault is pretty much equivalent for both today, though they may do different vaults and only have to compete within their genders. Once upon a time, however, the men had to vault the length of the apparatus, the women vaulted the width (that's at least one improvement). On the floor, the men move from tumbling run to tumbling run, taking small, controlled step sequences between, except when they stop to either balance on one foot, do a handstand or do leg flairs on the floor;
 the women make a tumbling move, then dance across the floor, then another tumbling move, then they preen and stick out their butts, et cetera.
Do women's gymnastics take athletic skill? Yes, absolutely and for sure. But it is hidden behind unnecessarily decorated with makeup and sequins and dance moves, which take away from that athletic skill. And the unfortunate fact that even though it takes an incredible amount of skill to jump from having one foot in front of the other on a four-inch wide beam and land in the exact same spot, it looks … kind of silly,

 especially in the middle of a routine. And especially compared to the flairs on the pommel horse. Although, yeah, scissor kicks look pretty silly, too.
And when you compare gymnastics to other sports, the differences are glaring. Even though the costuming in women's volleyball is ridiculous, the sport is the same as for men. They may not compete against each other, except in equestrian (where let's give the horses the credit they're due) but Archery is Archery, Cycling is Cycling and Water Polo is Water Polo. (Although, I'm not quite sure why the women's cycling road course is so much shorter than the men's or the women swim 800 m when the men swim 1500.) You can also contrast this to winter's figure skating, another heavily artistic sport, where, even though there certainly seem to be problems of sexism there (especially in the fondness for pixies), both the women and the men are required to show footwork as well as jumps. Mind you, I don't want to see the men dancing to the music and exaggeratedly sticking out their butts between tumbling runs. No, I'd like to see, and I think the sport would get more respect if, women's gymnastics rid itself of the prancing and preening. I'd also like to see collegiate women's gymnastics be the training ground for our Olympians that men's collegiate gymnastics now is, instead of the place Olympic girls go to retire.

I'd also like to see men's gymnastics get more air time, but that's a different topic.

Black Lives Matter vs All Lives Matter and Gay Pride vs Hetero Pride

We've all seen it: a movement comes up trying to right a wrong, and then, once it's popular enough, the counter-movement pops up. Once we saw enough blacklivesmatter hashtags, we started seeing alllivesmatter. That one didn't take long at all. We are seeing people asking, “When's heterosexual pride month?” “When's white history month?” and the oh-so-popular Men's Rights Movement, as if white, heterosexual males were somehow a persecuted class in need of protection. (News flash: you're not.)

Now, my liberal friends are saying that all of these counter-movements are an attempt to derail the progress of civil rights and equality. And the originators of these counter-movements may even be trying to do that, but the rank and file are probably thinking, “No...” (more later on what the rank-and-file are thinking.)

What brought me to this conclusion was a nearly random thought about the abysmal failure that is Title IX. Title IX (“title nine”) is a law that was designed to offer athletic opportunities to women in colleges and universities, but it hasn't exactly turned out that way. What Title IX states is that, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” Laws being laws, there's probably more to the law than that, but... How this reads to me is that Federal funding of educational programs should be evenly distributed between programs for men and programs for women, without regard to co-ed activities. How it's actually been put into practice is that colleges and universities that receive federal funding have to have equal opportunities for men and for women. Which sounds great. Football alone has 105 players allowed on NCAA rosters, and the major teams do everything they can to fill all 105. After all, football is a big money maker. That should be lots of opportunities for women. But it's not. It seems to me that while Title IX demanded that colleges provide equal opportunities, it didn't really do a lot to fund those additional women's opportunities. So colleges still have limited funding, even with a “big money maker”. So to fund those 105 women's opportunities, plus the numbers provided by basketball, baseball and hockey, it seems they had to take the money from somewhere. So they made cuts: men's gymnastics, men's wrestling, men's rugby... Temple University recently cut the men's gymnastics program because it couldn't fund itself, despite all the money that comes from having a major NCAA Division I football team and basketball team. And cutting these men's sports also served to reduce the number of opportunities they had to provide to women. Look at all the money they saved!

That leaves conservatives thinking there are only so many opportunities to go around. So what are the Rank and File thinking when they spread “alllivesmatter”? They're probably thinking, “I need to protect what's mine, otherwise my job / rights / life will go the way of Temple Men's Gymnastics.” And truth be told, they're not entirely wrong. In some cases they are – entirely wrong, that is. We can fight for black lives without putting white lives at risk. We can teach police departments how to resist racism, and require background checks and psychological tests, and have them actually follow proper take-down procedures, and get rid of that archaic “fraternity” system where good cops cover for bad cops' bad behavior, without letting real criminals get away, and without putting police lives at risk. In fact, as the sniper in Dallas shows, digging heels in and refusing to change the way police departments do business puts police lives at risk. It puts the lives of good police at risk. In the same way, recognizing a gay person's right to marry, right to be considered next-of-kin to his or her significant other, right to hold and keep a job, will not reduce a heterosexual's right to marry, right to be considered next-of-kin to his or her SO, or right to hold and keep a job.

So the question remains: who's starting all of these counter-movements? Well, if we create opportunities for non-privileged people (gays, women, blacks, latinx, transsexuals, …) without reducing the opportunities for white heterosexual males, what is the cost? Well, obviously initially, the cost is to business owners. You know, the dreaded One Percent. Yep, them again. See, creating a full-time, cost-of-living providing job costs money to a company … until such time as that wage-earner starts spending that money, and it all gets funneled back into the economy. But what costs money to a company costs profit to the CEO and stock holders, and despite the requirements of their jobs, they are apparently not forward thinking. And they're certainly not in it for the good of the economy at large.