HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: jtchew@csa3.lbl.gov (JOSEPH T CHEW)
Newsgroups: misc.writing
Subject: Re: The Shorter, the Harder
Summary: Oy
Date: 7 Apr 92 20:39:59 GMT
Reply-To: jtchew@csa3.lbl.gov
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.254.198
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.3-4

But ad copy and marketese in general is one of the great
sources of unintentional humor in this business!  Just the
other day, I saw a CompUSA newspaper ad that kinda got 
right to the heart of the matter:  one of their modems had 
"Easy-to-read front panel status symbols."

It's not quite up there with my all-time favorite, though:
an ad for condos in San Francisco that had a bullet list of
luxury features (pool, tennis courts, etc.) under the big
bold headline, "A Lifestyle at Bay."

Selling the sizzle, not the mistake,
--Joe
From: lwall@netlabs.com (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: misc.writing
Subject: Re: More style stuff
Date: 6 Apr 92 19:46:22 GMT
Organization: NetLabs, Inc.

There's an important point to be made about addressing the reader.
And that is that the reader that is being addressed may not be you.

In the same way that a story establishes the personna of the Narrator,
it can also establish the personna of the Audience.  Look at Kipling's
Just So Stories.  The official Audience of those stories is a young girl,
regardless of who happens to be turning the pages.  If you're reading
Sherlock Holmes, the Audience is reading the magazines that Watson wrote
for.  In particular, it's often important in a first-person narrative
to establish the Audience that the Narrator could conceivable be talking
to.  This is the basic problem in the other thread that's talking about
the narrator committing suicide partway through the novel.

As for why there's a rule of thumb against addressing the reader.  In
the modern view it's a distancing device, and pulls the attention of
the reader away from the story.  (Historically this was not always so.
It used to be that addressing the reader was thought to increase
verisimilitude, not decrease it.  Perhaps it's the loss of Storytelling
Culture, or something anthropological like that...)

So anyway, like all rules of thumb, you break it when you have a good
reason to break it, but the positive results had better outweigh the
built-in negatives.  In particular, feigning an Audience can contribute
to the characterization of the Narrator.  On the other hand, if the
Narrator really is addressing the real audience (you), this is a much
weaker justification.

As for why big-shots get away with it, there are at least three reasons.

	1) Because big-shots can get away with it.  :-)
	2) Big-shots generally do have some writing skills, and know when
	   the device is useful.
	3) Big-shots have built up an audience (a real one, not a feigned
	   one) that trusts them, and will follow them into uncomfy places
	   that they wouldn't follow an unknown.

So us unknowns have to concentrate on reason 2.

Larry (and Gloria) Wall
lwall@netlabs.com
From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Newsgroups: misc.writing,rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: The Future of Popular Fiction
Date: 24 Mar 92 21:48:21 GMT
Article-I.D.: eff.1992Mar24.214821.18221
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Originator: mnemonic@eff.org

In article <1992Mar17.001356.2091@ducvax.auburn.edu> wkeown@ducvax.auburn.edu writes:

>     I believe my paraphrase may have been confusing.  The editor was trying
>to contrast both the ghetto matriarchies and socialist utopias against the
>technological culture.  Here's the exact wording from the article:
>
>          Today, too much supposed "hard SF" tries valiantly to reconcile
>     New Age ghetto matriarchies and socialist utopias with some sort of
>     technological future--but Camille Paglia, in her brilliant study
>     _Sexual Personae_, proves the folly of such notions.  Ms. Paglia
>     maintains that the traditional male's obsession with objectification
>     is necessary to maintain a high technology (where are the female
>     engineers?), and sexual equality is really a threat to a
>     technological culture.

Paglia says no such thing.



--Mike





-- 
Mike Godwin,     |"Les vrais paradis sont les paradis
mnemonic@eff.org | qu'on a perdus."
(617) 864-0665   | 
EFF, Cambridge   |          --Marcel Proust
From: chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: misc.writing
Subject: Re: Yes, you want to be a writer, but can you use interest tables?
Date: 16 Apr 92 17:31:32 GMT
Organization: I is a writur

mtan@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Maureen Tan) writes:

>> Know that the publisher looks on you as an easily-replaced part of his
>> business process.  You are fodder for his combine, the maximum benefit
>> to be extracted from you at the least cost.

>Jeez, and I though *I* was cynical.

Unfortunately, for new writers, this is true. Remember, publishers get 500
or more submissions for every one they buy. Once you get over the hump and
get purchased, how publishers deal with you as one of the stable depends on
the personalities involved. DAW and BAEN and TOR get very high marks for
working with their people, keeping them informed and dealing with them as
friends. Others aren't so good, and if you're mid-list or below, you can
find yourself being treated as a commodity (and occasionally tossed back on
the street if you become inconvenient). 

It's part of the business. No worse than being run through a layoff at a
company. 

>>For nuturing, go to your mother. 
>Bad idea!  I do that occasionally and my mother says:

You need to find a new mother then. 

>Well, you get the idea.  My advice:  Remain insecure.  That's what
>makes writers so much fun for publishers to work with.

Remain insecure? Hmm. If it keeps your eyes open and keeps you involved in
the process, great.

But I think I'll wander down and invest in the company that makes Maalox.

-- 
            Chuq "IMHO" Von Rospach, Enterprise Products Support
            chuq@apple.com | GEnie:CHUQ & MAC.BIGOT | ALink:CHUQ
               Book Reviewer, Amazing Stories =+= Member, SFWA
           Editor, OtherRealms =+= #include <standard/disclaimer.h>

And lo, though I travel through the valley of the archetypes, I shall fear
no evil, for I know that the author can't kill me off for at least another
150 pages, no matter how stupid or trite I become, or he ruins the book.
From: bradn@tekig1.PEN.TEK.COM (Bradford H Needham)
Newsgroups: misc.writing
Subject: New Bulwer-Lytton book!
Date: 15 Apr 92 23:04:37 GMT
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton,  OR.

There is a fourth collection of entries to the Bulwer-Lytton contest,
copyright 1992 and titled something like "A Dark and Stormy Night --
the Final Conflict".  I picked up a copy last weekend.  Sad to say, none of
my past entries were bad enough to be included.


Aspiring to be really bad,
Brad Needham
bradn@augsburg.pen.tek.com
From: Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian)
Newsgroups: misc.writing
Subject: Re: Which way is out??
Date: 8 Apr 92 16:33:29 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Distribution: world

My own solution to the time-travel paradox was to assume a string of
"chronoplanes," parallel worlds moving in sequence along a single timeline like
beads on a string; once you learn how to move between chronoplanes, you
certainly change the subsequent history of a past chronoplane (Mozart gives
televised recitals in 21st-century London, for example), but you don't affect
the past of your own world.

This is as bogus an idea as any other in the time-travel genre, but it got me
out of all kinds of logical dead ends and led to three novels that were fun to
write--The Fall of the Republic, Rogue Emperor and The Empire of Time.
From: jimj@cleanplate.EBay.Sun.COM (James D. Jones)
Newsgroups: misc.writing
Subject: Re: The Shorter, the Harder
Date: 8 Apr 92 15:20:29 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca.
NNTP-Posting-Host: sit.ebay.sun.com

In article <1992Apr7.162901.4899@jetsun.weitek.COM> robert@hemingway.WEITEK.COM (Robert Plamondon) writes:
>
>Well, I've discovered something that's even harder to write than a
>short-short:  ad copy.  Trying to give a clear, believable,
>entertaining rendition in 75 words about why our chip is something
>you just HAVE to design into your new motherboard is one of the
>hardest things I ever did.  

Hah.  Try writing pop-up help for screen-and-menu driven software.  In
ten years of technical writing, I found nothing more challenging than 
shoe-horning meaningful instructions for use of a entire data entry screen 
in seven 60-character lines or less.  It was the most fun I've had in
the business - like playing word games all day.  Sounds like you're up
against the same thing, more or less. I envy you.

I've written marketing copy for small companies I've worked for ("Hey, _you're
a writer.  Maybe you can...")  It's always fun.  The downside comes if 
there's a bad political situation.  Then you do endless drafts because
everybody wants to piss on the copy so that it smells familiar to them.  
Then they start changing _each other's_ changes, and it never ends... 
Newsgroups: misc.writing,comp.org.eff.talk
From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Subject: Re: Update on EFF CIS forum discussion?
Originator: mnemonic@eff.org
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Distribution: na
Date: Wed, 1 Apr 1992 19:19:38 GMT

In article <1992Mar31.221514.622@dogface.austin.tx.us> bei@dogface.austin.tx.us (Bob Izenberg) writes:

>	I was just re-reading a misc.writing post from mid-February, about
>author's copyright assignments in the EFF forum on CompuServe.  The post
>concerned a notice sent to the editors of four on-line journals:  InterText,
>Parson's M&I, Quanta, and CORE.  According to the notice, which was written
>by a contributor to CORE, a portion of the CIS access charge for downloading
>the journals goes to the EFF.  Even if the EFF got nothing, the notice
>maintains, charging a reader to obtain the journal contradicts the stated
>distribution policy of some or all of the journals.
>	Was this ever resolved, and if so, in what way?

It was resolved by pointing out that Rita Rouvalis asked permission to
redistribute those journals on CIS as part of the EFF forum's goal of
demonstrating to CIS users what is available elsewhere on the Net. It was
explained that CIS does not provide a way for EFF to make them available
on CIS without charge. It was explained that the amount of money EFF makes
from downloads of those journals is de minimus, but that if the editors of
those journals had any problems with EFF's redistributing the journals
within the constraints imposed by CIS, EFF would not make them available
on CIS.

Apparently, only one person, an ex-editor of one on-line journal, had any
problem with this. As I recall, the other editors (Rita Rouvalis is, herself,
the editor of CORE) had no complaints.



--Mike




-- 
Mike Godwin,     |"Les vrais paradis sont les paradis
mnemonic@eff.org | qu'on a perdus."
(617) 864-0665   | 
EFF, Cambridge   |          --Marcel Proust
From: Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian)
Newsgroups: misc.writing
Subject: Re: Getting an Agent?
Date: 11 Apr 92 05:45:12 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Distribution: world

Richard Curtis, in his excellent book "Beyond the Best-Seller," points out the
cold arithmetic that makes the unsolicited ms. so unwelcome these days: If
major publishers receive 10,000 unsolicited mss. a year, and an editor can read
perhaps 4 or 5 a day...well, it boils down to spending about $150,000 a year
just in hopes that something in the slush pile might be publishable (never mind
successful enough to cover the costs of finding it). That's why so many houses
have passed the chore over to the agents; and they in turn, facing the same
arithmetic, start charging reading fees, critiquing fees, and so on. This is
very tough on many new writers, and I don't like it myself; I used to tell my
students to try to sell their first novel on their own, and then the job of
finding an agent would be much easier. Now I'm not so sure. But the reading fee
really isn't that steep, compared to the hundreds or thousands of hours the
writer has already given to writing the novel. And if the critique suggests
improvements that would indeed make the novel publishable, well, that's a sound
investment.
From: Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian)
Newsgroups: misc.writing
Subject: Authors' Advances
Date: 16 Apr 92 00:57:32 GMT
Article-I.D.: mindlink.11445
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada

In the inflationary days of the 70s and 80s, a good advance, up front, was
simply worth more than one eroded by a year or more of delay. That's less of a
problem now.

The downside of a big advance is that you may fail to earn it out; this will
cool editorial ardor fast. I went from a $15,000 advance for Eyas and $20,000
for Tsunami (both from Bantam in the late 70s) to $6,000 for Brother Jonathan
from Ace--where I ended up after those earlier books failed to live up to their
original promise.

Isaac Asimov, relying on his sheer volume, could charge minimal advances for
many books; this meant he could count on a steady relationship with his
publishers and reasonable income after publication. For most of us novel-a-year
types, however, it simply doesn't make economic sense to do so. As Anthony
Burgess (I think it was) once said: "You can't make a living in this business,
but you can make a killing." So we try for the killing every time.
From: eliz@ai.mit.edu (Elizabeth Willey)
Newsgroups: misc.writing
Subject: Re: Metamorphosis: Lawyer to Agent
Date: 15 Apr 92 14:25:40 GMT
Organization: MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory


   From: troly@redwood.math.ucla.edu (Bret Jolly)
   Organization: UCLA Mathematics Department
   Date: Tue, 14 Apr 92 06:02:01 GMT

     Greetings!  My girlfriend is an unemployed lawyer who would like to
   work in the world of books.  She wants to know if agencies are
   interested in hiring lawyers in-house, and particularly if any such
   agencies exist in the LA area.  She would also welcome any general
   information on the literary agent business, how it is run, and how
   to break into it.  Please follow up in misc.writing or send email
   by replying to this article or email troly@math.ucla.edu

In other words, she knows nothing about about the business but wants
to get into it.

She faces stiff competition from people who know everything about the
business and want to get into it.

She could start by going through the Yellow Pages and writing, then
phoning, established agencies, trying to make appointments for
informational interviews.  After, of course, spending some time in the
library learning everything there is about agenting.  Nobody wants to
waste time talking to someone who doesn't know what she's talking
about.  Her legal background, even if she has specialized in (say)
copyright law, makes no difference if she has no idea how the industry
works.


Elizabeth Willey
From: ARL00SJB@UNCCVM.UNCC.EDU
Newsgroups: misc.writing
Subject: Re: The Shorter, the Harder
Date: 14 Apr 92 17:23:59 GMT
Organization: UNC Charlotte

_The Writer's Digest_ just advertised a contest for short stories that must
go thusly:  write a seven-word sentence - this is the first sentence of your
story.  The next sentence must begin with the second word of the first
sentence.  The third sentence must begin with the third word of the first
sentence, and so forth.  You end with a seven sentence story.  You then type
the story onto a standard postcard and mail it to _WD_.  Just coming up with
that first sentence was the killer.  I did it, and I thought it was pretty
good, so I entered it.  Can't wait to see what *they* think!  (It's a horror
story, BTW, and when I read it to a friend of mine, he said "That's Stephen
King!"  I said, "No, a thousand pages, and that's Stephen King.")
 
- Jean
Newsgroups: misc.writing
From: vehaag@crocus.waterloo.edu (Viktor Haag)
Subject: Re: The Shorter, the Harder
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 16:29:28 GMT

In article <57680001@hpscit.sc.hp.com> fish@hpscit.sc.hp.com (John Fisher) writes:
>
>Hear, hear! I concur! Ad copy is the most difficult of all the types of
>writing I've been inclined, induced, ordered to do (technical, ad copy,
>business, letter, marketing, short fiction, magazine, newsletter,
>screenplays, posting to the net, slug lines, treatments, step outlines,
>greeting cards, and class notes). 


Hah!!  You think that's tough?  Phil Groff and I worked on a series of
exercises a few years ago that started on a lark and turned into a full time
diversion.  We ended up calling it "Matchbox Classics" or some such thing.
I am sure it would have become an obsession if Phil hadn't moved to pursue
schooling elsewhere (Hi Phil, if you are reading this ...)

The principle was to take a great classic of literature and render it in
precis that would fit on the back of a matchbox. The goal was to be witty
while getting across as much of the plot as possible, for the back of a 
matchbox -- a sort of Cole's Notes for the BarFly, or adaptations for the
businessman on the go.

eg -- the Matchbox Hamlet
		+------------------+
		|Guy's uncle kills |
		|dad, marries mum. |
		|Guy gets bummed   |
		|out, wastes time. |
		|Everyone dies.    |
		+------------------+

(smileys liberally sprinkled everywhere)
ps - if you would like to add to the burgeoning collection of MatchBox
Classics, send them by email, and I will compile and post!  Phil and I 
had all of Shakespeare, Dickens, and Milton done before we stopped, but
I have since misplaced them (the original interpretation of Hamlet, par
example, was much funnier).  Coming up with a realy good one (funny and 
accurate) took more time than you would think.



-- 
Viktor Haag 
		            |  "We are not thugs.  We are not fanatics.
vehaag@crocus.uwaterloo.ca  |   We are vitamin supplements to justice."   
viktor@watdcs.uwaterloo.ca  |				: a Selector
Newsgroups: misc.writing
Subject: Dangers of being a technical writer
From: tfarmer@datamark.co.nz (Thomas Farmer)
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 23:15:59 GMT
Organization: Datamark International Ltd.


Someone mentioned having to sweat over advertising material.

However, there is a fate much worse than this :

My word processing software is so much better than what everyone else
in the office has that I seem to be spending more and more time doing
secretarial work. Oh, the indignity. :-)

(For reference purposes : Me = Word for Windows 2.0, Them = Uniplex)

-- 
Thomas Farmer      | tfarmer@cavebbs.gen.nz | I need an apartment!
Datamark Intl Ltd  | tfarmer@datamark.co.nz | +64-4-233-8186 (work)
Technical Writer & Dos M/Wrangler           | Love is a warm beagle.
From: ajm@seqp4.sequoia.com (A.J.Madison)
Newsgroups: misc.writing
Subject: Re: Which way is out??
Summary: It's David Gerrold
Date: 14 Apr 92 18:19:31 GMT
Organization: Sequoia Systems Inc., Marlboro, Mass.

In article <1992Apr8.171116.9834@mips.mitek.com> clb@hp835.mitek.com (Chris Boyd) writes:
>>In a previous article, KVJLC@ASUACAD.BITNET () wrote about a
>>Time paradox story:
>>>    If a person returns to the past and attempts to alter it or does;
>>>
>>>    a.)  would the change occur before he returns to the future
>>>    B.)  or would the change occur after the return trip?
>
>One of the best time travel/infinite number of universes novels
>ever is _The Man Who Folded Himself_, by I can't remember and the
>book was borrowed from a friend.


The author of _The Man Who Fold Himself_ is David Gerrold, who has on occasion
been known to write the Odd piece for or about Star Trek.


And while I'm at it, Arthur C. Clarke wrote an even cuter paradox story, which
on paper takes up two pages, but is theoretically infinite...


It something goes like this:

Dear Sir,

Your story idea of writing a paradox story by incorporating the following
rejection letter into it:

	Dear Sir,

	Your story idea of writing a paradox story by incorporating the
	following rejection letter into it:

		Dear Sir,
		.
		.
		.

		Sincerly, Publisher X

    	Does not currently meet any of our publishing needs at this time.

	Sincerly, Publisher X

Does not currently meet any of our publishing needs at this time.

Sincerly, Publisher X

-- 
when everyone is out to get you, being paranoid is just good thinking.
         - Dr. Johnny Fever <in other words, standard disclaimer>
A.J. Madison                                           ajm@sequoia.com
Sequoia Systems Inc.
Newsgroups: misc.writing
From: mtan@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Maureen Tan)
Subject: Re: You really want to be a writer?
Organization: UIUC
Distribution: na
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 21:44:14 GMT


> tmaddox@milton.u.washington.edu (Tom Maddox) writes:
> 
> > Which is why *my* principle has been, write well and the business end 
> > will largely take care of itself.

Unless your use of the word "largely" covers alot more turf than I think it does, Tom,
 your philosophy (particularly  if embraced by the unlucky or the unwary)
could translate into starvation and literary obscurity.

I began learning that business wouldn't take care of itself  with one of the first
freelance articles I "sold."   I  told all my living relatives (and a few dead ones)
that my literay career was launched and then settled down to wait for my master-
piece to hit the newsstands.  The story  was eventually returned with a nice note
about how the magazine's editorial polices had changed and my article was no
longer appropriate.  I wasn't as tough then as I am now, so I spent a few 
minutes crying onto my manuscript and cursing my fate before I checked my contract
and found the words "payment upon publication."  Then I bought a book on
the business of writing and (among other things) learned about kill fees.

I've also had a freelance submission *published* by a national magazine and
discovered this fact  by reading my writing (minus my byline and plus a new lead-in)
in that magazine.  When I called them, offer of compensation came very quickly.
But I often wonder what would have happened had I not been businesslike enough
to keep dated records (and of course copies) of all my submissions.  They asked!

I have an agent now.  And, in spite of thinking that she walks on water,  you bet I've
learned as much as I can about rights and what parts of a publishing contract can be
 negotiated.   I've also learned about the business and the marketplace for my kind of
fiction from my agent.  She seems to feel that a well informed (businesslike?) writer
is a good (realistic?) client.

There are also little business  nasties like income and self-employment taxes lurking
out there, ready to trap the unwary writer.

Do I sound crass?  Maybe so.  I'd like to work in a world where rewards were based on
talent and the naive were never victims.  But I guess one of the reasons I don't write
fantasy is because I don't believe in it.

In article <1992Apr10.170314.4371@cs.yale.edu>, schwarz-marc@CS.YALE.EDU (Marc Schwarz) writes:

>  I tell him
> that I won't file until I have received all back pay, and payment for
> the 220 inches of copy up front.  He threatens to fire me, and demands
> the copy.  I reply that he can go ahead and fire me, adding that if I
> walk he now has to fill a 200 inch hole in the middle of his paper, on
> deadline.  I snidely say that it shouldn't be too difficult, and suggest
> that canceling about a third of the issue's advertising contracts would
> probably do the trick. 
> 
Wow! Marc, do you got guts!  If my agent doesn't work out...

Newsgroups: misc.writing