Aspiring Writers Info: The Narrative Gift as a Moral Conundrum

If you're a reader, or a writer, you should visit with Ursula K. Le Guin today over at Book View Cafe's updated web blog. She's writing about Story -- essentially as a force of nature. Some individuals dismiss story as mere tripe while Plot is the big gun. Oh, no, LeGuin suggests -- story is not a succession of unconnected events, shaped by the causality of Plot.

I have a high opinion of story. I see it as the essential trajectory of narrative: a coherent, onward movement, taking the reader from Here to There. Plot, to me, is variation or complication of the movement of story.

Story goes. Plot elaborates the going.

The Narrative Gift as a Moral Conundrum. Recommended, because Le Guin's take on matters is always interesting, and she says it so well.

Oh, To Be Able To Write Short And Pithy...

I just found out that the governor of Tennessee has signed a bill banning mention of "Gateway Sexual Behavior" in sex education classes. This does not include kissing and hand-holding, proving that none of the old white men in the senate or house of the Tennessee government have ever had a kiss that blew their socks off.

I had a sudden, wonderful flash of a teacher closing a class with a five-minute spiel pointedly, with black humor, and oh-so-correctly illuminating the new law, teaching a great deal about sex, politics, religion, and controlling other people's behavior -- and "all the things you should have just been paying attention to when I was not talking about Gateway Sexual Behavior."

Maybe I will write it.

Aspiring Writers Info: A Minimum Wage for Writers, and Other Contractural Concerns

The Passive Voice takes on several things that belong in contracts today (and belonged in them yesterday, too, but back then agents tried to get these things for writers.) He also has a nice link to an older (May, 2011) post by Kristine Kathryn Rusch that is worth your time. (In fact, I can't think of a single business post I've ever read written by Kris Rusch that was not worth my time. FYI.)

About Fifty Shades of Gray...

Is THIS what this book is about?

I am speechless. I thought the book was merely derivative, mildly erotic, and poorly written. This is appalling.

At the least, this is a well thought-out analysis of FIFTY SHADES OF GRAY. So what do you think?