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Jul. 19th, 2011 11:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatApparently if you are a sci-fantasy writer and wish to make any sort of living, you spend 75% of your life wandering about promoting yourself and your work like crazy. It's the big difference between literary writers and genre writers - I've noticed. The literary writers online - don't do this. They sort of sit on their laurels...and well write, teach courses, go to a few conferences, and that's it.
The genre writers on the other hand, particularly the sci-fantasy ones - seem to travel about the world either on their own dime or someone gives them money (can't quite figure out which - guessing a bit of both or they'd be broke by now, one would suspect because world-wide traveling can't be cheap) jumping from fan convention to fan convention and book signing to book signing, etc. Lord knows when they find time to write admist all this hubbub. Although, considering I find time to write and tell myself stories and blog with a full time 8 hour a day, mentally exhausting job...shouldn't be that much of a surprise. My father wrote a book in airports and at motels while he flew to and from meetings (the original road warrior). He was in and out of airports so much when I was a kid, that the other kids in my neighborhood thought he was a pilot. Which was admittedly easier to wrap one's head around than organizational and compensation consultant, who wrote mysteries in his spare time. Didn't get them published because he sucked at marketing himself. Now self-publishes them.
Been reading my correspondence list - and all the professional writers are blogging long-ass posts from some convention, book signing or awards conference advertising themselves and their work like crazy. The only one I sort of envy is Neil Gaiman who is by far the most successful of the bunch and the most famous. He just won two Shirley Jackson Awards - didn't know there were such things. Rather adore Shirley Jackson, although she rarely won awards and struggled mightily. What is it with the entertainment industry and awards? No one else gets them. People who work long days, sweating in the street fixing a sewage system, or abating asbestos from cables, or ensuring such things get done in a timely manner don't get awards. I'm guessing the reason people in the "entertainment" jobs do - is they are unappreciated or scoffed at, so need to some respect from somewhere - all people need that after-all. Also...it provides the rest of us with a way of choosing amongst the vast majority of content out there. Sure there are critics, but critics as we all know tend to be unreliable. Awards are far more positive any how, and they are based on the opinions of people in the actual field - who do it for a living. Also it's, let's face it, a lot more fun to predict which favorite tv show, book, story or movie is going to win than say which sewage construction worker did the best job. Entertainment takes us out of ourselves and our mundane lives - let's us escape...without nasty side-effects. And we adore those who entertain us - because they provide that means of escape or in some cases they communicate our greatest fears, joys, woes to the universe - connecting us with people we'd never met otherwise, like-minded souls across a vast divide.
So who's to say really which job is the most worthwhile? If any? And the awards are a means of showing some appreciation to those artists who move us the most.
Speaking of nasty ways of escape? Read about a really nasty drug the other day called Bath Salts - which causes severe psychotic episodes. Episodes that remind me a bit of zombies. The people who take these drugs - get high, but also often go violently and scarily insane. And are difficult to sedate or restrain. One woman scratched herself to bits - thinking bugs were crawling under her skin.
She looked like she'd been drug for miles over broken glass. Another woman was so violently deranged, it took six men to restrain her, and nothing worked to sedate her. A man - climbed a pole and threw things at the street. Another man killed his entire family while on it. Talk about your bad acid trip. It's like something out of a horror movie. Britain banned the drug in 2010 or 2009. Now its made it's way to the US and they are having troubles containing it - since it is sold in bath shops and stores as well "bath salts". This is why we can't legalize drugs - some drugs turn people into violent psychopaths right out of a Stephen King horror flick. The fiction writer in me went nuts over this story - I kept playing with ways to turn it into short story or novel.
Okay off to bed. Damn, I can't make it to bed until 11 no matter what I do. Feeling the Wire withdrawl, big time. I'm starting to figure out the narrative tropes that turn me on. The Wire hits so many narrative tropes that turn me on, it's not even funny. And I love, just love to pieces, all the main characters - well with the possible exception of Burrell and Valcheck, who I keep wanting to spork with a spoon. Great rec guys. You were so right about the Wire.
The genre writers on the other hand, particularly the sci-fantasy ones - seem to travel about the world either on their own dime or someone gives them money (can't quite figure out which - guessing a bit of both or they'd be broke by now, one would suspect because world-wide traveling can't be cheap) jumping from fan convention to fan convention and book signing to book signing, etc. Lord knows when they find time to write admist all this hubbub. Although, considering I find time to write and tell myself stories and blog with a full time 8 hour a day, mentally exhausting job...shouldn't be that much of a surprise. My father wrote a book in airports and at motels while he flew to and from meetings (the original road warrior). He was in and out of airports so much when I was a kid, that the other kids in my neighborhood thought he was a pilot. Which was admittedly easier to wrap one's head around than organizational and compensation consultant, who wrote mysteries in his spare time. Didn't get them published because he sucked at marketing himself. Now self-publishes them.
Been reading my correspondence list - and all the professional writers are blogging long-ass posts from some convention, book signing or awards conference advertising themselves and their work like crazy. The only one I sort of envy is Neil Gaiman who is by far the most successful of the bunch and the most famous. He just won two Shirley Jackson Awards - didn't know there were such things. Rather adore Shirley Jackson, although she rarely won awards and struggled mightily. What is it with the entertainment industry and awards? No one else gets them. People who work long days, sweating in the street fixing a sewage system, or abating asbestos from cables, or ensuring such things get done in a timely manner don't get awards. I'm guessing the reason people in the "entertainment" jobs do - is they are unappreciated or scoffed at, so need to some respect from somewhere - all people need that after-all. Also...it provides the rest of us with a way of choosing amongst the vast majority of content out there. Sure there are critics, but critics as we all know tend to be unreliable. Awards are far more positive any how, and they are based on the opinions of people in the actual field - who do it for a living. Also it's, let's face it, a lot more fun to predict which favorite tv show, book, story or movie is going to win than say which sewage construction worker did the best job. Entertainment takes us out of ourselves and our mundane lives - let's us escape...without nasty side-effects. And we adore those who entertain us - because they provide that means of escape or in some cases they communicate our greatest fears, joys, woes to the universe - connecting us with people we'd never met otherwise, like-minded souls across a vast divide.
So who's to say really which job is the most worthwhile? If any? And the awards are a means of showing some appreciation to those artists who move us the most.
Speaking of nasty ways of escape? Read about a really nasty drug the other day called Bath Salts - which causes severe psychotic episodes. Episodes that remind me a bit of zombies. The people who take these drugs - get high, but also often go violently and scarily insane. And are difficult to sedate or restrain. One woman scratched herself to bits - thinking bugs were crawling under her skin.
She looked like she'd been drug for miles over broken glass. Another woman was so violently deranged, it took six men to restrain her, and nothing worked to sedate her. A man - climbed a pole and threw things at the street. Another man killed his entire family while on it. Talk about your bad acid trip. It's like something out of a horror movie. Britain banned the drug in 2010 or 2009. Now its made it's way to the US and they are having troubles containing it - since it is sold in bath shops and stores as well "bath salts". This is why we can't legalize drugs - some drugs turn people into violent psychopaths right out of a Stephen King horror flick. The fiction writer in me went nuts over this story - I kept playing with ways to turn it into short story or novel.
Okay off to bed. Damn, I can't make it to bed until 11 no matter what I do. Feeling the Wire withdrawl, big time. I'm starting to figure out the narrative tropes that turn me on. The Wire hits so many narrative tropes that turn me on, it's not even funny. And I love, just love to pieces, all the main characters - well with the possible exception of Burrell and Valcheck, who I keep wanting to spork with a spoon. Great rec guys. You were so right about the Wire.
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Date: 2011-07-20 05:12 am (UTC)Recreational stimulants are bad news, clearly much worse than pot or acid, but arguably not as bad as alcohol.
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Date: 2011-07-20 04:27 pm (UTC)http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/us/17salts.html
Dr. Jeffrey J. Narmi could not believe what he was seeing this spring in the emergency room at Schuylkill Medical Center in Pottsville, Pa.: people arriving so agitated, violent and psychotic that a small army of medical workers was needed to hold them down.
They had taken new stimulant drugs that people are calling “bath salts,” and sometimes even large doses of sedatives failed to quiet them.
“There were some who were admitted overnight for treatment and subsequently admitted to the psych floor upstairs,” Dr. Narmi said. “These people were completely disconnected from reality and in a very bad place.”
Similar reports are emerging from hospitals around the country, as doctors scramble to figure out the best treatment for people high on bath salts. The drugs started turning up regularly in the United States last year and have proliferated in recent months, alarming doctors, who say they have unusually dangerous and long-lasting effects.
Though they come in powder and crystal form like traditional bath salts — hence their name — they differ in one crucial way: they are used as recreational drugs. People typically snort, inject or smoke them.
Poison control centers around the country received 3,470 calls about bath salts from January through June, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers, up from 303 in all of 2010.
“Some of these folks aren’t right for a long time,” said Karen E. Simone, director of the Northern New England Poison Center. “If you gave me a list of drugs that I wouldn’t want to touch, this would be at the top.”
At least 28 states have banned bath salts, which are typically sold for $25 to $50 per 50-milligram packet at convenience stores and head shops under names like Aura, Ivory Wave, Loco-Motion and Vanilla Sky. Most of the bans are in the South and the Midwest, where the drugs have grown quickly in popularity. But states like Maine, New Jersey and New York have also outlawed them after seeing evidence that their use was spreading.
The cases are jarring and similar to those involving PCP in the 1970s. Some of the recent incidents include a man in Indiana who climbed a roadside flagpole and jumped into traffic, a man in Pennsylvania who broke into a monastery and stabbed a priest, and a woman in West Virginia who scratched herself “to pieces” over several days because she thought there was something under her skin.
Alcohol is a depressant not a stimulant - so has different results and rarely results in the type of behavior described above.
Granted everyone's body is different. But PCPs' and amphetamines and mephatamines are dangerous due a tendency to result in increased "anxiety" and "paranoia" in the user. Also instant death.
PCP's and LSD ("acid") and "escatasy" are far more dangerous than alcohol because they are considered mind-altering drugs. LSD was originally used by psychologists in the military to alter mental patterns of people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder during the Vietnam War (see Timothy Leary, et al.)
Crack, cocaine, and heroine are far more addictive than alcole and require increased quantities to establish the high. They also seriously effect the chemistry of the brain and neurological system.
Alchol - which admittedly has dangerous components if done in excess, is not as addictive. The vast majority can drink a glass of wine or even get shit-faced without ripping myself to shreds. Or having delusions. Since it is a depressant not a stimulant - it rarely results in the type of behavior described above - if it did, it would be outlawed.
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Date: 2011-07-20 04:31 pm (UTC)Sorry for all of the typos.
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Date: 2011-07-24 03:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-24 11:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-24 03:56 am (UTC)LSD is an exceptionally safe drug by any measure. It has no known LD50, hence overdosing on LSD is effectively impossible, and it does not impair judgment or motor control even to the extent that alcohol does. There are no known long-term negative effects associated with its use, other than a disorder called HPPD (hallucinogen persisting perceptual disorder), which affects a tiny number of users -- probably less than 1% -- and is not fatal.
Alcohol is responsible for 79,000 deaths annually in the United States alone, according to the CDC (http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/). That is several times more than all other recreational drugs combined. While comparisons of which drug is "more addictive" are difficult to make with certainty -- since it's hard to get accurate data on the number of addicts vs. number of users for illegal drugs -- there is no doubt that alcohol is highly addictive. It is also neurotoxic, severely impairs judgment, promotes aggression, and has numerous long-term negative health effects. If we had to pick only one drug to zap out of existence, from a public health perspective the choice would be very obvious.
Saying that alcohol is more dangerous than LSD is frankly nuts.