Drawing from the Well
Scenes Arranged: 0
Total Scenes: 152
Another zero day. I’m hoping I’m recharged enough now to dive back in and get some work done. This wall I hit with Meibor really broke my momentum. Time to get it back.
Filling the Well
That Hideous Strength: 12%
Sightwitch: 32%
Jessica Jones: S2E10 of 13
20 Editing Tips: 100% (Book 11 of 25 for #ProjectBookworm2019)
I picked up a free book from ProWritingAid on editing tips and burned through it yesterday. It was only 25 pages, but it had some good ideas in there (even if most of the solutions were pointing to their own tools). I also watched a couple episodes of Jessica Jones. The show is okay, but it’s kind of all over the place. I’m ready to see how it ends and move on to the next Marvel Netflix show to check off.
Polishing the Well
Last night was a good family night. We watched the latest episode of The Flash in all its kaiju mind-bending glory. Now, I track all our shows on TV Show Tracker (which is run through trakt.tv) to keep up with new episodes, season starts, and mid-season returns. According to that, there’s only one episode left of this season. If that’s true, I’m pretty disappointed in this season. It has felt largely directionless. It was like it was setting up a bunch of dominoes to kick off an episode or two before the end. That’s great as long as the cascade begins! If next week’s episode is the season’s last, then there’s no payoff for me. I want to know what’s going on in (what now seems to be) the B Plot. That’s FAR more interesting to me than this Cicada wacko. Oy! We’ll see what happens next week.
Well Chat
The Importance of Diversity (NOT Inclusion)
This is a touchy subject. I’m going to do my best not to step on a land mine here. In honor of International Women’s Day, I thought it important to address what is ever-present in the news cycle today: diversity and inclusion.
Now, these are two totally different things. Inclusion is creating equal representation for every segment of the population. Every race. Every creed. Every orientation. It’s arbitrary and contrived and often forced. Readers, gamers, and viewers can all sense when a particular group is being forced into a medium.
Do I think various groups should be included in books, TV, movies, and games? Absolutely, but not for the sake of representation (read: not representation for the sake of representation), but rather for the sake of realism.
The world is a varied and diverse place. The United States is supposed to be one of the most diverse countries in the world and yet all of us white people keep acting like the whole world is white. Part of that is a psychological bias toward people who look like us (I’m not saying it’s right or acceptable, merely that it does exist) and by “us” I mean anyone, not JUST whites. I recently saw an article on Tor about Dune arguably being a white savior story. There is something to that, but Frank Herbert was a white man. It stands to reason that he would write about a white man.
In the same vein, it would be pretentious to say the least if a white man tried to write an authentic story about an African woman, for example. Would anyone believe that he could get her story right, that he had any sort of perspective on that? Of course not. You can only believably write what you know, have experienced, or have so heavily researched as to become an authority.
Does that mean that white men, like me, shouldn’t worry about diversity? Of course not!
As I said earlier, the world is a diverse place filled with various points of view alongside races, beliefs, and choices. Those need to be in books if for no other purpose than to serve as the counterpoint to the main character’s point. We are all influenced by the views and experiences of those around us. If the main character of a book/show/movie/game is surrounded by people who have all had similar experiences to him/her, then there is little for them to learn. We learn by failing and part of failing is finding out that your beliefs aren’t the only beliefs out there.
So I believe diversity is important in creation, but it needs to come from the right place. Acknowledge the differences in our world by reflecting them in the differences of the world you create. This is a lesson I had to learn and I think it would be good for everyone to remember it.
May the tide carry you to safer shores.
BSG