My drug of choice is writing––writing, art, reading, inspiration, books, creativity, process, craft, blogging, grammar, linguistics, and did I mention writing?
Low, dramatic voice: For tenthousand years I have slumbered.
Me: Uh...it's actually only been a couple of months.
Low voice: I thought you said this was long overdue.
Me: Yeah...but not that long.
Low voice: A couple of months isn't really that dramatic.
Me: Well, that's why I hired a dramatic low voice. You're getting half of today's net earnings. Punch it up. Do your thing. Earn that seven cents.
Low voice: Punch it up, he says.
Me: Okay, take two......
Low voice: For...uh eighty-sixthousand, four hundred minutes I have slumbered. But now, I return to a world that has forgotten me.
Me: Beautiful. Thanks low dramatic voice.
Low voice: No problem. Glad I could help.
Writing About Writing is deliciously free. It is ecstatically free. And for some of you, it is orgasmically free. (I'm basing that last one on some pretty sketchy statistical analysis, but I stand by it.) It will always stay deliciously, ecstatically, and (possibly) orgasmically free, but we depend on the generosity of our readers. I don't like to beg, but without you, W.A.W. would have to drop to one post a week while I go get a "real job" with "prospects" and "a decent retirement plan." (Those are the demands of Unsupportive Girlfriend.) I've had one of those jobs, and they suck. They suck bad. If indolent high school student haikus were a metaphor for suckage, "real jobs" would be: "Not sure what to write/This assignment is stupid./When would we use this?"
On the other hand, if this job starts paying the bills, I can do things like bring you more and better content, get a copy editor for my posts, and make the U.I. on this webpage not suck flaming Aye Aye testicles.
Oh sure. Bring me into this.
I currently make about five dollars a day (roughly a dollar an hour). Since I don't live in Romania or Thailand, $1/hour is not as awesome as it sounds. Also, over half of that comes from only three donors. Nearly 75% comes from my top eight donors. Ad revenue accounts for perhaps 10%. My ability to keep doing this daily depends entirely on you.
(~points at Low, Dramatic Voice~)
Low Dramatic Voice: Entirely upon you.
If you love this blog, and have been entertained by its almost-daily updates, informative articles, fiction, and more, why not cruise over to the Conspicuously Placed Tip Jar and drop in a few dollars. And if you really like W.A.W. it's very easy to set up Paypal as a monthly payment. I'm a struggling artist, so it doesn't take much to impress me. You can give up a McDonalds Value Meal a month, and I will think that donation makes you the most awesome person in the damned universe.
No money? No problem!
W.A.W. will never be the kind of web site to hit you up every article for social media proliferation like some hyper dog humping your leg (ohboyohboyohboypleasesharethisontwitterohboyohboy), but that's where the money shot is, baby. Toss us some love and we won't care that you've read for years and never donated a dime. Share an article or two that you've enjoyed on Facebook or Twitter and it's like the sweet ambrosia of a growing audience.
It really does matter, and it really does help. This blog is going nowhere without you. And who knows, maybe your shared article is the one that gets my blog in front of my next patron muse.
And please, turn off your adblocker for any website you love. (Low Dramatic Voice: Any website!) You're basically killing the ability of those sites to bring you free content. We know you hate commercials, but adblockers prevent websites from making money and that means they either have to find other ways to make money or the content providers all hang up their creative spurs and go manage pet food stores or count paper clips or something. You can turn them on and off for just the domains you want to support (and right back off if they use pop ups or something). So if you're a fan of something, let it make some money.
Something a little different is going to start soon here at Writing About Writing.
We're going to start doing reruns on Sunday! ~pulls out party poppers~
Yay! Reruns! Reruns are the best! Reruns make me sexually aroused and–
Guys....?
GUYS???
Aw come on!
Wait...don't run away just yet. There is a method to my madness.
Anyone following us on Twitter, G+, or Facebook knows that W.A.W. is no stranger to my posting reruns. Most days on those media, I post at least one rerun. "Reruns" is a bit of a misnomer. It's more like the best of the past. (But that doesn't rhyme with Sunday, so obviously it sucks.) I don't put up old poll results or the monthly status reports or anything like that. I put up the articles that got good response when they first went up even if good response for the time was a few dozen hits instead of a few hundred.
So why bother doing reruns here--even if it's just on Sundays?
There are hundreds of new subscribers (and one or two more each week) who never see old posts. Only the posts that are new for the day in question. It gives them the opportunity to see some of the best of the past. I can't deny them the exquisite ecstasy that long time fans have come to know and love.
People often come to my blog, but don't look around at the old articles. This will put some of the classics back on the front page for a few days.
Usually there is NOTHING here on Sundays. Only the fact that my blog is humping my leg to post on weekends so that we don't drop below 1000+ a day in May. This will give me a chance to post content without the time and pressure of writing a whole new entry. This helps me to get page views but remain irredeemably lazy.
I currently spend a modest promotional budget on Stumbleupon, which only promotes the front page of W.A.W. This gives those who stop by something to see (and something of value to see) on Sundays. If you can call my old entries "value." (But then again they're free, so you get what you pay for.)
Many of my old posts suffer from a horrible, debilitating case of being my old posts. (Being my posts is bad enough, but two years ago, it was an even worse condition.) I've learned a few tricks since then. Several of them need to be retooled into smaller chunks in keeping with internet attention spans. Many need to be rewritten. Some even have formatting errors from when I was still having trouble with the HTML tools. I like the ideas in these posts, but they need a fresh coat of paint.
If I change a post significantly, I'll put the old post in an "originals" menu of The Reliquary so that the old versions are always available to point and laugh at. I do like people being able to see the writing process warts and all, and that includes keeping even the shit that was truly, epically crap available for viewing so that people can say "Wow, you really DO get better from writing every day!" or "Wow, revision really IS important!"
Just a quickie today. I'm headed to San Jose in a couple of hours to do a live podcast with Ace of Geeks (one of the other blogs I write for) about non-traditional publishing, and how it benefits or hinders a modern author.
San Jose Convention Center 4:00 PM in Room E
I have any number of self deprecating jokes to make to try to and diffuse my actual sense of impostor syndrome that is currently eating its way up from my heart into my brain. This seemed like such a good idea two weeks ago when they asked, and now I'm looking for exit routes and wondering why the hell they picked me.
I think they'll post the podcast next Friday, so I'll get a link to that as soon as I can and you all can hear the sweet sultry sound of my voice.
[Note: since I wrote this article, two important issues have been brought to my attention. One is that the turn of phrase "coming out" is really a LGBTQIA+ thing. And though I have "come out" in other ways more appropriate to that phrase, it's not appropriate to use with any once-secret revelation. The other is that the purple fist inside the women's symbol is specifically a black feminism symbol and that many in that community are not thrilled to see it used in the context of general feminism. I apologize for my ignorance on each of these at the time of writing this article. If I had to do it again, I would choose a different title and preview image. I've chosen to leave both in place with this opening disclaimer so that others can be edified as well. I will, however, take one or both down if there is an outcry that this decision was not appropriate.]
Peter says:
This feminist crap is really hurting your blog.... You are alienating your male audience.... Isn't equality the real goal? You obviously write this stuff to feel superior.... Just the word feminism...[blah blah blah]
My reply: [I didn't publish Peter's whole, three-page screed because it was bullshit. (Actually, that's an insult to bullshit.) But I trust you get the idea.]
Hi Petey. Little hint: if you send me an "anonymous" e-mail less than 24 hours after I've unfriended you on Facebook, and in said e-mail, you make all the same points that you did on FB, it's pretty easy to figure out who wrote it. Sock puppet e-mail accounts are only so useful when you use the exact turns of phrase.
You know, concern trolling is still trolling, right? While I'm touched at your magnanimous advice about how to run my own blog, I'm just not sure that I really have a huge following of patriarchy loving readers who are as put off by my crap as you think, but if I do, I'm really okay if after today's post they either A) learn something or B) are disgusted and go away.
Frankly, I'm fucking tired. I'm tired of tiptoeing around this issue (and other issues) because "this is a blog about writing." The fact that I'm a feminist is already the worst kept secret on this blog. (It's right up there with the fact that writers don't really actually have groupie threesomes.) But if I'm going to have to put up with shart offerings like your three page "what about the menz" manifesto of ignorance anyway, I may as well be loud and proud. So today (thanks to you Pete–thanks to YOU) I'm saying fuck it, and I'm coming out as feminist.
I'll just have to cry myself to sleep tonight when my massive throng of MRA followers unfriend me.
Feminist is a title I was *GIVEN,* not one I took upon myself. So let me tell you a story about how I became a feminist, Peter. Because not that long ago, I sounded exactly like you. Cast your mind back just about four years ago. It's 2010 and the world is still pissed off about the ending of Lost.
See, I used to be the guy who didn't like the word feminist. I thought it promoted inequality. By its very nomenclature, it was unequal. I thought it was "all about women." I preferred words like humanist or equalist. [2010 me would have loved Joss Whedon's speech late last year.] I listened to feminists fight, sometimes even among themselves, to control the meaning of that word. Some versions wanted to include everyone who liked equality. Some radical versions of it declared that as a man, I could NEVER be feminist.
I was above such petty strife, for I was a superior and evolved being. I didn't like labels. I preferred to talk about ideas.
Wasn't I totes fucking evolved? Man that shit was like next level deep. (2014 Me: Yes indeed, past Chris. That shit certainly was deep!)
Whenever someone asked me about gay rights or women's rights, I said (with evolved-ier-than-thou benevolence) "Why don't we work on human rights, brah. Why does it always have to be about one group instead of everyone." I mean holy fucking shit was I ever deep! If I learned one more meaningful truth, I was going to evolve into a being of pure energy.
But something about my world view wasn't quite right. The allies I was gaining weren't actually the people I felt were fighting the good fight. They seemed to be content playing devil's advocate for some hypothetical situation in which a man was misjudged or loudly proclaiming their problem with the language of feminism and not so much their alignment with its ideals.
Whenever I was just humming on about equality in a very non-specific way ("women are people!" "women are equal!" "equality is the default position!" "of course inequality sucks!" "we shouldn't be treating either gender as special!") everyone nodded sagely. "Oh Chris, you are so right with your rightly rightness!" they would say to me. "You are deep in all the deepest of ways. You call out our sexism and reverse sexism alike with your platitudes of power!"
"You teach us how to be..." they said with a sniff and a dramatic pause, "...better humans."
Sure, some uppity feminists would be all in my face saying "Um....equality and feminism are the same thing." and I would soften my eyes and say with my best Ted Mosby impression "Are they? Are they really? Because it seems to me that you can't exclude an entire gender when you're talking about equality. Even the word feminism has gender bias in it."
And...this is the way the world went.
For a time.
But I started to....notice...something.
People sure did like my equivocal, lukewarm lip service to equality. They really liked it. When I talked about social justice in the vaguest, most noncommittal terms possible the cis, white, able, males just ate it up. That was just the bee's knees. It was the cat's meow.
However, whenever I started to bring up actual specifics, like pay discrepancies or gender portrayals or sexual assault or human trafficking or even the way traditional gender roles tend to disadvantage BOTH men and women in different ways, people would begin to use this word to describe me.
"Feminist."
I would deny it, of course. "No no no...this is about equality." But for some reason, they would not be convinced.
It kept happening. Over and over.
It was an invective–or intended to be. The way "liberal" was used after 9/11 or the way someone says "intelligentsia" to an academic institute that has debunked their pseudoscience. People would (as you have done) often follow up "feminist" with "crap" or "shit" or maybe "agenda." They would claim that I only cared about these issues because I wanted to get laid and had succumbed to some Manchurian Candidate caliber mind control, which according to them had also left me impotent (but apparently still wanting to get laid, I guess). This attempt at an incivility became very closely linked with the slightest attention to CERTAIN issues–often the issues of greatest inequality, and ALWAYS the issues surrounding gender.
But I really was about equality. I really did care about all inequality. How could I ignore those issues of the GREATEST inequality?
Oddly, this never happened when I brought up the inequalities of men. No one labeled me a masculist or called me out for ignoring the plight of women. As long as I was talking about men's issues I was talking about human issues and general equality. Men's issues were human issues. Women's issues were well...you know...some chick thing.
Gosh, I just can't imagine why.
If I talked about the selective service or men's gender roles as providers, people went back to nodding sagely. I didn't particularly think that these issues quite matched the scope of women's inequalities, but as long as I talked about the former, and never talked about the latter, people assumed I was all about equality. "True story, brah!" they would say.
Their sage nodding made them look like bobble heads.
Unless, of course, I began to drift into the territory of blaming those inequalities on our expectations of masculinity and our unequal gender roles, and then–shockingly–it started up again with a vengeance. "Feminist!" It was okay to complain about how unfair it was to be a man, but if I suggested any alternative of egalitarian roles or a shifting of power, I was once again a "feminist."
I realized that the discourse itself was laden with inequalities. People–most often (but not always) men–who tend to be into words like humanism and equalism and insist that today's default is equality and that "we're past all that now" were always pitted against me. They seem to believe that only after a laundry list of men's grievances were rectified, would it even fair to BRING UP women's issues–to say nothing of spending social capital becoming aware of them. Their effort was expended not in addressing or redressing issues, but in muscling into conversations to make sure the focus was still on them that not ALL men behaved poorly or that sometimes unpleasant things happen to men too.
"That happens to men too!" they keen.
Does it happen to men and so they feel solidarity? No. Does it happen to men and so they can relate? No. Does it happen to men and so they want to link arms and go fix it...together? No. Does it happen to men, and since it's bad enough they can really appreciate the urgency of the fact that it affects women disproportionately? No. Does it happen to men and they then really GET it? No. Does it happen to men and they turn to women and say "Holy crap my fellow humans. Given how difficult this experience is to my half of the population, I can only sympathize with how much worse it is to be disproportionally affected by it! Clearly, you have a legitimate grievance." No.
No.
No, it is always, always, ALWAYS used in only one way: "That happens to men too......so shut up."
Calls for general, vague, unspecified equality are most often used when shutting down conversations about CERTAIN issues. Again and again and again. They sound noble, but they are used as the stop energy to a conversation or complaint that women have about their systematic treatment in this world. They are used to silence and derail. They are a counterpoint. And they are employed to achieve anything but equality.
And not to put too fine a point on it, but feminism is willing to discuss how the power systems in play (oh the dreaded P word) hurt men as well as women. They do it all the time. That's why they want to dismantle the whole thing, and in fact you would only have to listen to a feminist define themselves (rather than their opponents) to grasp this.
"Equalists" without the slightest sense of irony do not seem to be willing to extend women's issues the same fucking courtesy. They do not seem to realize that their quest to get men's rights represented happens to the exclusion of women, but also to the exclusion of trans folks, gay folks, people of color, or any other group that isn't them. Basically...they're projecting their own prejudice onto feminism.
I didn't have to care about gender issues that affected women to the EXCLUSION of men's issues. I didn't even have to care about these issues MORE than men's issues.
I just had to care about them.
At all.
Even a little.
That made me a......."feminist." Over and over and over. "Feminist." Even spat out in repudiation: "God you're not a...feminist are you?"
Not an isolated incident. Not a few bad apples. Silencing any genuine, specific inequalities that had anything to do with women was the inevitable, immutable flowchart of cultural sentiment. It was everywhere I went–in person, online, conservative, liberal. Everyone knew the script by heart. Everyone rolled it out when the issues came up. Pernicious, ubiquitous, and always couched in the vestments of equality, its only real goal was to shut down one side of the conversation.
"Feminist."
That's when I began to realize that the conversation itself was imbalanced. It was a microcosm of the problem. The slightest loss of focus, attention, and ultimately power from men was unacceptable. God help these poor dudebros, the histrionic feminazis were coming for their ability to control the narrative. Because if they can't even relinquish their control over the definition of a single word, how are they going to accept entire other narratives?
Fuck man, a guy can't even ignore the history of feminism and invent words to describe struggles they haven't been a part of without a bunch of uppity b's blogging them into oblivion anymore. What IS the world coming to?
If they can't even relinquish their control over the definition of a single word, how are they going to accept entire other narratives?
And that is why it bothers them, Peter. (And perhaps why it bothers you?) It has begun to dawn on those in power that in order to achieve anything beyond the after school special lip service to the equality they claim to love so dearly, they will have to relinquish some of their vaunted power to control how we frame stories, how we use terms, and how we view the struggle for equality. They may have to let half the population have equal say on what the issues of our time are or about the marginalization that still goes on...or holy shitsnacks, even about whether or not a woman they fucked ever actually consented. And that scares the crap right out of them.
That's about when I began to wear the aspersion as a badge of honor.
"Feminist!"
Upsetting people who are struggling (very, very hard, I might add) to maintain the status quo has always been a particular point of amusement for me, so I found "feminist" to be less and less insulting the more it was bandied about. My subversion has always gone beyond a slogan to sell more jeans.
Because what's more likely, Peter? That a multinational, millions-strong conspiracy of women are trying to assert their superiority over men by talking about how street harassment isn't actually flattering and telling their rape stories, or that maybe–just maybe–the people who stand to have the most to lose from equality are doing what the oppressors have done since the dawn of time in the arc of human history: painting themselves as eminently reasonable and those who struggle under their dominion as hysterical and out of control?
Which of those seems more rational? More logical?
Being afraid of/hating things you don't understand.
Hmmmm. I'm certain I've heard that somewhere before.
I remember the exact moment when I shifted sides. I was enraged that a judge said a woman wasn't raped because her pants were too tight. I could barely even type, I was so pissed off. There is no world in which that should be a men's issue or a women's issue. That is just a fucked up issue of human suffering and oppression in a kangaroo court.
But when I wrote about how upset it made me? "Feminist!"
"Rape happens to men too," my sagely-nodding allies said–as if somehow this issue was about them, that someone had claimed otherwise, or that it wasn't absolutely fucked up enough to be worthy of not derailing for even a few minutes.
That's why I stopped correcting people. That's why I started to smirk and give a little half shrug.
The problem isn't the word feminism. ("Fem" is not a bad thing, and the hypocrisy of this position can be observed when many of the same people with an axe to grind against the word feminism will roll their eyes at changing mankind to humankind.)
The problem is the idea of feminism. If feminists ignored the history and context of their struggles to this point and changed their name tomorrow to "equalists," these people wouldn't suddenly jump on board. They would just quibble over that. (Well "equalist" implies that we're all in the same place, so I prefer the term "egalitarian" which discusses potential.) As they would quibble over the next term and the next and the next. ("Egalitarian" implies that we shouldn't have designated roles so I prefer the term "humanist" "Well, humanism is a philosophical movement, so I prefer the term....") And while they stroke their chins and have a brandy in an endless debate over the perfect word, every issue to which those labels concern themselves remain un-redressed.
And it's not as if these people couldn't struggle for equality under another label–any other label. Instead they have limited their "struggle" to policing the word wherever they see it. When your only cause for equality is to piss and moan about the label used by the people actually doing the work, you suck at caring about equality.
The way I know this is because such groups exist, and the "feminist word police" haven't joined them. They just sit around and find excuses that rationalize the fact that they don't want to fight against a status quo that benefits them.
"Feminist." (Yeah, okay. If that's what you want to call me. Sure.)
I didn't claim it. I didn't declare it. I didn't even want it at first. To this day it is seldom a word I use to describe myself as some believe it can never fully be claimed by men.
It was hurled at me for caring about things like consent, harassment, or impossible beauty standards. It was flung at me for suggesting that victim blaming sucks or that there might be a double standard in politics. It was lobbed at me like a grenade because I cared about the glass ceiling or vastly, hugely, outrageously imbalanced violence between the genders.
"Feminist!"
So after a while, I picked up the label, dusted it off, and pinned it to my lapel with a shrug. It kind of looked good on me.
No, that's not even true. I realized that it pisses off exactly the sort of misogynists I like pissing off. It rocks the boat of exactly the mealy-mouthed, diplomatic, Ted Fucking Mosby, Me-From-2010, equalist, status-quo-lovers I want to shake up. It stands for all the things I actually, really, honestly stand for rather than just their unctuous homage. It goes beyond platitudes and bumper stickers, and I like it because of that.
It is what the world sees of me and what the world won't let me forget, and so now I wear it like armor.
Not that kind of cleaning house, Chris.
Though....actually, I'm sure plenty of that is to come.
So I'm doing some work on the blog today that is a little less visible than my standard posts, not that this post is invisible. Though that would be totally cool! Except it probably wouldn't get very many hits. So maybe that's a shitty superpower for a blog.
Um...anyway....
The Fortune Cookie posts need to have links to each other. I only intended to do one or two at first, but they were so popular (and an excellent filler when I was behind on writing a real article) that I've ended up putting up one every couple of months or so. Apparently I can jazz hands with the best of them.
A few of the older Not So Best of the Mailbox articles have been getting a bunch of hits for some reason and are being promoted to The Best of the Mailbox, and of course that means a few who were sitting pretty among the best will be walking The Green Mile. (I was going to say "the walk of shame" but what the fuck is shameful about getting laid???)
We're long overdue for another entry into W.A.W.'s Staff. Honestly, it's almost like the staff doesn't actually care about getting that finished!
Leela Bruce says she's not going to post her latest article until The Pointer Sisters have had more than a single entry. (Apparently it's important to at least one of the voices in my head that the rest of them pass the Bechdel test.)
Some of the menus need cleaning up. They are dirtier than a twelve year old.
Still noodling my next offering of Demon's Rubicon. I'm hoping to get that up very soon.
There may actually be a post going up either late tonight or extraneously tomorrow. It may be of limited interest to those not either following my time management crisis or those who have ever tried to evaluate their priorities and reorganize their lives.
We have a new menu on the VERY basics about to go up. (And if that doesn't bate your breath, I just don't know what will.)
This is more a personal thing than a blog thing, but I owe some marvelously generous patrons thank you notes, and I am deplorably behind on that.
Oh and I just got an absolute gem of a piece of hate mail which–seeing as it is more about me than writing–will have to be answered on Monday as part of my personal updates. But it's going to need to be handled just right....
The worst professional athlete you can think of has worked harder to get where they are than most people can really wrap their heads around. The same is true of most published authors.
When it comes to love and lust and sex and fun and passion, there's a very fine line between inspiration and distraction.
An assignment deadline is an external motivation and I've seen a lot of good writing occur because of one, but they only exist for as long as they exist. Eventually you have to motivate yourself. You can go to school until you have a PhD in creative writing, but you still eventually have to motivate yourself.
When it comes to writing, "talent" is just another word for hard work.
MFA programs are a relatively new phenomenon. Before the 50's people just had to read a lot and write a lot. It is a mark of extraordinary financial privilege to be able to spend $40,000+ and two or three more years of college on an education that almost prides itself on its lack of a marketable skill.
You will eventually solicit criticism from someone you respect and they will annihilate you with the scathing of your lifetime. It will be....awful. Rejection. Failure. You may question whether or not you even want to keep writing. It is easily the worst thing you will ever endure with regards to your writing. But also, it is the worst thing you will ever endure. Ever. There are no bears. Or bees. Or snakes. Or bears that shoot bee-covered snakes at you when they roar.
In truth, we don't even LIKE those honey eating motherfuckers.
"Loving" writing is usually a misnomer of some degree or another. Some writers do enjoy the process. Some attend to it like a sick compulsion. But with almost all... OH the bliss of having written.
The worst part about One True Way™advice is that everyone booby traps the jungle behind them. We can't help it. Every success story via some route or trick or formula makes the next one that much harder. Building an audience with a blog is harder today than when I did it two years ago, and it was harder then than when the people I was emulating started it. People telling you "this is how to do it," may be ignoring the fact that it's much harder to do it that way than it was for them. This is doubly true of traditionally published authors whose careers hit their stride over ten or fifteen years ago. The only constants are writing, reading, and a shit ton of hard work.
I meet way too many writers who are special snowflakes. They don't need to write every day because their creativity works in bursts. They don't need to do a lot of revision because they "think about things a lot before they write". They don't need peer review because they "have the eye" for good writing. They don't need to be taught craft...blah blah blah. Of course I've yet to meet a single one who was also a success. Most successful writers work normally and their most extraordinary quality is their ability to acknowledge that fact.
Most writers will tell you that perfectionism kills creativity and productivity. Most MFA programs will tell you that their goal is to help a writer achieve the closest thing to artistic perfection the writer is capable of. I'll let you do the math to figure out what ends up happening to most writers in MFA programs.
The idea that one has to live in order to be able to write is almost always chanted by those who don't want to write (and usually before they head off to a double shift at Petco, not before they go to hike the Himalayas with nothing but a begging bowl). The real challenge of a fiction author is not to live a life that can't help but be exciting when it reaches the page; it is to bring new life to the pedestrian.
This blog exists as a real-time demonstration of many of the most important lessons a writer can learn. If you want to see me get better at writing, just go look at the old entries. If you want to see success come from tenacity, watch my audience and income slowly growing over time. There are no tricks. Nothing is happening "behind the scenes." You can watch my career develop and see exactly how much effort I'm putting into it.
Before committing any platitude of writing advice to memory, know at least a dozen writers of note who have broken it spectacularly. That will prepare you for exactly the sort of guideline-not-rule/borderline-bullshit paradox writing advice tends to be.
This time I'm going to get more than five votes!
This is MY year.
What is the best Fantasy Series?
Our May poll is live–or at least the first of our May polls. And it looks like this battle is so epic it will be going on into June.
How appropriate for a fantasy series!
Due to the extraordinary number of write-in nominations for our Best Fantasy Poll, we are going to have a semifinal poll to determine which titles will go on to our final poll. I selected each semifinal round randomly–that is to say I had a friend pick 4 randomly (in a choice of 1-5) and I picked every 4th title until I had done half the list.
No series made it without being seconded. There were some good ones suggested, but they just didn't have any support.
And it should go without saying but please vote on the BOOKS. I'm thrilled you liked the various movies, but if you think that Lord of the Rings was maybe a little dry and spent too much time on describing the countryside then just remember you're not voting on whether Daniel Radcliffe or Elijah Wood has a cuter butt.
(Besides, that's not even a question–it's totally Daniel Radcliffe.)
The poll is at the bottom left of the side widgets. It's long and black and the subject of much innuendo. Everyone gets three votes. The top four books will go on to our final round.
Also, because of a quirk in Polldaddy (the polling program) it can only hold your IPS addy for a week, so if you vote early, you can technically get in a second vote right before the poll closes as well. VOTE EARLY! VOTE OFTEN!
Also, please be aware that I have all but been promised another round of "ballot stuffing" by our mischievous Pratchett fan, so if you want to see your beloved series do well, you might have to put this poll in front of some fan pages and galvanize support.
Or decapitate him while saying "There can be only one!" but that seems a little extreme to me. Maybe at least try Reddit first?
Low, dramatic voice: For ten thousand years I have slumbered. 
