Before I do anything else today I want to apologize for something, but first I must explain to be clear what it is I'm apologizing for.
I write this blog because I'm a repentant former neo-con political activist. When I left politics and stopped thinking collective goals can be more important than individuals, I redirected my 'having a positive impact on human civilization' energies to writing novels. And knowing the world of politics as I do, I know just how limiting having one's political views known can be to the size of a fiction writer's audience.
Fiction, unlike politics, has the amazing potential to be timeless and transcend cultures. Politics is much more limited. Thus I use an image of Homer on my site. His fellow Hellenist, Alexander the Great conquered half their known world and is renowned even to today as one of the world's most amazing political leaders, but it is the words of Homer that ring still today teaching a much larger world about the importance of balance and humility. It is Homer and not Alexander who's legacy is truly great today.
Now if I were to allow my novels to be readily identified as the works of some guy who liked or didn't like a certain politician or a certain political cause, that would be like tying an anchor to them. Besides potentially turning off some potential readers before they even give me a chance, it would be to pin my works to the time and place of very temporal and culturally limited causes.
Things like tax structures, the details of how same-sex couples get their civil unions satisfactorily recognized, and who's president of the United States are very small things in the light of thousands or even just hundreds of years of human history. And my goal, no matter what the odds may be of me reaching them, is to have my works still read centuries from now.
So I feel I must segregate the more temporal things from the rest of my work.
It is in that effort that I created this blog. It serves as a place where I can vent, so to speak, my politics. It has also become a place where I can freely preach in a way that would otherwise ruin a good story. Readers rightly dislike ax-grinding and preachy moralizing in fiction. So I find once a week is well enough venting to keep it from invading my novels.
My novels do in fact contain moral and ideological teachings, just done in ways that readers can take it or leave it and not have them distracted from the story. That they think about it is all the victory I seek there, and that is plenty.
I add that last paragraph only to intercept a misunderstanding. The parts above are the explanation that I felt I needed to preface my apology with. Now for that.
Some weeks I actually have no need to vent and my creativity is spent on the bulk of my true work, novel writing. So it is on such weeks I search my archives a year or more back for something of merit to re-post. Some times I edit it or alter it so as to make it more current and some times I find it stands well as is. It's my goal in this to edify as many readers as possible in the absence of something totally original. Remember It was never my aim to always present something new, just to allow whoever may benefit to do so from what I post.
But I discovered after last week's post that I had re-posted the same old post only about one month prior, and it is for that I feel I must say I'm sorry, I let myself down and perhaps a few readers. I am currently working up some methodology by which I can make such overly-quick repetitions less likely in the future.
I would like to add a word of thanks to some anonymous readers who brought this to my attention. Feedback is a wonderful thing.
I write this blog because I'm a repentant former neo-con political activist. When I left politics and stopped thinking collective goals can be more important than individuals, I redirected my 'having a positive impact on human civilization' energies to writing novels. And knowing the world of politics as I do, I know just how limiting having one's political views known can be to the size of a fiction writer's audience.
Fiction, unlike politics, has the amazing potential to be timeless and transcend cultures. Politics is much more limited. Thus I use an image of Homer on my site. His fellow Hellenist, Alexander the Great conquered half their known world and is renowned even to today as one of the world's most amazing political leaders, but it is the words of Homer that ring still today teaching a much larger world about the importance of balance and humility. It is Homer and not Alexander who's legacy is truly great today.
Now if I were to allow my novels to be readily identified as the works of some guy who liked or didn't like a certain politician or a certain political cause, that would be like tying an anchor to them. Besides potentially turning off some potential readers before they even give me a chance, it would be to pin my works to the time and place of very temporal and culturally limited causes.
Things like tax structures, the details of how same-sex couples get their civil unions satisfactorily recognized, and who's president of the United States are very small things in the light of thousands or even just hundreds of years of human history. And my goal, no matter what the odds may be of me reaching them, is to have my works still read centuries from now.
So I feel I must segregate the more temporal things from the rest of my work.
It is in that effort that I created this blog. It serves as a place where I can vent, so to speak, my politics. It has also become a place where I can freely preach in a way that would otherwise ruin a good story. Readers rightly dislike ax-grinding and preachy moralizing in fiction. So I find once a week is well enough venting to keep it from invading my novels.
My novels do in fact contain moral and ideological teachings, just done in ways that readers can take it or leave it and not have them distracted from the story. That they think about it is all the victory I seek there, and that is plenty.
I add that last paragraph only to intercept a misunderstanding. The parts above are the explanation that I felt I needed to preface my apology with. Now for that.
Some weeks I actually have no need to vent and my creativity is spent on the bulk of my true work, novel writing. So it is on such weeks I search my archives a year or more back for something of merit to re-post. Some times I edit it or alter it so as to make it more current and some times I find it stands well as is. It's my goal in this to edify as many readers as possible in the absence of something totally original. Remember It was never my aim to always present something new, just to allow whoever may benefit to do so from what I post.
But I discovered after last week's post that I had re-posted the same old post only about one month prior, and it is for that I feel I must say I'm sorry, I let myself down and perhaps a few readers. I am currently working up some methodology by which I can make such overly-quick repetitions less likely in the future.
I would like to add a word of thanks to some anonymous readers who brought this to my attention. Feedback is a wonderful thing.
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