On an Important Decision About Writing

Someone asked me today why I have stopped writing fiction. I told them that my motivation for writing fiction had been bound up with using the fiction to escape poverty. Although I had enjoyed writing fiction for its own sake, that enjoyment had been infilitrated by the hope of living on a normal income from writing fiction instead of being trapped on a government handout that is less than half of a poverty line income, and the enjoyment had become inseparable from the hope. Then I read about the late Philip K. Dick, who had been one of the best writers of his generation, and certainly the best such writer of science fiction and fantasy, but, despite having had several novels published, had spent his whole life on welfare anyway. That made me lose hope of sufficient income from writing fiction, and, when the hope died, it dragged my enjoyment of writing fiction into its grave with it. So you could actually say that my enjoyment of writing fiction is currently buried alive in the same coffin as a corpse, so that it will eventually suffocate to death under unpleasant circumstances. There’s nothing I can do about it, so I’ve accepted that I’ll probably never feel motivated to write fiction again.

But why is it that I never did get published? Same reasons as about 10 million other English-language writers have never been published, many of them better writers than me and more deserving publication. The lesser reason is that the publishing and magazine industries are fall too small to have room to publish all deserving work. The bigger reason is that publishers and magazines are businesspeople, and businesspeople are sterile, which makes them spiteful toward those who are fertile, purely out of unconscious resentment. No successful businessperson ever created anything. What they do is exploit enterpreneurs, inventors, technically creative people and artistically creative people in order to make a million times more money off those things than their creators do. But despite the great wealth and fame and opulent lives of businesspeople, at their core is a bitterness they are not aware of, the bitterness of being barren and obliged to be parasites. This bitterness is probably exacerbated by the fact that they do ruthlessly exploit creative people, which they do in order to retaliate against our fertility, and which in turn makes them retaliate even more spitefully.

I’ve come to the decision that I am going to reject all commercial opportunities I might get for my writing in the future. It’s highly unlikely that I’ll ever get any, so this isn’t something I spend all my time fantasizing about; mostly, I don’t even think about it at all. But I am prepared for all the weaselly, dishonest arguments that business parasites will throw at me–that I can make money if I let them exploit me to make a million times more money for not doing anything of true value, that they can deviously arrange to have my disability checks cut off in order to put pressure on me to play along, that they can frighten my unsophisticated father to tears and use him to put pressure on me to knuckle under, that they can even steal my work and lie about it and get away with it because I can’t afford a lawyer. I’m not going to disclose my strategies in event of such conduct just in case there are businesspeople reading this post, but I’m completely ready for them in peaceful and lawful ways. I’m always peaceful and lawful, and also have a peaceful and lawful plan in place in case anyone makes up stories to the authorities, counting on the authorities being bigoted enough against someone with the label of schizophrenia automatically to believe any lie they’re told about me by a scumbag fatcat who has a privileged position in society. It really is great to have all the bases covered so I can don’t worry, be happy. And it’s even better to have conquered despair about my writing and be in a position to accept it just as what it is.

All Hail the Great tl;dr

The acronym “tl;dr” stands for “too long; didn’t read.” Originally used by online readers who found a piece of online writing too long to read all the way through, it has been adopted by online writers to indicate that what follows is a summary giving either the gist of what the previous, longer text says or an emphasis of some important point they want the reader to take away from having read it. I write concluding tl;dr paragraphs often, even when emailing to someone who has said they aren’t necessary. Many other online writers as verbose as me also use them.

But isn’t there an existing English phrase for tl;dr, “To make a long story short?” What’s wrong with just saying that instead of using an acronym that looks like leetspeak and not everyone understands? Simple. For online purposes, “To make a long story short” is itself too long.

I haven’t read any scientific research on the comparative reactions of print and online readers to long documents, but more than a decade of anecdotal experience, not only mine but many other people’s, suggests that what is considered a perfectly acceptable length for a print document is too long for an online one. The most common explanation is that readers find long online documents tedious. This is not altogether a mystery if you look into the history of television. Yes, television.

When the first television sets were being designed way back at the start of the twentieth century, the designers had to determine how often the image on the screen should be repainted by the electron guns in the cathode ray tube behind the display screen. This is something called “the refresh rate.” Very quickly a refresh rate of 60 Hertz was standardized. There were two reasons for this decision. First, that refresh rate is most comfortable for human eyes to view. Second, that refresh rate induces a mild trance in the viewer, in a way analogous to how rapid flickering can trigger an epileptic seizure. This trance was considered desirable for marketing purposes, as a viewer in a mild trance would watch longer and be more likely to believe the truth of what he saw on the screen, as well as be more open to subtexts and subliminal messages. Such has always been the ethics-free world of marketing and sales.

Today’s computer displays are far different from the TV sets of yore, but they still have a refresh rate, and, in most cases, the refresh rate is still 60 Hertz. This has an unexpected effect on people who read text online. While a print book, magazine or newspaper doesn’t refresh, and therefore can be read indefinitely, an online document does refresh, and the refreshing at 60 Hertz impairs the reader’s concentration and makes reading more difficult. Reading is far different from watching images. Reading requires us to use parts of our brains that are actively hindered by a computer display refreshing at the rate it does.

Most people believe miniaturization of devices, such as the emergence of seven-inch tablet computers and smartphones, is what has led to the increasing brevity of text and ever-higher reliance on images. There is no doubt that non-oral communication is shifting steadily in the direction of pictures rather than written words. Yet the real reason behind this might be that the very nature of computer and phone displays militates against reading long documents. Perhaps the tablet would never have been invented if people found it comfortable to read long texts online.

Which brings me to the point of this already-too-long diary-blog entry. tl;dr is now essential for anyone who intends to be verbose. After the fifth medium-sized paragraph of text, most online readers find themselves experiencing tedium and wanting to scroll down to the end just to see how long the rest of the document is. If there is a tl;dr at the end, then it should catch their eye, and enable the writer to get the gist of her point across in a few words for those who aren’t riveted by the full text simply because their display’s refresh rate unrivets them.

tl;dr if you’re going to write long online documents, always use a tl;dr–and if you read online, make a practice of looking for the tl;dr at the end.

In Prays a Charlie: Th Farthur a My Illiteracy

Charlie Farquaharson dun got re-tired even tho he wern’t tired in the furst plais. Spite bein a God-fearin man, Charlie wern’t no kreechur of God. He were the kreechur of yer Canagean cummedium, Dun Hairy One, hoo firs plaid him in 1952, afore even I wuz bored, and I got bored a lung time AGO (but not in yer Artsy Gallowry as is calld that). Hairy One dun never plaid Charlie wif hisself. He furst plaid him in a moosy seriyus on yer Canagean Breadcrustin Corpulayshun teavy nutwerk an laider on yer cummedy seriyus call The Rude Greed Show. But Charlie wer headin fur forescore year, an Hairy One put him out to pasteur on Charlie’s farm by Peary Stound. I dun growed up wif Charlie’s teledivishun seriyus an wif his bookies a which I gut and has red sex outta th ten (if ya counts th bookie as Hairy One put out two yeer AGO calld My Dubble Crossin, which ain’t by Charlie but by Hairy One about playin Charlie). So I’s exorcisin my frenchfries here ta communimemorait Charlie and th contribulation his bookies maid ta my illiteracy. Thank yees fer readin.