(2:58 to 3:22 PM on April 7, 2021)

When first learning to write on my own, I spent so much time second-guessing my options, trying to work and rework and rework individual sentences. Eventually, I realized this was a mess and slowing me down, and by then I felt more confident about writing a sentence well enough and going on. On reviewing, I'd get tangled and uncertain, but I could spend long periods forgetting all that entirely, simply drafting.

The trouble now became twofold: more to edit, less cause to recast any piece. I've always been a dabbler and petty tweaker. Some wiser voice in me knows I should step back and make bigger changes: cut paragraphs, find entirely new routes to the single thought in a sentence, zero in on my thesis overall and the sense of each paragraph, rearrange my outline's face with a crowbar, and so on. Instead, I nickel and dime my words, hoping for a flow that's already inherent in the drafting.

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When first learning to write on my own, I spent so much time second-guessing my options, trying to work and rework and rework individual sentences. Eventually, I realized this was a mess and slowing me down, and by then I felt more confident about writing a sentence well enough and going on. On reviewing, I'd get tangled and uncertain, but I could spend long periods forgetting all that entirely, simply drafting.

The trouble now became twofold: more to edit, less cause to recast entirely. I've always been a dabbler and petty tweaker. Some wiser voice in me knows I should step back and make bigger changes: cut paragraphs, find entirely new routes to the single thought in a sentence, zero in on my thesis overall and the sense of each paragraph, rearrange my outline's face with a crowbar, and so on. Instead, I nickel and dime my words, hoping for a flow that's already inherent in the drafting.

*

When first learning to write on my own, I spent so much time second-guessing my options, trying to work and rework and rework individual sentences. Eventually, I realized this was a mess and slowing me down, and by then I felt more confident about writing a sentence well enough and going on. On reviewing, I'd get tangled and uncertain, but I could spend long periods forgetting all that entirely, simply drafting.

The trouble now became twofold: more to edit, less reason to recast entirely. I've always been a dabbler and petty tweaker when editing. Some wiser inclination in me knows I should step back and make bigger changes: cut paragraphs, find entirely new ways to approach the single thought in a sentence, zero in on my thesis overall and the sense of each paragraph, rearrange heavily, and so on. Instead, I nickel and dime my words, hoping for a flow that's already inherent in the drafting.

*

When first learning to write on my own, I spent so much time second-guessing my options, trying to work and rework and rework individual sentences. Eventually I realized this was a mess and slowing me down, and by then I felt more confident about writing a sentence well enough and going on. On reviewing, I'd get tangled and uncertain, but I could spend long periods forgetting all that entirely, simply drafting.

The trouble now became

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When first learning to write on my own, I spent so much time second-guessing my options, trying to work and rework and rework individual sentences. Eventually I realized this was a mess and slowing me down, and by then I felt more confident about writing a sentence well enough and going on. On reviewing, I'd get tangled and uncertain, but I could spend long periods forgetting all that entirely, simply drafting. The trouble now became

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When first learning to write on my own, I spent so much time second-guessing my options, trying to work and rework and rework individual sentences.

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When first learning to write on my own, I spent inordinate time second-guessing my options, trying to work and rework and rework the individual sentence.

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When first learning to write on my own, I spent so much time second-guessing my options, trying to work and rework and rework the individual sentence.

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When first learning to write on my own, I spent an inordinate time second-guessing my options, trying to work and rework and rework the individual sentence.

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I spent an inordinate amount of time, when I was first learning to write on my own, second-guessing my options, trying to work and rework and rework an individual sentence.

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I spent an inordinate amount of time when I was first learning to write on my own second-guessing my options, trying to work and rework and rework an individual sentence.

You can talk about mental health/illness to raise awareness for others. You can talk about it to be understood. Everyone wants to be understood sometimes, and if there's a thing to know about mental health, it's that people don't understand, and you may not understand yourself. If everyone got it completely on all sides, it wouldn't be an issue. If you fully understood your condition, you'd fix the parts that are severe problems. It's just puzzles, in the end. Don't let people convince you otherwise. Puzzles.

My weakness as a writer is that I'm not nearly ruthless enough. I let my discursive, ADHD-addled thought patterns lead me by the nose. It's insecurity about my own creative powers, which I usually see as feeble. The only way I can get some good ideas is by indulging the hell out of my wandering, hoping that a few of the tangents connect up. That's what I believe deep down, and it shows.

I'm very sympathetic about feminism's push against traditional gender norms, because I myself dislike and distrust such norms. If I don't like to be held to them, and I feel my own way is a better way and the right way, compared to an artificially fixed "standard" that knows nothing about me as a person, then why would I think a woman would like it, especially if those norms have been more restrictive toward women? Though I can't say I'm a woman, I can say, as close as means anything, "I totally get it."

Change takes raising awareness, and raising awareness sometimes seems to demand steps that would otherwise be less than ideal. Though I support breaking down gender norms and oppression wholeheartedly, and often find evidence of such norms (not to mention oppression and subjugation) to be distasteful in old cultural artifacts, there is one step I prefer not to take, myself, because I consider it not right. That is, old-fashioned gender norms are no good to enforce on anyone, let alone today, now that we know better; yet, personal tastes and distastes aside, I do feel we should stop short - or, anyway, I will - stop short of seeing all evidence of such as wrong. If a person wishes to be traditionalist, and this harms no one, then that should be as acceptable as anything else. And if a character is portrayed in fiction as traditionally masculine or traditionally feminine, with the usual specialization and division of responsibilities implied, then that is not in itself evil in any way. If we may be influenced by literature toward what's in it, we also may be influenced by literature away from what's in it. The argument that depicted violence makes us violent ourselves has gone around a million times. Does it? The evidence suggests it does not, or not in particular. There's even a case to be made, though I can't vouch for it with any numerical evidence or even a clear opinion, that fiction and virtuality are the place for violence, and putting it there makes us safer.

Personally I do suspect that boys/men and girls/women, in aggregate, have a few instincts and motivations that are a bit different - there's plenty of evidence for that in the rest of the tree of life, especially in the branch we live on, and in human history. That is, while I'll hear arguments and evidence with interest and agree with many of them, I don't believe "it's all socialization." Now, we may want to cast the net far and wide so that we can change as much as possible. That's important and probably necessary. But I will, myself, out of genuineness, stop short of supposing that every supposed difference is an oppressive, patriarchal conspiracy. Maybe girls do tend to like dolls better, on average, and that drives the market for dolls, rather than the patriarchy conspiring to get all girls believing they should be baby machines, and brain-washing them with dolls. The latter explanation, I must be honest, sounds like a conspiracy theory, and poorly thought out. Still, the establishment sells dolls to girls at great profit, and mocks boys for liking dolls, and this creates further differences where either there weren't any, or those differences were natural, adaptive, flexible, subject to circumstances and evolution and personal strengths and weaknesses and learning and role models and dreams and so on and so forth.

Having said all that, representation makes a difference. That is also true. I'd like to apply that standard to new representation, and let old representation be what it is and was without cursing it. That's my way. It feels like the best and most sensible way to me, and so I follow it, and will put in a good word for it here and there.

So, speaking of good words, I thought I should say: fuck the patriarchy!

I understand that raising awareness isn't always easy, and doesn't please everyone, and will at least temporarily make a few people enemies, unfortunately. That's to be expected. Count me in on the side of feminists everywhere. Do know that I put intellectual honesty on a pedestal, and that's behind both my criticism and my agreement. The truth is out there, as the logline goes, and a lot of feminism is right there in that truth.

Amnesia is one of the oldest tricks in the book in fiction, so much so that a friend of mine who's a writer dismisses it everywhere it occurs. I myself feel similarly about zombies.

Allergy notwithstanding, we both appreciate particularly surprising examples of our allergic trope. For my part, it isn't as if I hate the idea of zombies. Not at all. I thoroughly enjoyed 28 Days Later, Hot Fuzz was pretty great, I'm highly entertained by both cuts of Romero's Dawn of the Dead, and even a cruddy B-movie like Zombi 2 can become something I remember fondly. (On the other hand, I hated the zombie-inspired finale to Skyfall - a huge pile of utterly senseless, numbing violence that's deafening in the theater - though I will agree it's semi-interesting for the fact they aren't actually zombies, and I liked the rest of the movie.) What puts me off is seeing a zombie variety of absolutely everything. That level of popularity feels overpoweringly gullible to me. Meanwhile, amnesia is objectionable because it's such an easy character and plot hack.

Ultimately, it isn't that a story using either of these can't be any good, but eventually it becomes difficult to suppress fatigue and irritation with everyone's copycat gullibility - if too many people do "the wave" for too long, that ends up feeling lazy, uninspired, and uninspiring. Excess unoriginality has a curious way of making originality itself seem futile or worthless. That's depressing.

One trope related to zombies lands better with me, though. This is the one where everyone seems to have been replaced by someone who looks like them, but isn't. The house, town, or world is filling with imposters, and the only person who notices (or the only human left?) talks about this and is treated like a lunatic. A cliche for sure, but it's a bit less common than zombies, and it can be done really interestingly - The Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, etc. There's usually a psychiatrist or house arrest or mental ward (rather overplayed and unrealistic, so I'm less a fan of that aspect). The mental health reference is no coincidence, because the trope comes from a real condition called Capgras Syndrome, which you can look up if you're interested. For what it's worth, I know two people who experience Capgras Syndrome now and then, and I've been on the "imposter" end of it, hearing the news that someone pretending to be me was on the phone earlier - only, it actually was me. In fiction, this typically serves as a metaphor for situations where everyone disagrees with you, but you're convinced you're on to something, and it turns out you are. The perception divide can make the rest of the world seem hostile and dismissive, and we need stories about getting through the situation well.

I'm beginning to feel about AI the way I do about zombies and amnesia. The topic is all the rage, and whenever something's all the rage, you get exposed to a superabundance of stupid remarks and attitudes. Aside from rabidity and a few similar biological conditions involving sporulation, I'm not sure zombieism has ever existed in reality. (Of course, by applying extending the metaphor, we can refer to consumerism and status quo bias, etc.) Forgetting and computation, on the other hand, are here to stay; amnesia and AI are phenomena with perhaps deeper universality. There is no escaping them for long, I'm afraid. But I actually am very interested in AI, to the extent that I took a course in graduate school and have attended a number of AI conferences as a tourist. I'd simply like to see it talked about differently.

Bandwagons can be off-putting, depending on your personality. Another phrase associatable with the phenomenon is "cargo cults," and that implies the part I don't like: people buying into stuff wholesale because they keep hearing it. A superstition is born. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, but don't carry the bathwater with you everywhere you go just because others do. That's gross.

There is no reason not to let your imagination roam, of course. We've seen an explosion in AI, and no one knows exactly what that will mean 20 years hence. But I'd like to see AI included in ways that scrupulously avoid giving the sense that the idea has been inserted to tick boxes that say "I am current" and "I think tech is cool" and "AI is the GOAT" (for the record, that last box would amuse me, as it's the kind of thing my students would say). AI today is like magic. You can do anything with it. Any problem imaginable in your story, you could inject it with a futuristic AI. It's duct tape for the imagination. It's discount sealant for plot holes.

What I'd love to see more is AI treated as a response to some unexpected diagnosis. 2001 and Her don't just mention or use AI, they start good conversations years or decades after. Raise a thorny question. Add something no one has said yet, or no one explored much. Either that, or approach AI (or any popular topic) from an especially realistic angle, so that I feel more informed about what might actually happen in the next years and decades. That kind of use instantly gains my respect.

If you fail, that's ok. I can tell if you're trying, and that itself gains my respect.

A good principle for representation in stories, one I've heard and want to pass on, is that the ratio of races/identities among characters should be the same as in that society at large. If the story digs into inequities, then of course a more exact realism can make sense or become necessary (and the digging will give balance). But, for example, it's at least slightly noxious or untoward for a story about programmers in America to involve only white men. That is, don't break down the current subculture demographically, as it could easily reflect prejudice in hiring. Represent the wider cultural one. Use the real background numbers. Roll some virtual dice. Or hand-pick your cast, but count. Only deviate from the rule when there's a specific reason. Fiction allows and asks us to draw and change with awareness. And this isn't a strict rule, that is I'm not proposing eviscerations where it's broken, but it is a good guideline. I can't think of a better one.

By the same token, half of characters should be women, or even slightly more than half. I don't care as much about religion so I'm not emphasizing it as much, but the argument is the same, and it might make for a better story. Trying to match the wider demographic background actually, to me, suggests more creative possibilities than trying to profile the audience and cater to them with what they tend to like. The latter easily slips into pandering and cliche. The former is a source of ideas you wouldn't think of. Imagine that.

There is an argument that varying race/gender/etc can make the story seem to be about that when it isn't. But I'd counter that this mainly seems true because the rule isn't followed enough yet, and so when it is, that stands out. If it were usually followed, it wouldn't stand out, and that might result in an actually more effective spin on color-blindness. In other words, with representative mixing we'll stop thinking everything is about race and politics, because representation has reached parity and we've gotten used to seeing what's actually there.

Semantics is important because if two people don't agree on the meaning of a word and don't even realize it, they'll be talking past each other. And if they realize that a seemingly larger disagreement depends on differences in understanding a word (or corresponding situation), then they have gotten somewhere.

No one is obligated to agree with anyone else. Too often in a discussion there's this sense that Thou Shalt See It This Way Or Else. It's never said, really, but it's often implied by tone or dogged repetition.

The only legitimate way to command agreement, in my view, is to be transparent about logic + evidence. What are the logic and evidence that led you to believe what you believe? If those pieces hold up, they more or less speak for themselves. If no one can find the problem with those pieces, or provide an equally compelling logic + evidence argument, then this is the reigning answer, not because anyone is bullying anyone, or demanding anything, but because we live in a material universe that operates according to logic. That is how you establish truth if you find it important to do so. There is no better or more reliable way, and there is no reliable shortcut.

You definitely don't have to think so - no one does, our thoughts are free - but if you don't think so, I would bet you large amounts of money (if I have it) that this will show in the inaccuracy of your beliefs and your thinking. And if I make that bet, I will be walking away richer.

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This is the game of debate. And it is a game. 

And realizing it is a game makes you better at it, because this allows you to step back and see with a bit of detachment, and therefore from more angles. Clinging to one of them isn't conducive to finding the right answer, or proving you've found it if you have.

Ironically the most productive debate is one in which you can humor a position you find incorrect, and others can do the same. It's the attitude of play that brings flexibility to thought where emotions may run high. Expressing a stronger emotion than someone else doesn't establish that you're right. Often what it does is get you caught up in an inflexibility that impairs the process.

Global poverty is serious. But if you can't talk about it as if it weren't serious, you are doing your objectivity - and your debates - a disfavor. This is counterintuitive, and that's why so many debates go badly. Debate is a game. It works better that way. It's more productive that way. If you love someone, set them free. If you want shared truth, open your hands, let go of certainty, and play around with ideas that may seem untrue.

The appearance that you will refuse to even go there - refuse to even consider a possibility - may look strong and persuasive to some people, but to a slightly more sophisticated reasoner, it looks as if you're on crutches and don't know what's going on.

Everyone can benefit from watching and rewatching the movie 12 Angry Men, I suspect, including me. The protagonist is a hero because he's a better debater, and he's a better debater because his stance is flexible. Even though his motives and his questioning are principled and insistent, his stance is flexible. Everyone else is on crutches. He can dance. And that gives him more clarity, not less. Compared to them, he is playing. He knows debate is a game, even when it's deadly serious.