Black Swan Events

Kris Rusch talked about Black Swan Events in her latest Business Musings blog yesterday. She discusses both bad decisions and good decisions over the course of her professional life. I suggest you read it.

For those who don't want to read Kris's blog, a Black Swan Event is an unpredictable event that changes the economy whether on a local stage or world wide.

I'm old enough now to have been through a few as an adult. And the irony is that each Black Swan happened in a different profession in my life.

1991 - The First Gulf War.

I worked as a computer consultant for DuPont. I'd moved to the east coast to get the heck out of Ohio. When the war broke out, part of me knew I should be looking for another job. Part of me knew no where in the U.S. was safe from the coming recession. I give DuPont some credit. When they announced one million lay-offs, they got rid of the contract workers like me first and retrained their employees from closed divisions for other jobs within the company.

Unfortunately, DuPont wasn't the only east coast employer laying off workers. I found myself competing with folks from IBM and DEC (they were the two biggest computer companies at the time) with twenty or more years of experience for jobs along the Atlantic states. I finally nailed a position after two months of solid job searching, but it meant moving back to Ohio.

2001 - The Trio

The beginning of the 21st century had not one, but three Black Swan Events. The first was the tech stock/dot.com crash in April. It unfortunately didn't effect just the dot.coms. DH and his partners had sold their consulting company two years prior, and the new conglomerate had planned to go public in May. Needless to say, that didn't happen, and it made DH's stock worthless.

In the meantime, I'd started a solo law practice. That was going well until 9/11. For those of you who remember, I don't have to remind you of the fear and uncertainty of the time.

Finally, there was the collapse of Enron and other corporations who'd overstated their earnings in an effort to keep the price of their stocks propped up. Enron in particular was the final straw in the Houston economy. I had no new clients because no one could afford my services. Even worse, other law firms were laying off attorneys and staff. A couple of months later, my lease expired and I had to pull the plug. The day I moved out of my office, I curled in a ball in my bed once I got home and cried. I tried practicing from my home for a while, but all the leads my friends threw me evaporated.

2008 - The Housing Crash

I'd been hired by a firm in Houston and was back to practicing law until health problems forced me to quit. Once again, I got a part-time job at a local Hallmark to make ends meet. Unfortunately, between my illnesses over 2006 and 2007 and GK needing two surgeries during that time, our money was stretched to the limit. When the crash occurred, the banks jacked up the interest rates on our credit cards to compensate for their loss of income. Stupid move on their part. We ended up defaulting on the credit cards, but thankfully not our house, though we did consult with an attorney concerning bankruptcy. It took us a long time to dig out from that mess. What's funny is that my income from writing erotica is what changed our financial landscape. *grin*

2020 - The COVID-19 Pandemic

After a series of life rolls from 2013 to being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2018, it took a lot of work in 2019 to get back into the writing and publishing game. I naively thought 2020 would be a breeze. Here we are, two and a half months into the year, and the world has essentially shut down. But that shut down is the only way to stop the spread of the virus.

In a world of chaos, you have to ask yourself, what can you do? What can you control?

In my case, I can control my writing. I have a stockpile of covers. I just need to finish the stories they belong to.

I can stay inside and away from people. The last thing I want to do is spread germs to people who may be even more vulnerable than me.

I can keep in to touch with friends and family who are in the same damn lock-down as I am. E-mails, texts, and phone calls go a long way, even if it's just commiserating with each other.

I throw what little money I have to people who need it. Buy a few covers. Tips for the workers at the carry-out windows. Buy a few books.

I can give Bella some extra cuddles and play time when I need a break. Extra hugs and kisses to DH who's trying very hard to be supportive to his employees and dad right now.

I remind myself that I've survived everything else Murphy, the one true god, has thrown at me.

It's too easy to get lost in the anxiety and fear right now, and to paraphrase Master Yoda, oftentimes that fear turns to hate. We don't know what the world's going to look like once we get to the end of this Black Swan. What we can do is look out for each other and to quote the Doctor, "Always be kind. Never cruel."

Stay on Target! Stay on Target!

Red Leader's Force ghost has been hovering over me lately, extorting me to, of course, "Stay on target!"

While finishing Hero Ad Hoc doesn't compare to blowing up the Death Star, I find myself running into the same trap of fear Red Squadron faced in their attack. I'd hoped to finish the novel last week when I had some relatively free time.

But doctor appointments start up again today. In fact, I've probably been to my first appointment and gone by the time you read this. And I'm beginning to feel like I'm never going to finish this damn book.

I've even resorted to working on Hero De Novo and another unnamed project just to feel like I'm moving forward. It's only a hundred to two hundred words every day or so, but it is enough to spur me back to Hero Ad Hoc.

Normally, I'd chalk up my reluctance to finish to my usual "don't want the story to end" mindset. However, the majority of this book was written after my breast cancer diagnosis.

Yep, a mere fifty thousand words in the last three months. Which is low for me, but hey! Given the circumstances, that's actually pretty good!

I don't know if it's superstition, premonition, or what, but I feel like something's going to happen when I finish this book.

Like everything's going to change.

Which is weird because life is constant change.

It is fear, but a different type of dread. I wish I knew what the hell Red Leader was really trying to tell me. As Luke Skywalker can tell you, Force ghosts are rarely clear in their exhortations and even less cooperative.

Unless it's Yoda blowing up the frickin' Tree of Knowledge.

What Is Literature?

Literature

Definition:

(1) writings in prose or verse

(2) written works, especially those considered of superior or lasting artistic merit

Origin - late Middle English (in the sense ‘knowledge of books’): via French from Latin litteratura, from littera (see letter).

For some reason, the difference between literature considered worthwhile and literature not considered worthwhile has been making the social media rounds over the last couple of days.

First, the magazine Bon Appétit made the mistake of posting this tweet on Twitter:

Nothing like insulting all us romance writers and readers who cook. And really, Bon Appétit? Slut shaming? After how many millions of people read Fifty Shades of Gray openly and publicly with the ORIGINAL COVER!

Bon Appétit has since changed the post:

Say it with yet again, ladies and gentlemen: THE INTERNET IS FOREVER!

Hybrid writer Bob Mayer then blogged about an NYT opinion piece that debated whether elitism or populism is more harmful to the arts. After reading the piece, I have to agree with Bob. The initial premise is like asking which smells worse: dog farts or cat farts.

And yesterday morning, Kris Rusch talked about the same issue in her weekly business blog. Ms. Rusch compared the indie revolution with the post-WWII increase in paperback publishers. The question she proposed: was there such a thing as a "good" book or a "bad" book?

To answer Ms. Rusch's  question: no, I don't think there's any such thing as a "good" or "bad" book. Oh, sure, there may be a difference between technically good or bad writing.

For example, look at how Yoda talks in the Star Wars. Standard English generally follows the subject-verb-object rule. Yet, Yoda's speech pattern generally uses object-subject-verb order.

Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is.

Now if everyone in Star Wars spoke like Yoda, the writer can be properly castigated for abusing the English language, i.e. bad writing. However, Yoda's speech pattern emphasizes his alien-ness. This isn't a guy who thinks like the rest of us, so it's actually an example of good writing. The writer breaks the rules on purpose to create a specific effect in the consumer.

But when someone breaks down stories, or in this case books, into "good" and "bad" categories, it comes from their desire for power and control.

The actually reasons for desiring this control vary. The Bon Appétit issue stems from "good" girls cook for their men, whereas "bad" girls read smutty books, i.e. the desire to control female sexuality.

Trad publishers have lost a great deal of control in the industry. They are losing a ton of money for three reasons:

1) some writers who were trad published no longer submit manuscripts to them and are making money by going indie,
2) some writers have never submitted to them, and
3) some writers submitting to them haven't reached the technical proficiency need yet.

As a result, trad publishers claim that indie books aren't quality because they haven't been properly vetted.

Since the same corporations that own the big trad publishers also own the newspapers and magazines that do a lot of reviewing, things like the opinion piece in the NYT get published in order to shame readers into reading the "good" books, i.e. the same books our co-workers are publishing.

And then there's the moral police, screaming "Think of the children!"

My feeling is if you really want kids to read, give them something that interests them. I learned to read thanks to Dr. Seuss and Stan Lee. How many of moral police would be screaming about what a bad example the Cat in the Hat would be?

However, I would counter that Spider-man's "With great power comes great responsibility" would trump any bad cat influence I suffered.

Deep down though, the people who want to control what you read really want to control how you think.

Don't let them!

(And I'd be the first one to tell you to read Fifty Shades of Gray as many times as you want. ☺ )