Speak with Authority :: The Incomparable Taylor Mali

Milk & Steak :: Heinlein on censorship

"How anybody expects a man to stay in business with every two-bit wowser in the country claiming a veto over what we can say and can't say and what we can show and what we can't show — it's enough to make you throw up. The whole principle is wrong; it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak."

- Robert A. Heinlein

The Week In Links :: Banned Books Week

I'm With the Banned
It is Banned Books Week in the United States, a celebration of books that have been suppressed and a flag raised to rally support for books that are challenged as "unfit for public consumption."  I stand firmly in opposition to the idea that it should ever be allowed in a free society for the government to think on behalf of the governed. For one to impose their viewpoint on the unwilling many or hide the viewpoint of another is nothing less than tyranny. 

The strength of your opinion will not be proven by your efforts to suppress the contrary opinions. Quite the opposite, in fact.

It is in each of us to decide for ourselves and for our families what is or is not acceptable, to guide our own behavior, and our own consumption of art, literature, and music (or anything else for that matter). It is for the betterment of the whole that we strive. 

I only regret that I have but one mind to give to my country.

"Official" Banned Books Week Links
Banned  Books Week -- Official Site
The newly-launched official website of the OIF and Banned Books Week. Home of the BBW Read-Out and resources for anyone looking for more information on the events around the country tied to this week.

American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom
The founding organization for Banned Books Week, the ALA acts as clearing house for information and support of citizens, their libraries, and their librarians fighting the good fight for intellectual freedoms in their communities. It's about the right to decide for our selves.


"Happy Banned Books Week" from "Jacket Copy" the official books blog at the LA Times. The LA Times kicked off Banned Books Week by challenging all of us to think beyond the usual suspects of Song of Solomon and Huck Finn with the provacative question: "Are there books that should be banned? What about Mein Kampf?"

Playing with the banned: My own thoughts on book banning.

An Odious Little Book
The LA Times points out that we spend all of our time talking about beloved classics during Banned Books Week. Well, not here. Let us test our intellectual mettle and talk about one of the most evil books in history: Mein Kampf.
 
I'm with the Banned
Childhood is just one banned thing after another. With all the imaginary dangers of the media I consumed growing up, it's a wonder we survived at all.


Hucked :: The Trouble with Twain
The thorny issue of Twain's language and how we handle it in this (allegedly) post-racial world.

On Censorship
 Is banning a book really even possible in a world with an internet? Or are we making tempests in teapots?  (Spoiler: The answer to the first question is "yes", the answer to the second one is "no.")

Becoming a Writer :: You don't need permission from anyone

The other day, I cleaned out my art studio and learned something about myself as a writer.

The art instruction in my small mid-Missouri hometown was only so-so. Certainly there weren't any figure drawing classes to be had and since what I really wanted to do (or thought I did at the time) was draw comic books, that was more than a little frustrating for young Scottie.

So I taught myself.

I did it by tracing comic books. I traced page after page of Xmen, Superman, Batman, Spiderman, GI Joe, and even Archie & Jughead. I filled entire notebooks with page after page of traced comic books.  At one point in my life, no piece of paper was safe. My dad had to lock away the onionskin typing paper because if he didn't it wouldn't be there when he went looking for it.

I did it over and over and over again until one day I didn't need to anymore. My hand had learned how to draw the human form in every style that was popular in the comics world at the time.

The Week in Links

Geeking Out (Nerdy Links for Nerdy People)

Filling the void

It's the one thing that all of us have in common.

Every writer uses a different path to get from the start to the finish, but in the beginning, the page is blank.

Okay, it's not entirely blank; there may be some blue lines on it.  Faint ones, arranged in a parallel fashion.  If you are the conventional sort, they are perpendicular, and there's usually a red line along the left side of the page.  If you are like me, it takes about five minutes of staring at it before that margin is crowded with wee caricatures of the people around you, running in fear from an army of cats, robots and gnomes wielding large mallets in a fashion that used to cause my teachers no end of sleepless nights.*

Even if you are a margin doodler, you're still a writer, not an illustrator; until there are words, all the doodles in the world won't make the page any less blank. The page still waits, the words are dormant, the ideas wait in the antechambers of your mind like paratroopers watching for the green light that will send them hurtling down into the white void to come back with a story or not at all.

No matter how you write -- with a cursor or a Cross pen -- in the beginning, the page is blank.