Why the Best War Reporter in a Generation Had to Suddenly Stop

breakthecitysky:

As word got around the paper last fall that Chivers was leaving the foreign desk, he was in the newsroom in New York, putting the finishing touches on his major chemical-weapons story (part of his new role with the investigations desk). When the editor he’d been on the phone with from Libya, Rogene Jacquette, spotted him, she walked over to say she had heard the news. Chivers told her about his boy, about the game of cards and the hives and his terrible dread. He said it was as if a message were being sent through his son that it was time to go, in a way that even I could understand.

Jacquette took that in for just a moment and said, “We should all be thankful for your son.” And then she said, “Because he is a blessing.”

When Chris was killed, Tim Hetherington in that same attack, it was Chivers who got them home, who eulogized them in the only way that felt right to me.

No one covered war like he did, no one wrote better about conflict or captured the humanity that lies on both sides of the equation and while I miss his war reporting, I’m grateful for his son, too. Because we need him alive. He doesn’t let you off the hook when he writes. We need that now more than ever.

Here’s what fanfiction understands that the Puppies don’t: inversion and subversion don’t ruin the story – they just give you new ways to tell it, and new tools to tell it with. Take a platonic relationship and make it romantic; there’s a story in that. Take a romantic relationship and make it platonic; there’s a story in that, too. Take a human and make her a werewolf; take a werewolf and make him human. Don’t try and sidle up on hurt/comfort like it’s something you’re ashamed to be indulging in; embrace the tropes until you have their mastery. Take a gang of broken souls surviving the apocalypse and make them happy in high school; take a bunch of funny, loving high school kids and shove them in the apocalypse. Like Archimedes, fanfic writers find the soul, the essence of what makes the characters real, and use it as a fulcrum on which to pivot entire worlds, with inversion/subversion as their lever of infinite length.

foz meadows (via ailelie)

mypsychology:

For more posts like this go to @mypsychology

One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

Annie Dillard, The Writing Life (via magpiefngrl)

I was inspired by your post about Hugh Scott (having been both the Hugh and the You in that situation) and I spontaneously (almost involuntarily) found myself trying to find contact information for him to send him your story. The email I found is no longer functional, which is probably for the best since I should’ve asked your permission before doing that anyway. Have you ever gotten in touch with him?

thebibliosphere:

I thought it might be not working, as my own email to him never got through. As for contacting him in any other way, it’s proved nigh on impossible. I have to therefore assume he’s retired to spend time with his cats 🙂

FYI, the most recent thing I found after an extensive google search is that he was part of a consulting committee about authors in schools in 2013-2014. So at least until recently, he was doing exactly as you remembered @thebibliosphere.

I’m done explaining why fanfic is okay.

bookshop:

Note: this post was originally made in 2010 in response to Diana Gabaldon’s epic rant about fanfiction. The original version is still being updated. I’m reposting it to Tumblr by request, but if you have any additions, please feel free to drop a comment at LJ so they can be added to the masterpost!

Dear Author of the Week,

You think fanfic is a personal affront to the many hours you’ve spent carefully crafting your characters. You think fanfic is “immoral and illegal.” You think fanfiction is just plagiarism. You think fanfiction is cheating. You think fanfic is for people who are too stupid/lazy/unimaginative to write stories of their own. You think there are exceptions for people who write published derivative works as part of a brand or franchise, because they’re clearly only doing it because they have to. You’re personally traumatized by the idea that someone else could look at your characters and decide that you did it wrong and they need to fix it/add original characters to your universe/send your characters to the moon/Japan/their hometown. You think all fanfic is basically porn. You’re revolted by the very idea that fic writers think what they do is legitimate.

We get it.

Congratulations! You’ve just summarily dismissed as criminal, immoral, and unimaginative each of the following Pulitzer Prize-winning writers and works:

Keep reading

A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The waste basket has evolved for a reason. Think of it as the alter of the Muse of Oblivion, to whom you sacrifice your botched first drafts, the tokens of your human imperfection. She is the tenth muse, the one without whom none of the others can function. The gift she offers you is the freedom of the second chance. Or as many chances as you’ll take.

-Margaret Atwood

Nine Beginnings essay

deadcatwithaflamethrower:

carolyn-claire:

frecklestherobot:

purplexeyed:

Fuck the word “Mary Sue”. It is literally shorthand 90% of the time for “your character is female and doesn’t act how I want a female to act so I don’t like her.” Or “your character is female and a self-insert/wish fulfillment and that makes her bad.” As if a large chunk of male characters AREN’T self-inserts or wish fulfillment characters.

You know what I’ve noticed? That the qualifications of realistic or relatable are only applied to female characters in these genres. No one questions that Steve Rogers apparently learned French, computer and technology skills, an advanced fighting technique, and had the free time to catch up on history and pop culture between The Avengers and The Winter Soldier. But Skye is good at computers and can learn how to be an agent rather quickly? MARY SUE WHO DESERVES TO DIE.

SO many male characters are Marty Stu self-inserts, like, pretty much ALL of them. Men don’t care; hell, they’re into it. Women don’t care if male characters are “too good to be true” either. Why is that? Why are we so ready to buy into those ridiculous male characters but balk at the female ones?

It’s called misogyny, and it needs to fucking stop.

When I first started writing actual fanfic (as opposed to RPG fun) I was pretty much nerve-wracked any time I needed to write from a female character’s POV, because EVERYONE at the time was screaming MARY SUE any time you did so. I spent literal years waiting to be attacked for daring to have a female voice in a fanfic.

YEARS.

How fucked up is that?

Our western media culture is so messed up around storytelling. There are problems around Skye, no question but wow are there problems around Ward and Coulson too and I don’t see that called out anywhere.

I don’t read them but I smile every time I see character/reader stories and other self inserts. You go, writerpeeps. Go write yourself into the hero stories and the having a life stories and the I just want to hold his hand stories.

Write. Write the effing things. Be all the things. Dream all the things and fuck ‘em otherwise. How else are we going to be in stories but to push and shove our way in.

And the people writing those stories? They’ll remember those stories later in their twenties and thirties and they’ll vote with their dollars and their attention.

And finally, goddamnit, why not have a female hacker? It could so easily have been a male role and they didn’t do that. There are a whole set of women on that show that are competent around their jobs and chosen careers and that is something to celebrate.

Junot Diaz on Men Who Write About Women

The Atlantic: It sounds like you’re saying that literary “talent” doesn’t inoculate a writer—especially a male writer—from making gross, false misjudgments about gender. You’d think being a great writer would give you empathy and the ability to understand people who are unlike you—whether we’re talking about gender or another category. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Junot Diaz: I think that unless you are actively, consciously working against the gravitational pull of the culture, you will predictably, thematically, create these sort of fucked-up representations. Without fail. The only way not to do them is to admit to yourself [that] you’re fucked up, admit to yourself that you’re not good at this shit, and to be conscious in the way that you create these characters. It’s so funny what people call inspiration. I have so many young writers who’re like, “Well I was inspired. This was my story.” And I’m like, “OK. Sir, your inspiration for your stories is like every other male’s inspiration for their stories: that the female is only in there to provide sexual service.” There comes a time when this mythical inspiration is exposed for doing exactly what it’s truthfully doing: to underscore and reinforce cultural structures, or I’d say, cultural asymmetry.

I swear to every heaven ever imagined,
if I hear one more dead-eyed hipster
tell me that art is dead, I will personally summon Shakespeare
from the grave so he can tell them every reason
why he wishes he were born in a time where
he could have a damn Gmail account.
The day after I taught my mother
how to send pictures over Iphone she texted
me a blurry image of our cocker spaniel ten times in a row.
Don’t you dare try to tell me that that is not beautiful.
But whatever, go ahead and choose to stay in
your backwards-hoping-all-inclusive club
while the rest of us fall in love over Skype.
Send angry letters to state representatives,
as we record the years first sunrise so
we can remember what beginning feels like when
we are inches away from the trigger.
Lock yourself away in your Antoinette castle
while we eat cake and tweet to the whole universe that we did.
Hashtag you’re a pretentious ass hole.
Van Gogh would have taken 20 selflies a day.
Sylvia Plath would have texted her lovers
nothing but heart eyed emojis when she ran out of words.
Andy Warhol would have had the worlds weirdest Vine account,
and we all would have checked it every morning while we
Snap Chat our coffee orders to the people
we wish were pressed against our lips instead of lattes.
This life is spilling over with 85 year olds
rewatching JFK’s assassination and
7 year olds teaching themselves guitar over Youtube videos.
Never again do I have to be afraid of forgetting
what my fathers voice sounds like.
No longer must we sneak into our families phonebook
to look up an eating disorder hotline for our best friend.
No more must I wonder what people in Australia sound like
or how grasshoppers procreate.
I will gleefully continue to take pictures of tulips
in public parks on my cellphone
and you will continue to scoff and that is okay.
But I hope, I pray, that one day you will realize how blessed
you are to be alive in a moment where you can google search
how to say I love you in 164 different languages.

b.e.fitzgerald (Art is a Facebook status about your winter break.)