Rossisms, or Finding Your Voice

by Wholesome Rage | 7 March 2019

Doing the last article using examples gave me an idea.

I tried to keep emphasizing that what I like isn’t necessarily what everyone will think of as good writing in the process of giving general advice. But why not write about why I like what I like, and why I write the way I write?

Every author has a ‘voice’ they need to find for themselves, something that makes their work distinct and recognizable. So why not ask what my voice sounds like?

This is usually way more obvious to an audience than an author. The sound of your voice echoes the sounds of your thoughts, and it’s hard to hear your own thoughts clearly. It’s not like being able to listen to a recording of your own voice. You can get that icky feeling, but still not get what it sounds like to other people.

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Procrastination is Character Building

by Wholesome Rage | 21 February 2019

I aspire to be like George Orwell, alternating between essays on writing and essays on politics, and dying before the age of fifty. It seems I’ve been a bit heavy on the politics essays lately, so I thought it might be time to write another writing advice article.

After asking my editor for suggestions on how to write writing advice, he gave a good suggestion that I’d never have thought of on my own.

It was fantastic advice—only, halfway through writing this, I realized that making bespoke examples meant implying they were objectively good writing.

Not a good feeling, lemme tell you. In my desire to be helpful, I’m afraid that might come across as arrogant. Not my intention at all.

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Intellectual Property As Property

by Wholesome Rage | 6 February 2019

In 2013, the Supreme Court came down with a decision on Bowman vs Monsanto. Bowman was convicted of growing what he thought was his own crops, using seeds from the soy he’d planted the previous year. Monsanto sued, claiming a violation of their intellectual property: He’d bought their Roundup Ready brand genetically modified seeds, and so the second crop was a violation of their copyright in the same way torrenting a game off of Pirate Bay is.

Also in 2013, activist Aaron Swartz – the man who shut down the internet for the SOPA protests – was facing charges by prosecutors of up to $1 million, and facing up to 35 cumulative years of prison, for the crime of illegally downloading academic journals from MIT servers. He committed suicide, and was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame that same year.

In 2018 the John Deere corporation said that farmers didn’t really own their tractors: They owned an “implied license… to operate the vehicle”. This is currently being fought by the Right to Repair movement, but if it goes the way of Bowman Vs Monsanto, it means that farmers will not legally have the right to repair their own tractors, because they don’t really own them.

To drop the solemn tone for a moment: What the hell is going on?

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