Noel B

Apparently they got linked on a couple of "get rich through ChatGPT" guides

So you got random assholes trying to make a quick buck by... submitting to short fiction magazines?? Your "get rich quick" scheme is actually a "get maybe $50 in two to three months" scheme, pal. Most likely it's a "get a form rejection in two to three months" scheme, which...

You're fucking up an industry already in shambles for less than beer money IF YOU GET LUCKY

This is not helping my "submitting to lit mags sucks major ass" motivation problem

I'm organizing my notes to do a write-up but this is the kind of thing I wrote down:

• this book truly is the author going “pattern seeking brain goes brrrr” without a hint of awareness
• that’s not how code or brains work or anything
• SIGH
• Jordan Peterson my beloathed
• extremely not what Tolstoy was getting at
• where are the sources
• this book reads like a slightly less overtly racist Ben Shapiro explaining in detail why he failed as a screenwriter
• why are the sources
• my kingdom for a footnote
• enlightened centrism?? In MY writing craft book? Is more likely than you think

So I don't know how useful the write-up will be. For me or anyone.

our brains are hardwired to [EXTREMELY LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER]

We are hardwired for story!! Your brain is hardwired to follow the hero's journey!1!!

I just read someone say "our brains are hardwired to think with the rule of threes"

None of those things mean jack and/or shit!! Let's just stop saying our brains, an incredibly plastic organ that is constantly pruning and building neural networks, are "hardwired" for anything, but especially things that are obviously and self-evidently culture-specific.

Fuck whoever first used a brain metaphor to explain a computer, you've doomed us all to listen to "experts" constantly liken brains to computers and misunderstand both in the process.

And yes this is about "The Science of Storytelling" but it's also about the reason that book exists and the context that made it both possible and successful.

I really want to finish it so I can do a write-up but this may be the anti-craft book. This may be the book that makes me dislike writing and makes my writing worse.

It's not looking good folks. I've been reading it all month and only got 30% of the way in, I keep stopping to roll my eyes and say "but that's not how it works" every two paragraphs/

I'm going to finish reading it, I think I have valuable things to get out of it, but none of those things were intended by the book and it's also making me angry