Hi, Quinn.

--- Quinn Tyler Jackson  wrote:

> My entrance, years ago, into WRITING, was rather turbulent. At the
> time, there were no literary agents in British Columbia, as far as
> I
> could tell. So, I decided to become a literary agent. It turns out
> (hindsight being 20/20) that I wasn't a particularly good agent.
> But I did try my best.
> 
> Anyway, back then, I was also editing, and writing. Well, I was
> young, and proud, and bold, and ended up stepping on a few feet.
> 
> I ran a Fidonet bulletin board called OmniHost for a while.
> 
> Like an idiot, I insisted on signing my name:
> 
> Quinn Tyler Jackson,
> Freelance Editors' Association of Canada (Voting Member)
> 
> (Or something like that.)
> 
> This rubbed someone the wrong way. I forget his name now. He was a
> local Fidonet BBS operator.  In a private message, he threatened to
> come over and beat me up. That was the first threat I ever received
> in an e-format. I immediately pulled out of being a BBS operator. I
> remember that I was terrified. I had never been threatened with
> violence from an unseen force before.  This was ... 1991?
> Thereabouts.
> 
> I returned, but was very cautious. I learned also that, well, I'm
> not all that important. But I still managed to piss people off. 

Jesus, Quinn, is that all there is to it?  I do that just by standing
here and breathing.  No further provocation is necessary with those
assholes.  Remind to tell me you sometime about how I got savaged by
trash like that at the Thomas Jefferson Center Community Chalkboard.

Well, I will admit that I was deliberately provocative in that one. 
But they started it.

Anyhoo! --

Check out Dr. Robert Sternberg's Styles of Thought and do the
self-assessment test in the book.  I'll bet right here and now that
you'll find your scores are slanted to the left of table; toward the
creative side.  Us sort tend to make our own rules and that really
pisses of the right-of-the-table thinkers whom I tend to characterize
as ever more narrow-minded the more to the right they are.  Such
people cannot abide the free spirits that we are.  Come to that,
there's another book by Sternberg about being creative in society. .
. . 

Yep.  Here it is.

Defying The Crowd: Cultivating
Creativity in a Culture of Conformity
Robert J. Sternberg &
Todd I. Lubart -1995
ISBN 0-02-931475-5
Dewey # 153.35 S839

> The reasons I needed validation
> didn't seem all that important anymore. I just wanted to support my
> family.
> 
> I discovered, however, that in order to do that well, I had to have
> a "public" side. I had to participate in the real world.

Yeah, that sucks.  More often than not I'druther the whole world
would just screw off.
 
> A writer cannot hide away from the world, and hope to make it, I
> told
> myself. Over the years, people opened up to me, readers started
> contacting me, and things moved on. But my damned pride got the
> better
> of me, I guess. I wanted to present the "best" Quinn Tyler Jackson
> I could, 

So what's wrong with that?  Even if no contracts are involved it is
not unreasonable for a person to be want to be known as more than,
"that lousy bum".

> I made the mistake of getting too wrapped up in my creations. I put
> too much of me into Janus Incubus, I now realize. That 10-year-old
> boy
> who maimed his best friend with a skeet shooter ... perhaps should
> have remained in my past. But ... dammit ... readers cried when
> they
> read that. They cried when "Mark" had his manuscript destroyed by
> dog piss ... and they cried when ... and ... well, I'll admit it --
> perhaps when they cried about those things, they cried both for and
> with me.

Then you're probably well on your way to that Nobel for Lit'rature.

Just think, some day you'll polishing up that big medallion and be
getting hate mail from me just because I knew you when. . . .

> And it made me dig more deeply into Quinn than I ever thought I had
> the courage to dig. Janus Incubus is ugly ... it reveals things
> about human nature (my manifesting of it) that are ugly. But people
> seemed to fall into the dream.

One of the psychological factors behind the way children play violent
games is that they are attempting to explore evil in a safe venue;
one in which they can be evil but without inflicting harm on others
or having to face any consequences for having done so.  I think the
fascination that many adults have with King's horror and Janus
Incubus is simply the adult version of that.  A mode of delving into
one's own psyche without having to drink Dr. Jekyll's elixir and
living in dark side for real.
 
> And then POW. Smack right dab into the face ... not by a known
> quantity, but an anonymous sniper. "Fraud. Con-artist."

  I understand that it hurts, that sort of thing has hurt me
too, but let's face it: how much can an anonymous sniper have in the
way of cojones?  When I express an opinion in cyberspace, I very
rarely use a pseudonym.  When I do, it's simply because I do not wish
to draw myself into a bunch of long-winded, and time and intellect
consuming threads.  I have occasionally bashed someone anonymously,
but only in reply to the bashing they posted.  Quite frankly, I don't
hold anonymous posters in high regard.  Which, by the way, is
something else that scares them enough to make them wet their pants.
 
> I should have saw it coming. I exposed too much of myself ... and
> perhaps should have been more careful.  But, as an artist, it felt
> like the most honest thing I could do. I felt that NOT exposing the
> human condition as I knew it was the Path of the Falsehood. Only by
> digging and being honest was I being an artist, in my esthetic.

So you were true to your art.  You can't hold yourself up to any
possible higher standard because there is none.  And yes, you exposed
yourself to attack by doing so.  However, as the old saying goes, you
cannot love without the risk of being hurt.  Hearkening back to the
last line in my previous paragraph, just having the self-confidence
to expose yourself that way is what frightens the anonymous ninny who
attacks you.  It scares him because he is not so confident and
resents that you are.

> Somewhere in that is the reason the attacks still sting -- even
> though it's been a while since they occurred.

Eh! -- "Such is life.  And it gets suchier every day." --Walter de
Bruin.  

Just keep telling yourself that when an anonymous assailant attacks
you for what he thinks is a weakness in you, it's a safe bet that he
is projecting and thereby in reality is only exposing the weakness in himself.

=====
Fear of corrupting the mind of the younger generation is 
the loftiest of cowardice. --Holbrook Jackson

>From the Lair of Fang-Face DreamWeaver
and The Encyclopedia Michael Nellis
http://www.angelfire.com/scifi/dreamweaver/index.html

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