Frank, the Beagle of Unexpected Plot Twists (Janeen Ippolito) – My other links today are kind of heavy, but not this one – enjoy this fun look inside an intuitive writer’s brain. 😀
Is a Surrogate a Mother? (Michelle Goldberg) – Long article that illustrates the kind of moral conundrums and heartbreaking situations we’ve created in this Brave New World of fertility technology. “The natural mother is irrevocably committed before she knows the strength of her bond with her child. She never makes a totally voluntary, informed decision, for quite clearly any decision prior to the baby’s birth is, in the most important sense, uninformed, and any decision after that, compelled by a pre-existing contractual commitment, the threat of a lawsuit, and the inducement of a $10,000 payment, is less than totally voluntary.”
The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture (Nora Samaran) – I don’t necessarily agree with everything in this article but there is a lot of fascinating stuff to take away. “Men have capacities to heal that are particularly masculine and particularly healing. They often are not fully aware of this deep gift and how helpful it can be for those close to them, whether family or close friends.”
Scream It Until Their Ears Bleed (Chuck Wendig) – WARNING: as you’d expect with Wendig, lots of language in this post. I include it in my Simmers because it spotlights a major issue – that Huffington Post is vocally “proud” that they don’t pay their writers, because that means the writers’ work is more “authentic.” Which has all kinds of terrible implications about writing and the value of a writer’s work. If you’d rather not wade through the language, here’s a clean snippet –
When you go to Huffington Post, it is primarily made of one thing:
Words. Lots and lots and lots of words.
Hundreds or thousands on a page. Millions at the site overall.
And nobody paid anything to anyone to write them.
Imagine walking into a building and realizing nobody paid anybody to lay the bricks that built the walls. Imagine sipping a drink and realizing that nobody got paid to build the machine that makes the can or what is inside it — nobody got paid to formulate the beverage or drive cases to stores or put the cans on shelves. Imagine that those who made the most fundamental component of the drink — the drink itself — never get paid. They were told that work was a privilege. They were told that to get paid to do those things would somehow make the process crass. It would make it impure. Better to drink a drink made out of love, they would say. Love is an ingredient! They would bellow that as they use a literal rake to rake in profits while those beneath them starve.
The only thing HuffPo has is words, and it chooses not to pay for them.
I love to hear your thoughts!