Tag Archives: writing

Writing Without Electricity

Recently I endured a power outage lasting over 38 hours. I’m not complaining about the outage. Many people have gone without electricity much longer than that.

Up until the dawn of the 20th Century, all people went without electrical power for their entire lives. However, many of us have become dependent on those tiny electrons flowing through wires, and it’s a major disruption when those particles stop moving.

Like most people, writers fall prey to this dependency We type on computer keyboards, we conduct research online, we write by the light of electric bulbs. It’s hard to imagine writing without these things. It is even possible?

Yes, of course it is. I wrote the rough draft of this post with pen and paper. I could have written it by candlelight, but used battery powered lights. Later, when the emergency was over, I transcribed and edited it on a computer. In fact, I create most of my first drafts—fiction stories and blogposts—using pen and paper.

I’m not suggesting you do that. You should write by whatever mechanism suits you, using the tools you prefer, when available. (Note: chiseling words into marble can be slow going).

All I’m saying is that you shouldn’t lose hope when the power goes out. You can satisfy your urge to write by different means.

You might even enjoy the pen-and-paper method. Freed from the computer, your writing might take a different direction. You might write about different subjects or explore new tones, settings, characters, or themes.

When the power comes back on, you can revert back to your accustomed methods. But you’ll always know you have a reliable backup.

The electricity’s back on here, but who knows when it will go out again? At least a simple power outage won’t slow down writing progress for you or for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

February 21, 2021Permalink

7 Things to Know Before You Retire to Write Full Time

It’s tough to write part time while still working at your day job. I know. I did it for several decades, all the while dreaming of how prolific I’d be and how much money I’d make when I retired.

Well, I’ve been retired for nearly three years. How’s it going so far?

In truth, things aren’t as good as I’d hoped, nor as bad as I feared. Still, I’ve learned some lessons.

If you’re still laboring in a day job, looking forward to retirement when you’ll write all day and rake in those large-advance contracts, perhaps you’ll benefit from my seven take-aways:

  1. Writing time will increase, but maybe not to full time. There will still be other things to do, the non-writing parts of life. Those won’t stop.
  2. There will still be reasons not to write. If you’ve been good at making excuses for avoiding things you should do, you’ll still do that in retirement. You might become better at it.
  3. Becoming rich may stay a dream. For most of you, writing will not provide much supplement to your retirement income.
  4. It may be harder to discipline your time. While you’re working, clocks rule your life and you squeeze writing into the available hours. When you retire, you’ll have more time, but it’s easier to waste it.
  5. You may have to adjust to life without a boss. During your working years, you’ve gotten used to having a supervisor tell you what to do. Can you manage your own time without a boss?
  6. Others might have a say. Perhaps your home companion’s vision of your retirement doesn’t include you sitting alone and typing for hours on end. Best to settle those issues before retirement day.
  7. You might get bored with writing. That hasn’t happened to me, but it could. Do you have a Plan B if you tire of the writing biz?

I don’t mean to give you the wrong impression. I’m enjoying my retirement and I’m writing more than I used to. It’s been great. Maybe, for you, retirement will provide the time you need to achieve the writing success you’ve dreamed of. I hope so. But it’s good to have realistic expectations.

Writing always starts with dreaming. But at some point, you’ve got to put words together using whatever time you have. If you still have a day job, write when you can. Don’t waste valuable time fantasizing about retirement, like—

Poseidon’s Scribe

November 15, 2020Permalink

Quit and Start Over?

Songwriter Robert Lopez once wrote, “The temptation to quit and start over infects every creative process I’ve ever been in. Frustration and boredom always fuel this self-doubt.” Let’s analyze this as it applies to writing fiction.

First of all, I think we can agree Mr. Lopez speaks with some authority about the creative process. He’s won multiple Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards, the only person to have done so.  

I suspect nearly every fiction writer knows the experience he alludes to. You get partway into a story, then pause and reflect on what you’ve done so far. Your story looks terrible now. You think it would be better to abandon that draft and start fresh. You’re torn between the fear that no amount of editing will improve the current version and the fear that a new draft won’t be any better.

It’s appropriate that Mr. Lopez used the verb “infects,” invoking the metaphor of viruses and sickness. The temptation to start over does seem like that—spreading inside you, overwhelming your immune system, and making you miserable.

We’ll get to the frustration, boredom, and self-doubt soon. First, let’s examine what happens initially in the process of creating a short story or novel. You come up with the idea, then add to it in your mind. Enthusiasm takes over as the mental picture of the finished work crystallizes. It’s going to be great.

You begin to write, but you find out enthusiasm is a tough emotion to sustain, certainly for a novel, but sometimes even for a short story. The words you’re writing don’t match the gloriously perfect story in your mind. Compared to that ideal vision, the real version stinks. That gap in quality between real and ideal causes the frustration.

As your enthusiasm continues to fade, you lose interest in the story and become bored with it. Your muse moves on to shinier objects and even the thought of continuing the story becomes too much to bear. You’ll do anything to avoid working on it, including the most hated household chores. In this way, boredom has fueled your self-doubt.

Now that Mr. Lopez has put his finger on a very real and universally experienced problem with the creative process, is there a solution? When these negative feelings overcome you, should you edit the draft you started with, or abandon it and start over?

I suspect it’s a very rare occasion when the right answer is to quit and start over. The real problem is, you are no longer in the right frame of mind to write well. What the situation calls for is a break. You should stop editing that story and do something else. Look at the story the next day with fresh eyes and a sunnier mood. You’ll see some things wrong with it, but just maybe the original enthusiasm will return, that zeal you felt when the story was just an idea.

Maybe you’ll decide the problem isn’t a gap between the ideal vision and the faulty reality. Perhaps the vision wasn’t so ideal after all. Don’t be afraid to alter it and work to capture the new vision. This isn’t starting over; this is making a change in light of a new realization.  

Even though writers aren’t immune to the problem Robert Lopez identified, and self-doubt is bound to infect you at some point, you can pull yourself out of it. Most likely, you can salvage the draft you’re working on and won’t have to abandon it to start over.

That’s been my experience with the creative process of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

November 13, 2019Permalink

Better Writing through Exhaustion?

Are you more creative when sleepy? Is that the best time for writing rough drafts?

Some research suggests people may perform slightly better on “insight”-type tasks when they’re tired. Writing that first draft of your story might be an insight-type task. Perhaps, when fatigue sets in, you’re more willing to take a chance, to perform a mental leap, to connect disparate thoughts in a novel way.

This study, by Associate Professor Mareike Wieth of Albion College, examined the performance of over 400 students on both analytic and insight tasks. Analytic tasks were straightforward math and logic problems. Insight tasks were problems that seemed, at first, to lack sufficient information, but required a flash of intuitive thought to solve.

According to this article in The Atlantic, the students performed better on analytic tasks at their optimum time of day when properly rested. No surprise there.

However, in the insight tasks, they did 20% better at their non-optimal time of day.

As I understand it, the subjects for the study were college students, not a random sample of people. Also, the insight tasks did not include writing first drafts of fictional stories. I don’t want to infer too much from this study. As all scientists conclude after every study, “more research is required.”

But you’re not interested in research. You’re interested in becoming a better writer, the best writer you can be. When it comes to writing while tired, I suspect your mileage may vary.

It might be worth a few experiments. You could stay up past your normal bedtime and write some first drafts then. Or you could wake up early and scribble out a first draft before starting your morning routine.

Here I’ll add a cautionary note. Suppose experimentation reveals you do write better when tired. There is a long list of physiological effects of sleep deprivation, including depression, obesity, and increased risk of diabetes. Writing while fatigued is one thing, but be sure to get enough sleep.

Maybe you’ll find a different way to take advantage of those creative sparks you get while exhausted. Rather than sitting hunched over a keyboard, all you need is a notepad to jot down the insights as they flash by. I’ve blogged before about the tendency for a writer’s mind to solve problems while engaged in other activities, particularly mundane tasks. The notepad technique works then, too.

Well, <yawn> it’s getting late. It’s first-draft-writing time for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

August 11, 2019Permalink

7 Techniques for Writing at Optimum Speed

Sure, fiction writer, you say you want to write faster. What you really want, however, is to write faster without losing quality, without giving up your writing style.

Your aim,therefore, should be to find your optimum writing speed. That speed may be faster than you write now, but it might not be. A wonderful piece by author Nalini Singh inspired this blog post. I encourage you to read her guest post.

I’ve taken Ms.Singh’s five tips, reordered and reworded them, and added two more of my own. My list is in order of helpfulness to me, from least to most. You may benefit from using any or all of these techniques.

  1. Overlap Your WIPs. A WIP is your Work in Progress. By keeping two or more writing projects going at once, you can shift from one to the other as your muse and mood dictate. This doesn’t work as well for those who prefer to focus on one thing until it’s complete.
  2. Limit Session Lengths. When I was nine years old, I didn’t enjoy practicing my cello, and eagerly stopped each day after thirty minutes. My Dad read an article about famed American cellist Leonard Rose, who said he never practiced more than four hours a day. With dry humor, Dad admonished me to limit my sessions to no more than four hours. Even if you have an entire free afternoon to write, there will come a point of diminishing returns. Whether that’s four hours for you, or some other duration,don’t exceed it.
  3. Get Your Blood Pumping. At some point, you may get tired, be unable to think what to write next, or write yourself into a plot hole. At such times, stand up and swing your arms around, walk up and down some stairs, go for a walk outside, or do some calisthenics. Even five minutes of that might be enough. Aside from the health benefit, you’re getting fresh blood to your brain, rebooting your system.
  4. Enjoy Play Time. Take ten minutes or so and devote it to uninhibited free writing. Write about anything except your WIPs. Let your mind romp and play about in the universe, without the pressure of thinking someone might read what you write. This helps you associate writing with fun, and it just might spark an idea for a future story.
  5. Set Writing Goals, in Pencil. Goals are funny things, aren’t they? The minute you set one, you feel a sense of purpose and direction. You feel a call to action; you start to plan and strategize. If you fall behind your schedule, or miss your goal, you feel like you’ve let someone down, even if it’s just yourself. Goals are good prompters;they urge you to complete what you start. But don’t get so focused on your goal that you feel depressed or miserable if you fall short.
  6. Use Chore Time. All of us must do chores, those mundane tasks that don’t require focused thought. These include showering, preparing food, mowing the lawn, cleaning your living space,commuting, etc. Why not use that time to think about the next scene you’re planning to write, or to work through solutions to plot problems? When you’re next able to write, you’ll be ready.
  7. Leave Yourself Wanting More.This variation of the old show business line really works. Stop your writing session at a point where you know what to write next. Try not to stop when you’re stuck for the next word. That way, the next time you sit down to write, that next word, sentence, and paragraph will flow as if you’d never stopped.

These techniques may help you write at your optimum speed. They work for author Nalini Singh, and for—

                                                            Poseidon’s Scribe

December 9, 2018Permalink

Fiction Writing: Not Your Normal Day Job

If you work at a typical desk job and want to write fiction at night, be prepared. The two occupations are not at all alike. But what if your day job suddenly got altered to be more like fiction writing? Let’s find out what that would be like.

You wake up at whatever time you like; you’re now setting your own hours. There’s no commute. You telework every day. No one sees you working, or checks on your progress. There are no meetings, no boring chats by the coffee machine, and no lunches with clients. Knock off early every day if you want; nobody cares how long you work.

Sounds like a dream job, right? There’s a down side.

Sitting at your computer, you produce your first work product of the day. (What’s the product? I don’t know; we’re talking about your current day job.) You e-mail it to your boss and wait. A few hours later, your boss e-mails you back to say the product didn’t suit her needs. She says she can’t accept it.

You’re stunned. She’s rejected your work. How can she do that? You know this job well and have worked at it for years. You e-mail her back asking what sort of product she needs, and asking what’s specifically wrong with the one you sent. She answers that she’s looking for really compelling products the customer will like. Moreover, she receives too many product submissions to list the deficiencies with each one; she only has time to accept or reject.

Her e-mail concludes on a positive and unexpected note, wishing you well with the product, adding that you can submit to any other department head in the company. That’s weird, you think. It’s as if, all of a sudden, you have more than one boss.

With some trepidation, you submit the work product to another department head. An hour later, he responds, thanking you but also saying it doesn’t suit his needs. You’re disappointed, but not shocked. By now, you’re catching on to the new company procedure and you simply submit your product to a different department head.

During the next two weeks, you submit it to every department head and all of them reject your product. Some take less than an hour to respond, but others take days. While waiting on them, you’ve been able to do other stuff around the house, watch some movies, and hit the bar scene on a few nights. The rejections distress you, though; things never used to be that way.

Ah, well, at least it’s payday, finally. Checking your bank account, you’re stunned to discover there’s been no money deposited to your account. You call the Pay Department, and the representative explains you had no products accepted during the pay period, so there’s no pay. The company is no longer on a salary system; they pay you only for accepted products, and calculate the amount based on customer purchases.

Hanging up the phone, you have a “We’re not in Kansas anymore” moment. In this new system, you realize you’ll have to churn out products fast, keep circulating them, and hope a few get accepted and that customers like them.

E-mailing a few friendly co-workers, you discover most are in the same boat, with zero pay. Word has it that one employee tripled her monthly income, but was told that was no guarantee of future earnings.

Welcome, fellow worker, to the fiction writing biz, where success is rare, and determined in part by how well you learn your craft and whether a fickle public likes your stories. You can complain the system’s unfair or rigged, but whining probably won’t make you feel better, and sure won’t change anything.

Fortunately, day jobs aren’t set up like the writing business. Still, writing makes a highly enjoyable hobby for most authors. Among them is—

Poseidon’s Scribe

February 4, 2018Permalink

Writing with Spectators

In his book The Way the Future Was, the late science fiction author Frederik Pohl stated, “Writing is not a spectator sport.” Oh, yeah? I set out to prove him wrong.

I rented a football stadium, hired two commentators, and advertised for several thousand of my fans to watch me write. Here’s the transcript, as broadcast:

Pat: “It’s a beautiful afternoon here at the stadium and we’ve got quite a crowd for this amazing event. Wouldn’t you say so, John?”

John: “No doubt about that, Pat, weather-wise and crowd-size-wise. But this is the first time I’ve covered one of these writer athletes, and I’m not sure what to expect.”

Pat: “It’s a first for both of us. Look, the writer himself has entered the field and is making his way to the center, and the crowd’s cheering.”

John: “I like his confidence. You can see it in his walk. He’s not swaggering or strutting, just striding with confidence. I like that.”

Pat: “Tonight’s writer is Steven R. Southard. He’s been writing for several seasons already, and his career is on an upswing. He’s reached midfield now and is sitting at the desk there. The crowd is settling down. I’m guessing things will start soon.”

John: “I’m a bit confused, Pat. There’s no team with him. No opposing team out there, either. Not a single referee, and no coaches pacing the sidelines.”

Pat: “I guess that’s the way writing is, John. Must be a solitary thing. Look, Steve has turned on his computer. The stadium scoreboard is off so I don’t know if time has started or not.”

John: “I think we must have a second-rate writer, here, Pat. This guy is just staring into space. He hasn’t typed a thing. Now he’s sipping some coffee. I sorta expected more action, typing-wise.”

Pat: “Maybe fiction writing isn’t all typing. Apparently there is some amount of thinking involved, too.”

John: “If he keeps this up, he’s going to be traded in the off-season. This is just the kind of lazy work ethic that…hold on. He’s typing on the keyboard now. He’s actually typing.”

Pat: “True, John, he is. We can’t see the words from here. We’ll see if we can get a close-up view. He’s definitely pounding out some prose.”

John: “And the crowd’s getting into it, too. They can sense the energy. Still, he might want to work on his posture, because—uh, oh. He stopped. Did he call for a timeout? We’re back to that staring-into-space play that didn’t work before. How many timeouts do they allow in this sport?”

Pat: “I’m not sure, but we’re going to cut to a commercial break. Don’t change the channel, folks. There’s more exciting action coming up.”

——————————————————–

Pat: “We’re back, live at the stadium. There was some activity during the break.”

John: (odd sound, possibly yawning) “Yeah, but it was the wrong kinda action, Pat. No typing at all. Southard got up from his chair and paced around the desk a few times, gesturing and talking to himself. He’s not going to get any stories written that way.”

Pat: “He sure isn’t. A lot of fans seem to agree too, and are leaving for the parking lot. It’s hard to know if our writer is making any progress down there on the field.”

John: “Progress? He hardly moves. I can’t stand this anymore. This isn’t a sport! The boredom is killing me. I’d rather watch goalposts rust, or wait for Astroturf to grow. I’m leaving.”

Pat: “We’ve only been here fifteen minutes, John.”

John: “Then why do I feel fifteen years older, age-wise?”

The broadcast ended soon after that when both commentators and all the camera operators left. Perhaps Frederik Pohl was right after all, um, correctness-wise. From now on, writing will return to being a non-spectator event for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

January 14, 2018Permalink

Getting Through the 3 Filters

Let’s say you have a thought in your brain, a thought you want me to have in my brain also. Since you and I lack mental telepathy, we must settle for some other communication method. For our purposes today, we’ll say you’ve chosen written communication.

You convert that thought of yours into words of a standard language, a language you can write and I can read. You put those words into tangible form, either electronic or printed. Someone conveys your written document to me by some means. I read it, converting the words I read into a thought.

Will the thought in my brain match the one in yours exactly? Probably not. Considering the signal loss in the filters through which the thought passes on its way, it’s amazing two people can communicate at all.

The process is usually not as bad as the way I’ve dramatized it in the accompanying image. Still, it’s a less efficient transmission method than mental telepathy would likely be.

The part I’ve depicted as the “writing filter” consists of many things standing between pure thought and actual words. These include the clarity of your idea, your understanding of the meaning and connotation of words, your mood, your skill with language, your vocabulary, etc.

I’ve named the filter in the middle the “copying filter” and it represents any errors that creep into the text between the time you write it and the time I read it. For e-books, there could be a transmission error and some text becomes scrambled. For paper books, there could be smudges, spills, or torn pages that make some of the text difficult to read. Luckily, this filter usually results in negligible signal loss.

The “reading filter” is akin to the writing filter, but it’s everything between the words I read and the thoughts they cause in my brain. These include my understanding of words, my mood, my vocabulary, my ability to interpret meanings on several levels, my attention span, my life experiences, etc.

Remember, your goal was to create a thought in my brain matching the thought in yours. What can you do to increase the likelihood of the thoughts being identical? You can’t do anything about my reading filter; that’s solely up to me. You usually can’t do much about the copying filter, and it’s not much of a filter anyway.

Your focus needs to be on the writing filter within you, the only part of the process under your control. Work toward clear ideas, firm understanding of word meanings, mastery of language, increased vocabulary, and keeping your passing emotions from distorting your writing.

The best authors have nearly transparent writing filters resulting in negligible signal loss. That’s your goal.

I touched on this topic in a previous post, and neuroscientist Livia Blackburne explored these transmission filters in the context of getting bad reviews, in a guest post on Joanna Penn’s website, well worth the read.

Good luck, Writer! Improve the transparency of your writing filter so you can convey thoughts crisply to the world, and especially to—

Poseidon’s Scribe

July 30, 2017Permalink

An Analysis of Effortless Story Writing

“That story wrote itself,” I’ve sometimes said. But I exaggerated; it didn’t really happen that way. Still, it got me thinking. What if a story could write itself?

I decided to find out. Being rather sciency, I reckoned I’d conduct a careful and thorough experiment. I would give a story every conceivable chance, every possible opportunity, to write itself. Not because I’m lazy, you understand. This was for Science.

It’s time to shift the tone of this blog post to scientificalic language, lest you start to suspect I’m some kind of…not scientist.

Laboratory Setup – laptop still not writing

Ahem…the laptop was positioned in a roo—I mean—laboratory accustomed to having stories written in it, at a temperature of 24° C at normal atmospheric pressure. The laptop was turned on, plugged into a 120-volt alternating current power source, and word processing software was accessed.

The experimenter then left the laboratory and engaged in other, non-writing activities. These included cleaning other rooms, mowing the lawn, reading books, making and consuming lunch, and driving around town on various errands.

After a period of 8 hours and 24 minutes, the experimenter quietly re-entered the laboratory and discovered that a story had not been written. Even a part of a story had not been written, not a paragraph, sentence, word, letter, or punctuation mark. Neither had any new computer files been stored.

To gather more data, further opportunities were presented to the laptop on subsequent days. Longer time periods were tried, durations up to 73 hours and 53 minutes, with the same result. The experimenter engaged in a wider variety of non-writing activities, at greater distances from the laptop. Some trials were conducted with the laboratory door open, and some with it shut. Actual writing occurred in 0% of these cases.

Similar experiments were conducted with ink-filled pens and reams of blank paper. This served to eliminate the laptop and its software as the causal factor. Despite every opportunity and considerable time provided, the pens created no marks on the paper.

The experimenter tried to “spur” or “seed” the process by writing a first sentence, and allowing both laptop and pen to merely complete the story. These attempts likewise resulted in failure.

Numerous graphs were developed to document the results of these trials. They are not included here because the independent variable refused to depart from the axis; that is, the results were 0 in every case. 0 writing produced no matter what other quantity was being tested.

One common factor in all these trials was the experimenter himself. He therefore consulted several other writers and 100% of them reported the same outcomes in their “experiments,” though their trials were far less scientifical, with no white laboratory coats anywhere in evidence, and they had utterly failed to note the temperature. Mention of them here is included as anecdotal evidence only.

The experimenter is therefore forced to a surprising, though tentative, conclusion—it may be possible that stories do not, in fact, write themselves. The creation of stories appears to require the active participation of a writer. Significant participation actually, in every written story so far. At least this seems true for stories involving this single experimenter.

Further research is clearly indicated to validate or (hopefully) disprove this conclusion. Perhaps some necessary initial condition was overlooked, some nuance of temperature, pressure, time duration, or distance. Maybe positive results might occur under certain lunar phases or planetary alignments. A breakthrough may well await some future experimenter in this exciting research field.

For the advancement of Scientificness, this experimenter encourages others to conduct similar trials, particularly those authors writing in the same competitive genres as this experimenter. Feel free to send your own scientilic trial results as comments to this blog post by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 18, 2017Permalink

Analysis of Writer and Non-Writer Morphs

A significant proportion of the Homo sapiens species does not write fiction, leaving that task to a tiny sector of the population that writes all of it. Today we examine this phenomenon and these particular creatures, and draw what conclusions we can from the available data.

Observations indicate the vast majority (greater than 99 percent) of adults within this species do not write fiction. The fiction-writing and non-fiction-writing fractions have not split off as separate species, and seem unlikely to do so. The distinction between the two is behavioral only, so we may define the fiction-writers as the FW Morph, and the others as the NFW Morph. Other sub-species terms such as breed, race, cultivar, ecotype, and strain are not as applicable as morph.

Note: We are only comparing those Homo sapiens who write fiction and those who do not. The term NFW should not be confused with those who write nonfiction books.

FWs and NFWs coexist and both share a similar global distribution pattern. Evidence shows the two morphs consume similar food, display no distinctive appearance differences, and often cohabit and interbreed without apparent preference for their own, or the other, morph. Resulting offspring mature into FW or NFW in the same 1% and 99% proportions, respectively. No statistical correlation is observed regarding passing on the FW trait to offspring. For example, two NFW parents may produce a child who matures into a FW.

In general, the species puts significant value on the education of its young. Nearly all juvenile Homo sapiens are trained in fiction writing, and are encouraged to create their own stories between the ages of 8 and 18 years. Thus, nearly all have the capability to become FW as mature adults, yet few do.

Behavioral differences between the two morphs are significant, and some of these differences are documented below.

  1. Obviously, FWs spend considerable time writing fiction, and NFWs spend no time doing so.
  2. FWs are more likely to read books (both fiction and nonfiction), and to read more often, than NFW.
  3. FWs react in varied and bizarre ways to the acceptance of a submitted story by an editor, and to the arrival of a box of the FW’s own books. These apparent rituals (dancing, fist-pumping, inordinate consumption of alcohol or chocolate have been observed) are thought to be celebratory in nature, but further studies are indicated.
  4. FWs make frequent attempts to discuss their stories with NFWs, rarely with a favorable outcome. NFWs often appear bored, or make some attempt not to look bored. The FW either fails to notice or expresses bewilderment. In extreme cases, an argument ensues and the two separate, usually for a temporary period.
  5. FWs occasionally seek out the company of other FWs. Perhaps this is because they are so rare, or perhaps they understand each other better than they understand NFWs.
  6. NFWs apparently are capable of creative thought and retain vestigial memories of early fiction-writing education. Sometimes an NFW will suggest to an FW that the FW write a story around the idea the NFW just had. FWs almost never do this, and instead suggest the NFW write the story. The NFW will almost never do that.

Since FWs produce a unique product that NFWs consume, and since NFWs produce all other products needed by FWs, an economic exchange relationship has developed. The amount of wealth earned by a given FW apparently depends on the popularity and demand for that FW’s stories among the NFWs.

In an economic sense, it is fortunate that FWs are in the minority; otherwise they would have to pay NFWs to read their books, rather than the other way around.

To the author’s knowledge, this is the first significant study of these fascinating morphs and their interactions in the wild. Clearly, the need for more comparative studies is indicated. Confirmation or refutation of the observations made in this analysis is sought by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

March 5, 2017Permalink