everyone who is an excellent writer thinks they suck and will never get published. everyone whose writing sucks ass is actually getting published and displayed in barnes and noble
some people read an awful lot, but don't read very well. deep reading is itself a skill. being able to untangle the threads of theme, subtext, characterization, narrative style, and more are all things that it takes time and intentional engagement to learn.
if you've ever watched a movie with your film buff friend and chatted about it afterwards, that friend might have pulled hours more of conversation out of the same 90 minutes of screentime, and wondered how the fuck they did that - it's not raw intelligence, it's a skill that's been honed. And I learned a lot about film from talking to friends who knew about film, and reading critique by film scholars
literature works exactly the same. so if you want to get more out of your reading, there are things you can do to train that.
Find a book or short story you think you've got a pretty good grasp on, preferably from a widely read & respected author like Ursula K Le Guin or Ray Bradbury (if you're new at this don't swing for the Toni Morrison or the Samuel Beckett yet unless you feel very comfortable with the complexity of the text - the point is to develop a complicated new skill on good foundations). Then go to JSTOR, create a free account, and look up criticism on the story you've chosen. Find something that looks readable to you and at least somewhat interesting. Read that article, and look at what that writer got out of the same story you've read that you didn't get. Do you see the critic's points? Did they teach you something about the text? Go reread that story and see if the criticism has changed how you read it. Are you seeing more? Are you thinking about the implications of a line that you hadn't noticed before? Does the story feel richer now?
there are other more involved ways of finding criticism. Learning to use academic databases, going to your local library to do interlibrary loans, finding critical voices you appreciate; these are all useful subskills. Literacy isn't just being able to read words, it's being able to read words in context and think about what they tell you about the text, the author, or the time and culture in which the text was produced. Literacy is the skill of being able to look at the world with open eyes and think clearly about how its parts are connected. It'll change your life
this keeps getting shared around and ive seen some different tags responding differently so i just want to make some important clarifications and distillations
you don't have to read more deeply if you don't want to (but i'd recommend it, i genuinely think it makes you a better person)
if you want to learn to read more deeply, the resources are out there. try to find critical literature (that is, academic writing that analyzes the text) on works your familiar with so you can get a sense for how to do that analysis too
learning to deep read literature can help you deep read many areas of your life
writers tend to put a lot of work into their stories. if you learn to read that work you'll (probably) appreciate the stories you love even more. And if not, then you'll have developed your taste. This too is worth doing
Sometimes writers don't even realize the themes and concepts they've put into their stories, or frame something as unimportant. Identifying these is also exceptionally helpful for other areas in your life.
Made this post about 15 minutes after the repair guy who fixed the pump on my dishwasher packed up his tools and left, as the dishwasher was whirring along doing my dishes from that morning.
He said the exact same thing, which I did not know before that, so spreading this knowledge.
This is a gross article - sorry, I switched to the history
Anyway, look at this
Josephine Garis Cochran, born in Ohio around 1841, was good at many things. She designed, patented, manufactured, and sold the first modern
1841, in America. "Clumsy servants." Sorry, 'servants'? Press X to doubt, first of all.
That said, historical research has shown that Cochran probably didn’t have that many servants and perhaps wasn’t quite as wealthy as she had portrayed herself. In the 1880 census, around the time she invented her machine, her residence lists only one servant, while previous censuses list none. Cochran also let the press believe she was descended from steamboat inventor John Fitch, even though she knew that wasn’t true.
Okay, so that's tearing at her credibility too. She's faking having slaves, or more slaves than she had, to boost her reputation. Great.
Cochran didn’t just invent the machine — she built a business around it.
Oh, I'll bet.
The reason I checked this out is because the large majority of these domestic appliances are created by Black women, who are forced to carly out these chores. You know. "As servants." And the fact that I found this...
She designed, patented, manufactured, and sold the first modern dishwasher, turning wire baskets and hot water jets into a labor-saving device that has helped countless people.
Cochran set out to build a machine that could do what earlier dishwashers could not.
... tells me I still don't have an answer for who actually invented the dishwasher. Just that this woman had the patent for the first one to use jets, improving a design for something that had previously existed. Who was that, I wonder? Odd that it's not pushed in my face as much as the company known as KitchenAid wants it.
Everything is a fucking ad.
Anyway, the history is:
Women and servants (*cough* *cough*) had to use shitty bar soap, because sudsy soap hadn't been invented yet
Mostly "female servants" (*cough* *cough*) had to do it, and were likely scalding their hands at the same time
Some white dude name John Houghton held the patent with some version that slapped water at dishes
Some other dude (idk what race he was) named L.A. Alexander held the patent with another version that everyone hated
Did they make those designs themselves? Who knows. Could've been another Thomas Edison situation.
Anyway, Josephine Cochrane made her version, apparently designed it herself, because she was so annoyed by her shitty stupid slaves - SERVANTS - chipping her plates that she needed a machine to do it instead
Then she made a factory that I'm sure had wonderful mid-19th century work conditions
Anyone who has lived without a dishwasher knows how tedious it can be to scrub dishes by hand night after night — but one woman's idea chang
Take the win for what it is. At least we have dishwashers and sudsy soap now.
Distraught, she tried washing it herself but quickly learned how thankless a task it was. According to legend, the frustrated socialite shouted, "If nobody else is going to invent a dishwashing machine, I'll do it myself," and sketched a design for a prototype.
Wow, I guess those "servants" just voluntarily and inherently found great satisfaction in the work itself or something. 🙄
What a weakling. Once again, a white woman only cares when it affects her.
[ID: the disability pride flag, made of diagonal stripes of red, yellow, white, light blue, and green across a dark gray background. The stripes are parallel and evenly spaced. /End ID]
Plain text:
It's disability pride month yall.
Be unapologetically disabled and take up all the space and time you need! [row of five exclamation points]
If a woman cannot be trusted to make decisions for only herself.
The argument immediately shifts to who it serves
In common iterations of this conversation it’s inferred that body modification intended to enhance beauty is in the service of garnering attention from men or gaining social approval.
When these determinations dont simply corral women away from this choice or lifestyle we switch to the moral high ground of some future where we insist all women who have/think of having plastic surgery will/want to have children.
Making her choice to change things about herself surgically a betrayal to her genetics and to her children who will have to live with her face…
We have to be more accepting of women who are finding themselves point blank period.
And relinquishing all desire/connection to beauty is not liberating for everyone.
Every woman didn’t grow up living the same life. The oppression varies in form by way of intersectionality, social pressures distributed across that period, education standards in the area, the list goes on.
Hegemony is a concept that every member of any minority group needs to be able to name and truly understand its trappings as not to try and force a blanket doctrine onto certain members of their group in an effort to participate in the fallacy of the model minority.
I.e. if all women stopped trying to participate in beauty (in general). let alone the prevailing beauty standards we would be a united force against a very large arm of patriarchal oppression.
The problem is hardly anyones life is that simple. And the fact that patriarchal power is found in controlling/prescribing to women what beauty is is not self evident of its origin.
Women were beautiful and participated in beatification before the system was put in place. You wont destroy this system of power by placing the onus on the people oppressed latterly by the system rather than realizing the system was effective in invading culturally relevant spaces in our societies.
Tldr:
Your problems with the systems that oppress you are not incoherency, the system was put in place to disadvantage you and treat you and others unfairly. Your idea of a better more unified argument/statement is not the opposition that will cause our systemic problems to be rescinded. So stop trying to flatten peoples lived experiences to a single standard or position or point in order to stamp out a singular argument or stance because complexity was never the issue.
Anyway this disability pride month I would like to shoutout disabled folks whose creativity has suffered because of their condition. I’m talking people with hand tremors and pain that stop them from drawing, knitting, and playing instruments. People whose thinking has become so disorganized that nothing they write makes sense to other people. People with chronic pain who can no longer dance. People so over medicated in a fruitless attempt to maintain stability that the wells of their imagination have run dry.
I see you and I love you. You are more than your creative output. You are not a shell of what you used to be. You are a whole, complete person, regardless of what your creativity has been, is now, or will be in the future.
"you can jack off you can eat grapes all else banned" is kind of the post of the summer because literally wtf else are you supposed to do once it’s 30°C outside
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