Greetings, Mastodon! 💫

I’m a strong believer in writing from wherever the day’s feelings find you. This week, they found me frozen, while reviewing the news and wondering how on earth to use our impoverished media spheres to build a conversation strong enough to meet our global needs.

I have no set answers in this week’s first #Newsletter - but I wanted you to know that you’re not alone with the questions.

#BetterWorldsTheory
#MediaLiteracy
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/grief-work-at-the-end-of-a-media?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Newsletter up! 🎉

Apparently when I start new ventures--like this week's switch to a semi-paid model, in which paid subscribers will get a second piece later this week--my workflow slows *way* down because I want to make sure the work is as sharp as possible. But the jitters will pass! The spice--er, content--will flow!

Today, I use two David Brooks pieces to talk about a writing structure that does great harm to the pursuit of thoughtful discourse.

#BetterWorldsTheory
https://mlclark.substack.com/p/how-to-choose-the-right-focus-for?sd=pf

Afternoon, folks!

This week's #Newsletter touches on two recent news items in literary publishing: the "small fry" of the Prosecraft debacle (involving author data scraping), and the big news of Simon & Schuster's acquisition by private equity firm KKR.

We have the vocabulary to talk about data scraping. But where is our conversation around the much bigger issue of *asset* scraping, which plagues our industry and so many others?

#BetterWorldsTheory #Publishing #Finance https://mlclark.substack.com/p/the-deeper-financial-grift-behind?sd=pf

Morning, Mastodon!

Today, #BetterWorldsTheory reflects on the struggle to pay attention to what matters, when we're easily swept up as a culture in what someone else has declared a worthy debate.

When animal species yawn, there's usually an instinctive mirroring response.

How do we break from that instinct, when it comes to tedious debate taking up all our "air"?

#Newsletter #SocialMedia
https://mlclark.substack.com/p/why-are-talking-about-this-again?sd=pf

#Newsletter time!

This week in #BetterWorldsTheory, we dip into The Beatles on film, VCR case law, and contemporary crises in the business of art.

Is it weird that The Yellow Submarine represents both an aspirational freedom for artistic expression *and* a tricky history for corporate involvement in the creation of beloved art?

Nah. Not weird. 🙃
Just the price of doing business in our creative fields.

But maybe it's a price we're not as willing to pay anymore?

https://mlclark.substack.com/p/making-all-our-nowhere-plans-for?sd=pf

Morning folks!

Sorry for the delay. This week's #BetterWorldsTheory newsletter reflects on imperfect activism, & how to dream more inclusively about the world.

It includes a deep dive into the wonderful dream-song of an Afrofuturist film, Neptune Frost, and thoughts about how much we in the SFF industry could stand to reconnect with life outside the online bubble.

Will be back on track next week.

(eBook & paperback of the collection are now up & out, thank goodness!)
https://mlclark.substack.com/p/the-actual-bad-place-for-contemporary?utm_source=twitter&sd=pf

A day late on the #Newsletter, sorry folks. Hope you had a great July 4.

Today, we lean on John Stuart Mill and Marshall McLuhan to explore the difference between protecting free speech and protecting the public forums, the "containers" of speech, that make all personal liberties possible and defensible.

Happy hump day, whatever your lumps and bumps!

#Philosophy #BetterWorldsTheory
#Humanism
https://mlclark.substack.com/p/on-mill-mcluhan-and-social-media?utm_source=twitter&sd=pf

#BetterWorldsTheory

Today's newsletter touches on the latest SFF Twitter nonsense, to make a bigger comment about the danger of assuming that our proximity to literature makes us more enlightened and kinder critters.

We have to make choices to lean into better systems all the time.

Whether we're up for that challenge... well, only time will tell.

#WritingCommunity #Writing #WritingLife #SFF https://mlclark.substack.com/p/will-literary-communities-save-us

Okay, Mastodon! 💪

This week's #Newsletter is a deep dive into Colombian politics. There's a lot here about the complexity of peace deals with local paramilitary and cartel outfits, along with the intricacies of front-facing and back-end state policies in shaping Colombia's future in some truly extraordinary ways.

If you're curious to see the road to peace in another political milieu, this might be the newsletter for you!

#BetterWorldsTheory #GlobalHumanism
#Colombia
https://mlclark.substack.com/p/on-writing-about-war-and-nationalism?sd=pf

Oh, this is a fierce one, folks.

Today's #Newsletter talks about #SFF's tempests in teapots (like the cozy horror chatter), but it also calls for us to remember what we share with other labourers. Where is our class consciousness, when picking our battles?

#BetterWorldsTheory
https://mlclark.substack.com/p/lessons-from-the-vending-life-outside?utm_source=twitter&sd=pf

#Newsletter Tuesday! 💫

Today, I look at similarities in the panic around LLMs and forms of labour theft that were normalized in other industries (journalism and teaching) many years ago.

The common denominator?

Why, it's our old friend, corporate exploitation of vulnerable workers! These systems have always been ready to use the promise of simplifying labour to rewrite industries in their favour.

Don't miss the forest for the trees.

#BetterWorldsTheory
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/thinking-about-ai-labour-theft-through?r=1ii76&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Morning, Mastodon!

In this week's #BetterWorldsTheory, I've got another deep dive for us.

This time, we go back to 2nd-century A.D., to reflect on two writers - Lucian of Samosata & St. Irenaeus - who influenced literature in entirely different ways.

The aim here is to use history to think about more recent upheavals in our industries.

If change is the status quo, what comes next for us today in #SFF publishing?

#Writing #WritingCommunity #Literature https://mlclark.substack.com/p/on-lucian-irenaeus-and-extraordinary

And now, something for the literary set...

Recently @jasonsanford offered an excellent overview of Sudowrite discourse in his Genre Grapevine (linked within the piece below).

That summary gave me license to focus in this week's #BetterWorldsTheory #Newsletter on another side of the conversation: our literary histories, and the danger of letting AI distract us from the greater creative threat. ⬇️

#SFF #Literature #AI #History #WritingCommunity https://mlclark.substack.com/p/on-artists-artisans-art-and-ai?sd=pf

All right, loves.

For some reason, this was a *really* tough #Newsletter to send out.

Yes, it explores heavy stuff, including carceral reform & the cruelty of trans panic, but mostly it's about the importance of striving for pluralist democracy, & not letting hateful politics trick us into accepting a reductive approach to society instead.

(Children of Doro also goes deep into governance and restorative justice, so this all weaves together well.)

#BetterWorldsTheory

https://mlclark.substack.com/p/history-literature-and-pluralist?sd=pf

Morning, Mastodon. 💫😊

Today's #BookTube offers a deep dive into classic lit, philosophy, and history in contemporary SFF... and it also reflects on some of the problems with Western publishing that make it difficult for us to *own* the intellectual histories in our fictions. We can do better! Here's a great reading list to get you started, if you're itchy for work in conversation with ideas that came before.

#BetterWorldsTheory #SFF #Books #CoSoBooks #Publishing
https://youtu.be/SnS0Lm9w-Bs

Morning, folks! 💫

Another week, another #BetterWorldsTheory #Newsletter.

This one talks about 3 news items in the world of #writing: a Bookseller survey about stressed-out debut authors, the sale of the first AI-inspired novel to a major, and the upcoming WGA strike.

Around these items, I reflect again on the distorted expectations of our industry that cause so much pain in the first place.

(Also, a new BookTube is up, on histories of spec lit! 🎉)

#WritersOfCoSo #SFF
https://mlclark.substack.com/p/three-slices-of-the-writing-world?sd=pf

😊 Mastodon!
#Newsletter time!

I'd delayed posting until I had my ARCs up for Children of Doro. (Link within, at the bottom! Have at 'em, loves!)

In this week's piece, an Asimov story from 1958 helps us reflect on how far we haven't come, because we're *still* a regional species with grand dreams of global reach.

What would it take for us to dream up a way of writing and creating that could *actually* bring in the world? ⬇️

#BetterWorldsTheory #SFF #Publishing #Indie https://mlclark.substack.com/p/in-search-of-a-better-way-to-write?utm_source=twitter&sd=pf

I was going to write a nice long essay for the #Newsletter tomorrow, related to Dostoevsky & Children of Doro, but after reviewing The Grand Inquisitor I had such a good chuckle that I'll just record a reading of it early in the morning, for Easter Sunday. How little has changed in the world of fiction, with respect to the tension between realist and fantastical prose. 😅

(More soon!) #SFF #Literature #BetterWorldsTheory

Evening, Mastodon. 💙

Tonight, I made a public Patreon post connected to a BookTube, in which I talk gratitude for my patrons and go deep, for fellow struggling writers, into the kinds of doubt it's normal to be moving through in our world.

If you're questioning the value of your work in this dumpster fire of an unjust society, you are not alone.

We'll get through it together.

#Writers #WritingLife #WritingCommunity
#BetterWorldsTheory

https://youtu.be/Q57JGLhIc_I
https://www.patreon.com/posts/gratitude-chat-81107608

Morning, Mastodon! 💫

Today's #Newsletter is on the "entertainment" side of things. I use John Wick 4 to reflect on "spectacles of violence" in general: the role of violence in art, the fantasies it can dangerously uphold, the hard realities it reflects, and how much a difference it makes to see the fact of violence in human life represented in a more mature and #Humanist way.

(I obviously loved the film. No spoilers, I promise!)

#CoSoFilms
#BetterWorldsTheory

https://mlclark.substack.com/p/on-john-wick-4-the-spectacle-of-violence