here’s my rebuttal.

http://www.halfcute.com/2009/09/i-will-not-read-your-f-ing-script-why.html

We can has jumped shark nao?

I’ve been thinking about your comment, and the thing I think you missed is this. The article is about DICKS who want your help. A lot of people who were offended by it seemed like fairly nice people who would be angry to have J.O. scream in their faces that he won’t read their fucking script. I’d be offended if he treated me that way, too. But J.O. wasn’t talking to me. He wasn’t talking to most of the people here. He was talking to dicks. The kind of people who deliberately make you uncomfortable until you break down and do what they want.

“You know, it’s been hard since my cat died, and poor me, and my mom and yours have been friends and I know my mom’s feelings would be hurt if I had to tell her that you wouldn’t read my script, and I guess she’d probably tell your mom . . . ”

I’m sure there is a dickish equivalent in everyone’s field. Moreover, these people are almost never any good because this behavior is co-morbid with not wanting to do any actual work. If they are writers, they don’t want criticism, just praise. If they were musicians they’d want you to spend an hour teaching them tabs, but they wouldn’t practice on their own.

Such is life.

I’m an astronomer. I love answering questions from laypeople, as much as I joke about how half of them are ‘I saw something funny in the sky. Let me describe it in ways that do not help you at all, then ask you what it was?’* I don’t mind talking shop for non-astronomers, or answering questions. Heck, I just did a blog post on what the Moon would be like if Earth were tilted like Uranus. I’ll also happily dispense advice about grad school and majoring in physics.

Where I draw the line is at the same kind of detailed work that Scalzi suggests. I won’t read your rejection of Big Bang cosmology and offer my opinion on the matter**. For one, I study the rings of Saturn, so am out of my league. For two, there are legitimate channels to get a paper or book reviewed by a scientist (peer-review) and this is a good way to get scientific attention. For three, if the emails I have to go by (and even as a grad student I get them, probably for having an email account that ends in astro.myuniversity.edu), you are probably a retired engineer who is missing something that the folks who took grad cosmology classes/General Relativity could pick up in five minutes. For four, when I tell you this, you’ll probably claim I’m part of the scientific establishment that is suppressing all ideas. This is doubly true if I don’t know you — at least with my friends, three and four are probably not true, and I can tell them one and two and they’ll drop the matter.

* In fairness, this is because my department has an Ask an Astronomer program, and I’m one of the few experts that has stargazed before, so I actually know what a satellite or Iridium flare looks like.

** This has happened.

misanthrope @30:

I’m still interested in the larger question of whether professionals have any sort of mentoring obligation to the up-and-comers. Is there any role for altruism, or wanting to share a passion for one’s work, or does it all boil down to the marketplace?

Just as an exercise, replace “professionals” with “any other sentient being” and see if the answer is any different. IMHO there is always a role for altruism – in particular the sort of altruism which has helped before Intellect has projected an ROI – but how can there be altruism if one already has obligations to help another? [1]

htom @44:

I do wish I had a Cream-Pie-Throwing Lazy Gun, though, for those who persist. Doesn’t damage them, just inventively and publicly labels them as deserving of laughter

Darn you, sir, darn you and your timing. Just yesterday I finished reading Against a Dark Background for the first time… now half the complex is wondering who the hell is choking, snorting and laughing so hard he cna braley tyep i na ocherent fahsoin. [2]

(and if I fired it at an undeserving target, it would hit me with its humor.)

Well, that seems entirely fair. [4]

____
[1] Which may explain why I’ve decided to assist in proofreading a 50k-word MS by an almost-complete stranger who aspires to writing for a living. Believe me, it’s not because the MS features vampires (I —ing detest vampires), nor because I would be mistaken for a professional save in very dim light.

[2] If a Lazy Gun chooses me as its new plaything to be mocked, I shall blame you while suppressing the urge to duck. [3]

[3] Ducking only guarantees that one gets hit with a cream pie – or many of them, perhaps thrown from low orbit. *splatsplatsplatsplat<drown/>splat*

[4] A Lazy-Fair Gun? Best keep your hands off of it!

Oh god yes. One of my lab partners way back in college first got me into playing. He’d show me chords and scales and stuff, loan me his guitar. I eventually bought a cheap axe to practice on. He kept showing me stuff.

Then I ran into another student who use to play professionally. My god. He’d invite me over to his place and tell me to bring my guitar. He’d show me something, I’d try to play it. We’d spend hours doing this.

A guy I worked with used to play professionally too. He kept inviting me over to his place and we’d jam together a lot. We eventually played open mics a bunch of times.

I’ve helped a bunch of people who wanted to learn. teach them some chords. Loan out my guitars. I’ve got a Gibson out on loan right now. I don’t play as much, but it’s definitely seems to be a cultural thing to help your fellow guitarists.

Man, now you make me want to get out the strings and jam….

In writing and reading, I’ve read some really bad fiction, but nothing was ever so bad that I couldn’t find something constructive to say. I did have a person ask me to read their novel one time and I said ‘no’, but didn’t make a big deal out of it.

The article did mention something that I think is insightfully true. You can’t talk a writer out of writing. If you can talk someone out of writing, they’re not a writer. It seems to be one of the most brutal things I’ve ever tried to learn. It took a long time to learn a song on a guitar, but that was a blink of an eye compared to how long I’ve been trying to figure out writing. It’s something it seems that you have to work at for years before you finally “get” it. Maybe all that effort makes you cranky by the time you finally get there. I dunno.

“It seems to be just professional writers who feel this way.”

Yeah, not so much. I know professional musicians who won’t listen to demo tapes, or forward them on. As with writers, there’s not enough time in the day, and they don’t want someone accusing them of stealing work.

As for guitarists being all superfriendly, etc., well, you know. I know lots of writers who will endlessly talk craft and make suggestions and offer advice and so on, which is the equivalent of what you’re talking about. I also know lots of writers who will help fellow writers in need.

So: No.