Ditch Diggers #41: Hot Button Topics

 

Matt and Mur come to you live from Morgan Freeman's 24-hour news network control room where we are discussing the latest hot button topics on the news! (Mur has a new applause machine, but it's not working right now, so you'll have to infer the applause.) Sound f/x as the new vernacular, and addiction to sound f/x machines. Mur and Matt are tackling ISSUES on this HOT BUTTON EPISODE of Ditch Diggers, those things that are heatedly being discussed on writer social media in recent weeks. Matt explains (poorly and too meta, according to Mur) what hot button issues are and how they come into being. Mur explains (far more eloquently) the nature of click-bait and how it drives/poisons discourse on the internet. Hot Button #1: The infamous "if you don't write every day you're not a real writer" article and the larger "real writer" myth. Hot Button #2: The "don't you dare smack talk your copy editor on social media" debate, and the larger issue of how important discourse gets derailed by pretense and false premises, the difference between discussing issues and discussing individuals, and authors criticizing other authors. Hot Button #3: "Literary" magazines publishing genre fiction, and also not paying authors. Matt and Mur go on a tangent about the detriment of labeling fiction, particularly for SFF and horror, and how the market has shrunk. Returning to the hot button, Matt and Mur talk about the difference between the business of "literary" magazines and SFF magazines. Twitter Q&A! Questions include outlining book series, "bonehead" things aspiring writers do again and again, and knives.

Matt and Mur shill their books, GREEDY PIGS and RENCOR and SIX WAKES respectively, and remind Hugo voting listeners Ditch Diggers is up for best fancast, so vote for us