Month: March 2025

Thoughts on The Motern Method

I liked it. Well-worth reading and owning.

However, if anyone has spent any time at all reading Heinlein’s Rules or exploring corners of the internet where these Rules are being lived out, a lot of the concepts in The Motern Method will sound familiar.

Which doesn’t mean it’s not worth reading. IT IS.

But it wasn’t particularly revolutionary for me. Parts of it reminded me of Make Art, Make Money: Lessons from Jim Henson on Fueling Your Creative Career. Parts of it reminded me of Ray Bradbury’s long-standing advice on quantity over quality in one’s art-making. And parts of it reminded me of Heinlein’s Rules.

One thing it also reminded me of is my previous desire to be an independent filmmaker. If The Motern Method was anything for me, it was a reminder that I once wanted to make movies and felt like I didn’t have the resources, and that maybe I need to let go of such thinking and try to make a movie no matter the lack of money or equipment.

I’m not saying I’m going to start making independent films. But… maybe?

The other thing I like about the book is that it collects a lot of advice into one place. Sure, there are Heinlein’s Rules and the books and authors I referenced above, but when I need a quick pep talk, The Motern Method is right there, with all the stuff.

For instance, I got a rejection the other day from a short story market. And yeah, yeah, rejections are part of the deal, right? I’ve had many rejections before, so you’d think I’d brush it off and no big thing.

But I was bummed. In a funk.

And that rejection was followed by another rejection (different story, different market). So again, you’d think, “But that’s great! You’ve got two stories out for submission and even with the rejections, all you need to do is send them out to two more magazines and keep going!”

And that’s exactly the right advice, but my brain doesn’t always operate on logic. My brain sometimes spirals into depths of self-doubt and loathing that are like the black pits of Tartarus, just roiling under the surface waiting to bubble up.

I know rejections are part of the gig, and I know all I need to do is send the stories out again. But knowing and believing are two different things.

Enter The Motern Method.

I remembered that Farley had a few chapters on rejections and getting your work out into the world (again, very Heinlein-esque), so I flipped to those pages and started reading.

It was basically a pep talk, and it worked. My brain stopped its death-spiral, and I felt renewed. Getting my work out into the world is what matters. Getting your work out into the world is what matters. Can’t let rejections stop that. Gotta keep going.

Sure, I could have gone online and googled Heinlein’s Rules again, or tracked down similar publishing advice, but having Farley’s book right at hand, its minimalist, indie-punk black and white cover reminding me that artists can work outside the mainstream system, made it easier to read what I needed to read.

I love the book’s aesthetic. No author is mentioned anywhere but on the spine. No introduction, no table of contents. The book just starts, each section indicated by bold-font titles, and then it ends, with Farley narrating his creative journey, explaining how the Motern Method was developed and how it helped him write the book.

Some sections are ones I quibble with a bit. “Read the comments. Read the reviews”? Maybe for others, but for me, this is DEATH. Both good comments and bad, good reviews and bad, tend to hurt my Creative Voice. It doesn’t mean I’m not an idiot who sometimes reads the reviews, but I always hate myself afterward.

Farley’s larger point — that reading the reviews will toughen you up, show you that taste is relative and not to worry if people don’t “get” your work — isn’t a bad one, but I know for my own ego, reviews can get inside like brain worms and infect my process.

But overall, the book is a rallying cry, a manifesto.

And it is very punk. Which I dig.

I’ll be keeping The Motern Method on my writing desk. When I’m stuck, when I’m down, when I need a kick in the pants, it will be my go-to.

News Fast

I wasn’t going to do a news fast because I thought it was important to pay attention to all the crazy stuff happening since January (since November, really). I thought consuming news was crucial to keep abreast of STUFF. Stuff that’s important. Stuff that’s going to hurt people (is hurting people). Stuff that’s going to be pretty forking bad, so I needed to know all the stuff. Or most of the stuff. Or, heck, just some of the stuff.

But I’ve decided there’s no way to dip my toe into the sludge of stuff without getting sucked in. A little bit of news, even just a check of the headlines or whatever, is enough to send me off into the vast, ugly maw of all the hellscape stuff that’s happening right now, and I just–

I can’t.

A little bit of news suddenly becomes a lot of news becomes too much news. So I’m cutting myself off from the news.

Near-total fasting. Occasionally a crumb from a newsletter (that isn’t normally political) will wedge itself between my teeth, but other than those stray, unintentional crumbs, I’m going off the news.

In fact, I unsubscribed to a bunch of newsletters just so I could shut out the world.

I blocked the New York Times and Reddit on all my devices.

I marked “Not interested” on every slightly newsy/political video that pops up on Youtube.

The only radio that passes my ears is the local classical/jazz station or a music show on WDET.

Total. News. Fast.

I don’t know how long this will last, but I can report on how it’s been for the past two weeks.

Reader, it has been glorious. Maybe not for the world, but for my sanity. For my writing and creativity. For my mental and physical and spiritual health. For nearly everything.

It has not been easy, or at least, it wasn’t easy the first week. Fasting from the news meant a total reorientation of how I spend my days and my time. Cutting out the news without filling my time with something better is a recipe for lapses and failures. As such, I’ve been listening to more audiobooks and RPG-related podcasts. I’ve spent spare moments reading my kindle or a library book.

I’ll admit, there are times when I really don’t feel “ready” to commit the mental energy needed to listen to an audiobook, or I resist the “slowness” of reading a book. There’s no clicking of links. No jumping from outrage to outrage. It’s been revelatory that I’m so resistant to sustained reading. I never thought I would be someone who would resist reading a book.

But that’s what happened (and still happens) once I started the news fast. The prospect of picking up a book to fill that time (time once-filled by Reddit and NYTimes articles and such) has become a daunting prospect. I realize now how “light calorie” the news was for me. Easy to digest. Not nutritious, but if I ate enough, eventually filling. A sick, greasy filling, but enough so that I would be satiated.

Reading or listening to an audiobook instead has meant a bit of struggle at the beginning. I resist. But then, it’s either listen to a book or read one or simply sit with my thoughts, and I realize that all three of those is preferable to the news, so I sometimes do sit with my thoughts, or jot down ideas in my pocket notebook. And sometimes I open the kindle just to peruse and suddenly find myself pulled into a story or essay. Or I’ll open that audiobook of Ray Bradbury stories that I’ve been neglecting and before I know it I’m crying or cheering or overwhelmed with awe, and it was all worth it, that initial struggle, that bit of resistance: I’ve pushed through it to the somewhat “harder” pleasure of reading a book and found the reward to be much greater than any I’ve ever had with reading the news.

I’m not sure the news fast can be sustained indefinitely. I may, with time, start listening to the radio again, just to keep up. But I might continue to block the news websites and be much more selective about the podcasts I listen to. I’ve gotten better at filling my spare time with reading (and not news); I don’t want to lose my new-found ability to engage with the deeper, harder pleasures of books. The spare moments don’t have to be filled with news and outrage. They can be filled with reading. Or thinking.

Or with nothing at all but quiet.

© 2025 Jennifer M. Baldwin

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