Alina, who has two degrees in literature that she doesn’t know what to do with, opens this video with the question: “Does anyone else feel like contemporary novels are written like we’re stupid?” She then proceeds to favour us with her views in a world-weary way that characterises her videos. It’s an interesting discussion – you hope it would be with two degrees – but a little too long and too focused on her demographic – twenty-something girls.
I don’t have much to say about her views because I don’t read contemporary novels. That’s mainly due to my being sick to death of the woke assumptions that are either in the foreground or the background. Now, Alina slings off at a right-winger like me (actually, I’m a Burkean conservative, but I rather doubt Alina knows what that is) who complains about the left-wing bias in contemporary novels.
She says political ideas are an essential part of literature. Well, they are, but that’s not the point. The issue is how political ideas are handled in woke novels and how they characterise their political opposition.
In the first place, they are assumed, which is intellectual surrender or, worse, the woke writer does not possess the ability to justify his ideas philosophically. In the second place, woke writers have no idea of the philosophical underpinnings of a competent, serious conservative writer. Such a philosophical defence is not imaginable.
The video below, providing writing advice for new writers, has scored 1.4 million views since it was posted 7 years ago. Alexa Donne doesn’t mince words, gives brutal advice to new writers who may be fantasising about their work, but is hilarious in doing so.
This is an edition of Joanna Penn’s highly regarded podcast. The section on self-editing begins at the 29-minute mark:
How can you improve your self-editing process? How can you find and work with professional editors and beta readers? How do you know when editing is done and the book is finished? With Joanna Penn.
From the Novel Marketing channel: There’s a culture shift underway that most authors aren’t seeing. Even traditional publishers can’t figure out why their titles are resonating. If your book isn’t selling, it could be a cover or craft problem, but it might be a zeitgeist problem. In this week’s episode, you’ll hear from fantasy and LitRPG author Seth Ring. We discuss the biggest cultural shift in storytelling in two decades and what it means for your books.
Katie Lumsden of Book and Things ranks Dickens’s novel across several tiers and categories. I pretty much agree with her final rankings except for OLIVER TWIST, which I would raise several places, and HARD TIMES, which I would drop several places. My criteria do not always align with hers.
The one category I would disregard is GENDER, which she should really name FEMINIST, because her interest is really only in how Dickens portrays women according to feminist gender theory. She really has little interest in male characters except to speak about toxic masculinity when, in her mind, it’s warranted or when they behave according to feminist notions.
Here’s a video that discusses the misconceptions about self-publishing. A salient point is that some self-publishers earn hundreds of thousands of dollars in a year. Alas, I’m not one of those.
The video below shows how pervasive female influence and control are across the arts world – through publishing, television, media, advertising, etc. If you’re a male (like me) writing stories and characters that men are traditionally interested in, you can forget about being published by a traditional publisher – no matter how excellent your writing is. If you’re a male who finds the latest offerings in bookshops, television and cinema feminist and boring, you’ll find the the explanation here. This video is worth rewatching for its explanatory value.
Mervyn Bendle’s series of three articles in Quadrant is of particular interest to me because the 1960s is the setting of my Sixties Series. The articles make interesting background reading for my series.
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Liza’s Journey: Australia in the Sixties
Mervyn Bendle, Quadrant, Dec 06 2025
This is the first of three articles that tracks a young woman’s intellectual and emotional journey through the 1960s in Australia. It was inspired by the book, play, film, and TV series, Ladies in Black, set around Christmas 1959, which focusses on Leslie, a shy, naïve, bookish, and mousy 16-year-old schoolgirl who takes a summer job in the high-end fashion section at Goode’s, a prestigious Sydney department store, while awaiting her exam results.
An only child in a working class family, Leslie had excelled at school and looks forward to going to university, where she can study literature and pursue her dream of becoming a poet. At Goode’s she is befriended by the older sales assistants and becomes part of their lives, changes her name to a more poetic and feminine ‘Lisa’, is introduced to the many social and cultural changes happening to Australian society, and begins her transformation into a confident, stylish, and worldly-wise young woman.
Or does she? This series of articles looks at the world that another fictional young woman, Liza (name changed for copyright reasons), might enter after she leaves her holiday job and begins literary studies at the University of Sydney. It briefly reviews the international scene at the height of the Cold War as it impacted on Australia, and the nature of Australian society as it left the conservatism of the 1950s and plunged into the radical changes of the 1960s. It then takes a more detailed look at life in Sydney at the time, including the activities of the ‘Sydney Push’, the bohemian vanguard of intellectual, cultural, and romantic life that flourished around the University, and into which any young aspiring poet and intellectual like Liza would have been drawn.
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Liza didn’t know what to make of it! It was if those exciting movies, The Wild One (1953) and Rebel Without a Cause (1955), had both come to life in Sydney! Kevin Simmonds was renowned as “Australia’s most fearless jail escapee whose Hollywood looks made him a teen idol as he ran circles around police”. Kevin (right) had been in trouble with the police since he was 14 for car theft and burglary, and after several stints in Boys Town and a Youth Training Centre, he eventually spent two years in Goulburn Gaol. A talented singer and musician – he had even cut a few records – he charmed the magistrate into sending him there because of its music program and, he said, because he wanted to hone his skills so he could go straight when he was released. In reality, he just wanted to be reunited with a mate so they could plan the jobs they’d do when they got out.
