Tribal lays*

      So basically I need to blog. Well, not need to in the sense of needing to eat or needing shelter from harsh weather or needing to find Angelina's home address, but I feel obligated to since I assume some of you are out there still reading this poor little blog, and I hate to think about you clicking my blog over and over and over, but no new content. Then you cry and think life isn't worth living and start drinking and end up on the streets with only the voices in your head for company, and I don't need that on my conscience, so buck up, little readers, here's a post.
      But not an interesting post because I still haven't done anything interesting to relate to you. I am working on Twilight, the Defenders Adventure, which will launch this weekend. The title comes from the name of the huge, deadly, mysterious starship that the players will explore: The Twilight Grace. But working on it isn't that interesting to relate. Writing isn't that interesting to talk about, actually. It's great to do, but not so much fun to discuss.
      I particularly get irritated at writers who:
       • discuss how their "Muse" has abandoned them (Of course, it left you; it's just as annoyed with you as we are)
      • talk about how they are just so sensitive to life that they can't write because the world overwhelms them (Yeah, cry me a river)
      • snipe about writers who write prolifically (Jealousy is an ugly thing)
      • complain about how writer's block is RUINING their lives (Maybe you need a few real problems)
      • writers who don't recognize that writing is different for each of us and what might work for one person won't necessarily work for another (It's called individuality, and you should realize that just because someone doesn't write like you do, it doesn't mean they're doing it wrong).
      Yeah, I've been visiting one of my online writers' groups. How did you guess? There's a moderator in one group that drives me crazy. She is dogmatic, mean-spirited, and vengeful. I don't attempt to argue with her because she throws her moderator status around like it was given by Saint Peter himself. She always has an opinion on everybody's writings -- even in genres that she proudly hold in contempt -- but as near as I can tell, she has never finished a book, a story or even a poem. Now, there's nothing wrong with having an opinion, but what she lacks is the knowledge ther her opinion is no more valid than anyone else's. We're supposed to help and advise in the group, not discourage and control.
      A couple members of the group have asked me to write to the site owner about her, but I'm not going to do it. There are plenty of groups out there so we can all find what we're looking for. And this moderator has friends in the group, so I'm assuming they agree with her. As I get older, I find myself less willing to throw myself into the fire for differences of opinion.
      But she tempts me. How she tempts me.

Footnote:
* From Rudyard Kipling's "In the Neolithic Age"
... a rival, of Solutre, told the tribe my style was outre--
'Neath a tomahawk, of diorite, he fell
And I left my views on Art, barbed and tanged, below the heart
Of a mammothistic etcher at Grenelle.

Then I stripped them, scalp from skull, and my hunting-dogs fed full,
And their teeth I threaded neatly on a thong;
And I wiped my mouth and said, "It is well that they are dead,
For I know my work is right and theirs was wrong."

But my Totem saw the shame; from his ridgepole-shrine he came,
And he told me in a vision of the night: --
"There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
"And every single one of them is right!"