Deborah Lipp

I posted this on Saturday, and it got wiped when I (okay, not me, Cranky) restored the site from a backup. It is a very cool dream and fascinates me, so here it is again, for posterity.

I am in my house. Although I never see this house from the outside during the course of the dream, I know that it is a tall Victorian, very Psycho. I am in my bedroom in the attic (sloped ceilings and such).

My friends are using my basement temple to perform an initiation. I am waiting upstairs in the bedroom for them to finish.

Suddenly I find that Alex Sanders is in bed with me. We are waiting together. Then he tries to seduce me. At first he is crude and grabby and I reject him twice. The third time he is more seductive and gentle and I respond. We begin to make love. I can hear the initiation going on downstairs. While we make love, I quietly recite some of the words of the ceremony along with the Priestess. I know Alex knows these words as well.

Then the lights go on and the initiation is going on in the bedroom. The ritual circle surrounds the bed and we have a major “oops, excuse our naked goodness” moment.

Interpretations so far include (a) I’m horny, and (b) the dream was an initiation. ‘Course, could be both.

I found a website that had an article I’d written years ago. It had been posted without permission or copyright notice. (No link or names; I’m not writing this to point fingers or be bitchy.)

On this site, I found quite a few articles, some attributed, some not, some with permission, some not. There were songs and poems and rituals, some without any author noted. As it happens, I knew who’d written about half of what I saw posted as “anonymous.”

This was common practice, back in the old days. Take everything you can get your hands on, and throw it up there. If you typed it yourself, clearly it’s yours. If you don’t know who wrote it, clearly it’s anonymous. It was exceptionally common among Pagans, but it’s also all over fansites, and probably everywhere else.

The old days are over.

I’m writing this, not to berate one web publisher (although I didn’t like his response, which I’ll detail shortly) but to talk about this as an issue. I’m a writer. It’s who I am, it’s what I do. It’s my bread and butter. It’s my art form. It’s my reputation. Most of what I write is free of charge. You can read this blog for free. The extensive writing I did in Pagan ‘zines in the 80s and early 90s was for free. Most Pagan ‘zines, even today, pay very little if at all. So what I get out of it is that article, attached to my name. That’s the part that’s mine.

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What is it that makes people think the author is the work? The artist is the art?

There was a commenter here who basically said that, because I was rude to her, she wouldn’t recommend The Way of Four anymore. Did The Way of Four get worse overnight?

I see this all the time, especially (but not exclusively) among Pagans. People who pan Oberon’s book because it markets towards Hogwarts types. “Oh,” they say, “He’s so caught up in fantasy.” And y’know, Oberon is caught up in fantasy. He loves it, it enriches him. But does that say anything about the book? I mean, shouldn’t you at least flip through it before deciding whether or not it’s good?

Authors are human. Oberon loves fantasy, to the point where sometimes it’s silly. Isaac loves polemics, to the point where sometimes it’s really gorram annoying. I am opinionated and sometimes bitchy.

So what?

So the first thing, I guess, is why does that have anything to do with our writing? But the other thing is, why should writing be perfect for it to be commendable? Maybe Oberon’s book has too much fantasy for your taste, and has some excellent magical stuff. I think if you sit home and wait for the perfect book, you won’t read much.

I think a smart person, a good reader, a discerning adult, knows how to separate author from work or singer from song, and also knows how to separate wheat from chaff.

I wrote to one of my favorite authors about one of her books. I was such a huge fan. I’d seen her lecture a couple of times. And the answer I got back was, well, snotty. Knocked the stars right out of my eyes, poor me. But I still recommend her book because it’s still a great book. I won’t invite her to my birthday party, but heck, she won’t invite me to hers.

The burden is on the reader, really, to make those distinctions, and to allow the writer to be a human being. Because we will be, regardless.