D. Scott Maiorca

March 24, 2020 dscottmaiorca Real life

Fluxtopia: What We Can Learn From Living In A Pandemic.

I know everyone is thinking about the Coronavirus, as they should be, but it shouldn’t be all doom and gloom. Don’t get me wrong, we should be worried; the world is changing, but things are never as bad as they seem. We tend to think of the world in binary terms— day and night, love and hate, black and white.It’s probably an evolutionary adaptation. It’s easier to simplify things so that we can make quick decisions. Can you imagine a primitive hunter and gatherer stopping to play all the possible angles when they heard a branch break behind them? By the time they figured out how to respond the tiger would have had dinner.

We simplified things because we had to to survive. We see the world as either dystopia or utopia. Either it’s Planet of the Apes, or it’s Star Trek. Don’t get me wrong, I love both of those stories/worlds, but in reality we don’t ever get dystopia or utopia. We live in fluxtopia. That state of being in the middle — in flux.

The world is different now. We are aware that pandemics aren’t just things that did happen. They are things that can happen. That realization alone has changed the world. While you can’t easily find toilet paper or flour right now, and the economy is looking bleak, that doesn’t mean the world is ending. It’s changing. It’s in flux.

I could list about a hundred horrible things that might happen, some that probably will, but you can get that on just about any other site. Instead, I want to talk about the good things that are happening.

Wildlife is returning to places like Venice. Click here to https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/20/nature-is-taking-back-venice-wildlife-returns-to-tourist-free-city read the Guardian story about it. It’s pretty amazing. Air pollution in China has dropped to record lowshttps://www.cnn.com/2020/03/17/health/china-air-pollution-coronavirus-deaths-intl/index.html, as I suspect it will happen elsewhere. Once the curve flattens, and the shelter in place orders are lifted, if we remember the impact they had we can continue the trend of cleaner air and water— as long as we remember.

I know that seems Polly Anna, but my observation is we are seeing the world differently. We’re worried about our friends and families. We are talking with them more. We are checking in, instead of checking out. We are becoming more concerned about other people. When things start to return to a new normal we can continue that—as long as we remember.

If you’ve been to a grocery store recently, you’ve probably seen the empty shelves. It looks pretty freaky. Unless you’re pushing 100 you’ve never seen scarcity in the industrialized world. We’re used to being able to run to the store whenever we want— buy whatever we want/need/can afford or put on our credit cards. With the stores being out of things we’re still surviving. In fact, I think we’re serving better. I’ve finally convinced my kids not to waste food. We’re having real talk about the importance of being responsible with food choices, not eating so much junk. They’ve seen the stores. They know the crap cereal they prefer, the fruit snacks, the chips aren’t as easy to get now, so they are self-rationing when they eat them. I suspect a lot of people are doing the same thing. In the long run, this will make us healthier. Once everything settles down we can continue eating healthier— if we remember.

I think that’s the key to staying sane in fluxtopia: look for the positives. Look for the things you see that are making the world better, and remember them when everything settles down. Adapt to the bad things, make smart decisions about your health and income. But don’t dwell on them. Dwell on the positives and when this all settles down — remember.

February 3, 2026January 5, 2026 Scott Teaching

Finding Your Voice After the System Teaches You to Be Quiet

Learning the language is only the first step.

What comes next is harder.

Most people don’t lose their voice because they lack words. They lose it because they learn, over time, that speaking doesn’t change anything. That explanations are ignored. That questions are treated as problems. That clarity isn’t rewarded—it’s managed.

Silence becomes practical.

I see this in my students, but I’ve lived it too. Systems don’t need to silence you loudly. They just need to teach you that speaking costs more than it’s worth. After enough forms, enough appeals, enough meetings where the outcome is already decided, people stop trying to explain themselves.

Not because they don’t care—but because they do.

Voice is risky. It exposes you. It makes you visible in systems that prefer you legible but quiet. Once you’ve been dismissed enough times, even having the right words doesn’t feel safe anymore.

That’s the gap people miss.

We talk about literacy as if language automatically leads to empowerment. It doesn’t. Understanding the system doesn’t mean you trust it. Knowing how to speak doesn’t mean you believe you’ll be heard.

Regaining voice is not a switch. It’s a slow, uneven process.

It starts small. A sentence you don’t erase. A question you ask anyway. A story you tell without apologizing for it. Often, voice returns first in private—journals, notes, recordings no one else will hear. Only later does it move into shared space.

This is why storytelling matters.

Story isn’t just expression. It’s rehearsal. It’s where people practice telling the truth without consequences—at least at first. Writing, audio, film, even fragmented notes allow someone to shape experience into something they can look at instead of carry.

I tell my students this all the time: if you don’t tell your own story, someone else will. And they won’t tell it gently. They’ll reduce it. Flatten it. Turn it into a label, a case file, a problem to be managed instead of a life being lived.

Voice doesn’t come back as confidence. It comes back as permission.

Permission to take up space. To be specific. To say this is what happened without immediately explaining why it doesn’t matter. That permission is fragile, especially for people who’ve learned that visibility leads to punishment.

I don’t push voice. I make room for it.

In classrooms, in writing, in conversation, the goal isn’t volume. It’s intention. Not everyone needs to speak loudly. But everyone needs a place where their words are treated as real.

Voice isn’t about winning arguments or changing systems overnight. Most of the time, it’s quieter than that.

It’s about refusing to disappear.

After systems teach you to be quiet, speaking again is an act of resistance—whether anyone is listening yet or not

January 27, 2026January 5, 2026 Scott Teaching

Why Literacy Is a Survival Skill

When people hear the word literacy, they usually think of reading levels or test scores. I used to think that way too, before I started paying attention to where confusion actually shows up in real life.

Literacy isn’t just an academic skill. It’s a survival skill. For all of us.

Most of our lives are spent moving through systems that don’t explain themselves very well. Healthcare. Insurance. Schools. Employment. Technology. Legal processes. Each one has its own language, and most of that language isn’t designed to help. It’s designed to move people along, to limit liability, or to protect the system itself.

When you don’t understand that language, the cost isn’t just inconvenience. You lose options.

I see this most clearly in my students, but I’ve felt it myself too.

When people don’t have words for what they’re experiencing, they tend to turn it inward. Confusion becomes a personal failure. Frustration becomes shame. Resistance gets labeled as attitude. Vocabulary changes that. Naming something gives it shape. It pulls the problem out of your body and puts it where you can look at it.

That’s why I care so much about language.

We build vocabulary deliberately—not as memorization, but as equipment. Words for systems. Words for emotions. Words for power, pressure, and limits. When someone can say this is what’s happening to me, instead of something is wrong with me, everything shifts a little.

Literacy also affects motivation in ways people don’t talk about enough.

If you don’t understand what’s being asked of you, effort feels pointless. Giving up isn’t laziness—it’s a rational response to confusion. Clarity restores agency. When expectations make sense, when the language is readable, people can try again.

This is why literacy comes before content for me.

Before essays, we build sentences. Before arguments, we build claims. Before critique, we build language for uncertainty. Reading and writing aren’t separate from thinking—they’re how thinking becomes visible.

And literacy doesn’t live only on the page.

Some people find their voice through writing. Others need to speak first—recording audio, hearing themselves think. Others work visually, through images and film, where meaning comes from sequence and silence. The medium matters less than the intention. Literacy is the ability to communicate meaningfully, in whatever form works.

At its core, literacy is about choice.

When you can read systems, name your experience, and tell your own story, you’re not guaranteed fairness—but you are less invisible. You have more ways to respond.

In a world that increasingly treats people as data points and cases instead of humans, that matters.

It’s not just academic.

It’s survival

January 13, 2026January 5, 2026 Scott Teaching

Teaching Philosophy: Motivation, Language, and Story

I teach students who have been worn down by systems to the point of giving up.

Many of the students I work with have learned—through repetition—that effort does not always lead to reward. School, healthcare, legal, and social systems have often treated them as problems to manage rather than people to understand. Motivation, in that context, doesn’t disappear. It erodes.

So yes—I teach motivation. But not the poster kind.

Motivation, for my students, is not about enthusiasm or compliance. It’s about rebuilding the belief that effort can still matter. That their voice can still land somewhere. That what they think and notice has value beyond survival.

A core part of that work is vocabulary.

Vocabulary is power. It gives students tools to name what they’re experiencing instead of absorbing it silently. We build words deliberately—academic, emotional, technical—not as memorization, but as equipment. The more language you have, the more precisely you can think. The more precisely you can think, the harder it is for systems to flatten you.

I also teach students to tell their own stories.

Not just through writing, though writing matters. But through audio, video, and visual media as well. Some students find their voice on the page. Others find it in a microphone. Others only begin to speak when a camera is pointed somewhere else and they’re allowed to narrate from the side.

Storytelling is not an add-on to the curriculum. It is the curriculum. When students learn to structure a story—where it begins, what it leaves out, how it ends—they are learning how meaning is made. They are learning how narratives shape outcomes. They are learning how to resist being reduced to someone else’s version of events.

I use project-based learning because it creates room for revision without punishment. I emphasize feedback over grades, clarity over compliance. I am explicit about expectations, and flexible about paths. Trauma-informed teaching, to me, is not about lowering standards—it’s about removing unnecessary harm so learning can happen at all.

Most of all, I try to be honest.

I tell students when systems fail. I tell them when frustration makes sense. I tell them when an assignment is difficult on purpose—and why. I don’t promise that education fixes everything. I promise that language, motivation, and story give you leverage inside systems that would rather you stay quiet.

Teaching, at its best, is not about forcing outcomes.

It’s about helping people believe they are still allowed to try—and giving them the tools to do it.

That’s the work I do.

April 10, 2024April 10, 2024 dscottmaiorca Real life

I’m Done Kicking Myself For Not Being Someone Else

I published my first Novella in 2019. I was finishing my MFA and. Had taken countless writing classes over the years. I thought I knew everything. Of course I didn’t, and still don’t. Here are a few things I have learned since then.

When I first published, everything I’d read said to keep your genres separate. If you write in different genres, use a different pen name for each. That sounded like good advice, and I think for a rapid release author that’s still true. Rapid release authors publish a book every month or at least every two months.

I am not a rapid release author. I write daily, but my brain doesn’t focus on one story at a time. Currently, I am writing on four different novels/novellas and a slew of short stories. I will finish them all. I write about a thousand words a day towards them. That means over a year I may finish two of the novels and some short stories, or I may finish tons of shorts and one novel. So far this year, it’s early April. I have finished four short stories, and one novelette. This year I have written 100,000 good, mostly publishable words. I’ve tried sticking to one story at a time, and my brain just doesn’t work like that.

Listening to my muse and writing what she tells me works for me as long as I write daily. As long as I write daily, I will complete my projects. It will just take me longer.

I used to feel bad about that. I could see very successful indie authors. A couple of them are friends of mine in real life. I’ve watched one of them write a 1000,000 word novel in a week, then spend less than a week copy editing and designing the book cover. I tried to be like them. Trying to be like them caused me to create so much pressure for myself that I quit trying to write for publication. I didn’t quit writing. I just did free writes and an occasional writing session beyond that. Eventually that pressure turned into kicking myself, for not being someone else.

I firmly believe the secret to life was written about the Oracle of Delphi’s cave several thousand years ago. Know thyself and all things in moderation. I told my students for years that’s the secret of life. I’ve told them if they actually know who they are, then they’d be harder to stop. If you know who you are, you know what you’re capable of, and you know what you’re worth. I, on their other hand, didn’t know who I was, at least as a writer. I tried being someone else. I was terrible at being someone else.

Christmas Eve I gave myself permission to be myself as a writer. Over 1000,000 good, publishable words in a little over three months, shows I’m a pretty good me. I’m writing great stories, submitting them to traditional publications, submitting quarterly to Writers of The Future, and getting close to finishing my first full-length novel.

I’m also done kicking myself for not being someone else.

March 25, 2024 dscottmaiorca Real life

Celebrate The Victories

I set at goal at the end of last year. I would either win the Writer’s of the Future contest this year or pro out. It’s, I believe the oldest science fiction and Fantasy writing contest. I’ve submitted to the contest sporadically since 2016.

In 2019 My story Not a Piece of Cake earned an honorable mention. At first I was elated. It was acknowledgement that my writing was getting good. I almost cried when I received the certificate. Pretty quickly my resistance kicked in and I convinced myself it wasn’t a big deal. I eventually posted it on Kindle unlimited as The Zone. You can read it there for free.

I went ahead and reentered the contest and, nothing happened, other than more rejections. Then I quit entering, until December of last year year. I entered for the first quarter of 2024.

I just heard back from them, and another honorable mention for my story Secondhand Speedos and other things you find at the Dump. From what I’ve researched that means I was in the top 10 percent of entries last year quarter. They have several thousand entries every quarter, so while it’s a rejection, it’s also a win. I’m now submitting the same story to other paying publishers.

I’m putting the polishes on my next entry 12 Miles Out, deadline is March 31st.

Here’s a link to the contest if you’re interested in entering. https://www.writersofthefuture.com

March 13, 2024 dscottmaiorca Real life

Henryetta and the Flying Car

I was fourteen and we were on our annual trek to Huntsville, Alabama to space camp. Loaded in our two-tone, gray and blue, GMC crew-cab with camper, were my mother, two little sisters, little brother, and best friend Mark.
My mom decided we should stop in Henryetta, Oklahoma to visit her aunt Wanda. Henryetta is an unremarkable town, its only claim to fame Troy Aikman, a former Cowboys quarterback. It is a small town of small houses with peeling paint and cracked sidewalks and unmanaged lawns, a town of potholes, of worn-away blacktop and exposed cobblestone roads.

I didn’t want to see my mother’s aunt. I thought that this town offered me nothing. Wanda didn’t have cable or even a VCR so I couldn’t escape into a science fiction movie. What could possibly interest me in the middle of a small Oklahoma town? After all, I was on my way to space camp. I was preparing to go to the Moon, to go to Mars, to enter the Brave New World I had seen in countless science fiction movies or read about in books. There could be nothing in this little town for me. Nothing.

We passed one dreary little street after another as my mother tried to remember where her aunt’s house was: streets named Maple, and Birch, and Elm, and Spruce, ticky-tacky tiny streets that made the truck rumble as we hit the cobblestones.

As we passed yet another street undoubtedly named for a tree, I saw it, my dream, what I’d been waiting my whole life to see: a flying car. The first flying car should not have been in Oklahoma… What could “Oakies” possibly have to do with flying cars? And yet, there it was, in Henryetta. For the rest of the time my mother spent looking for her Aunt’s house, I could talk of nothing else. I knew I had seen the flying car.

Mark confirmed he had seen it. Ever the skeptic, “undoubtedly a gag,” he said. My brother and sisters were asleep, and my mother’s eyes were fixed to road, dodging potholes, so she had missed it.

We found Wanda’s house and my mother, meaning well, but none-the-less Marquis De Sade like, made me sit at the dining room table, politely talking with my relatives. They asked me about soccer and baseball, and school and girls. Who the hell had time for any of these? There was a flying car three blocks away. I answered their questions as politely and quickly as possible, not wanting to strike up a conversation. I had to leave. I had to go see who had invented this, who was building this, who was dreaming, who was the visionary.

After a daylong half hour, my mother finally let Mark and I go. We ran as quickly as possible to the place; the place we had seen the car. It seemed like it took forever, but we were there, and it was beautiful: twelve feet around, like a giant Frisbee, smooth as glass and white as porcelain.

Behind the car was an unassuming building. It could have been a handyman’s shop, or a place where they fix lawn mowers or a junk store, but it was the corporate headquarters for the inventor of the flying car. Stenciled on the front windows of the building were the words “want to know what this is? Come on in and ask.”

We did.

The man inside wasn’t a mad scientist, an engineer, or even a nerd. He had been a diesel mechanic and good at fixing things, and now he was a “dreamer.” His dream was to build the flying car. He couldn’t tell me how it worked, but he said no one could explain how the Frisbee worked either, so that was okay. Knowing that you had a dream, and knowing that you had faith was all that was important in life. Faith was a lever you see, and you could use it to achieve anything.

I was hooked. I had to have one of the cars. I needed to know how much they cost and when they would be ready. He handed me a mimeographed timetable and explanation of cost. Right there in blue ink still smelling of ditto fluid, it said his first prototype would be available in two years, after my sixteenth birthday. The car would only cost seventy-five hundred dollars.

Never mind how a fourteen- year-old was going to come up with seventy-five-hundred dollars, never mind he hadn’t actually built one yet, never mind the flying car in front of his shop was made of plaster and chicken wire… The important thing was, they were finally here.

The flying car was finally here, and it hadn’t taken science or math, or even space camp. The dream was coming to life and all it took was faith. I spent the next two years of my life dreaming of owning the flying car, and planning how to buy it. Buying it would be the easy part.

When I was seven my father had bought a brand new 1977 Fiat Spider turbo convertible. I was in love. The day we drove it home from the dealer I asked if I could have the Fiat when I turned sixteen. He laughed, and assured me that we wouldn’t still have it then, but even though he thought everyone should earn their own car, if by chance the car was still around when I turned sixteen, I could have it.

At seven, I became a maintenance obsessive, continually reminding my dad to have his oil changed, to check the fluids when we gassed, and on almost every sunny day I washed and waxed the car.

Now that I was approaching sixteen, “by chance” we still had the car. On my birthday my father would give me the keys to my “seven year-old” dream and I knew I would sell this old dream for my new one. I would give up my convertible for my flying car.

The flying car of Henryetta, Oklahoma, never got off the ground; well at least it never flew into production or off the assembly line. And when I turned sixteen, there was no flying car for me to buy.

That didn’t discourage me though. I enjoyed driving my little blue convertible, but even more, I enjoyed dreaming of my flying car. I enjoyed dreaming of letting my earthbound tires fall away, and of escaping another day, flying over roads, over roads and fields, effortlessly, freely away from Oklahoma, away from people, away from any place at all.

March 1, 2024March 1, 2024 dscottmaiorca Uncategorized

Remembering My Ghost

https://scott-maiorca.medium.com/d4a038714069

I can remember my dad’s accident. He was standing outside my bedroom window. I see this from across the street. I was barely three, I was never allowed to cross the street, but yet I see our front yard from across the street. My dad collapses and then he’s gone. MY grandparents, his parent materialize. Grandmother Sally is distraught, a cigarette hangs loosely from her mouth. Grandpa John stands to the side: aloof. Grandmother’s sadness will go away. She will have a range of emotions. Granpa John will remain aloof, or angry. He has only three emotions.

This is how I remember my dad’s parathyroid episode. This is not how it happened. My dad Was in San Antonio, TDY, temporary duty assignment, when he collapsed and had to have emergency surgery. My grandparents came to Oklahoma as soon as they could, probably a few days by car. My mother, grandmother, and I drove to San Antonio to see my dad in the hospital.

I remember none of that. I remember him removing my rusty window screen. Taking it off of the brown brick house, and setting it on the ground, and then collapsing.

It wasn’t the only brickhouse we had when I was a kid. It’s the first time I remember moving. I knew we were somewhere before the brown and red brick house in Midwest City, but no idea where.

The living room wasn’t carpeted. I’d lay on the floor on Sunday afternoons watching the Sunday Matinee’s creature features and classic Horror films. I was four years old, and my mom delights in telling my sons what a handful I was at that age. The Creature feature may have been the only thing that settled me down.

My Dad was in Medical school and my mom was in graduate school. They both were Air Force officers. Watching Tv kept me out of their hair while they studied.

The house was haunted. I remember looking down the hallway that connected my bedroom to my parents, and seeing it. I was late one night, they were asleep, I’d been put to bed hours before. I don’t know why I was awake staring over the child gate blocking my door. But I was. And there it was. In the center of the hallway was the translucent spectre of a mad scientist, lab coat goggles and all. I did the only thing I could do. I climbed over the child gate and ran straight through him. I didn’t stop until I reached the safety of my parents’ bed. These events happened almost nightly while we lived in that house. I can still see the translucent mad scientist when I close my eyes and try to remember. I haven’t seen him in a house ever since.

Looking back I was too young to watch Karloff’s Frankenstein, or Chaney’s wolfman. I was to young to be left alone in the living room for hour at a time. Yet I understand now how much that time with the creature feature shaped who I am today.

I enjoy solitude. I enjoy creature features. Most of all my imagination still goes wild at the creaks of a settling house, or a dark foggy day.

Only now I know it’s my imagination, and not the mad scientist ghost.

I miss him.

January 7, 2024January 7, 2024 dscottmaiorca health|Real life

Socrates, Baby Steps, and Not Smoking.

Driving home from Christmas Eve Mass, my wife asked me to detour through downtown to look at the Christmas lights. Having gone to an early service, I did. Just a few years ago, our youngest begged to see Christmas lights. At seventeen,seventeen, with the temperament of an octogenarian, he was less enthused and began to grumble and gripe.

I ignored him at first — usually the best approach with an eighty-year-old teenager. After a few minutes of hearing how I was wasting his time I snapped at him. I quickly realized the snap was bigger than the offense. I apologized.” It’s probably just nicotine withdrawal, but can you go easy tonight? It’s Christmas Eve?”

“You’d have to quit smoking to go through withdrawal,” he quipped in return.

He wasn’t wrong, but sadly. He wasn’t right, either. I had quit only two hours ago, and was feeling the level of my addiction.

We have a twenty-year-old cat named Socrates. As infirmed as Socrates is when he gets one WIFF of catnip, he becomes alive. He will literally bounce down the stairs — as if being pulled by the nip. He rolls in it until his eyes become glasses and his addiction becomes satiated.

I call him Billy Burrows when he’s in that state, even though I’m the only one in my house that gets the Junky reference. Call him Billy Burrows, because I think it’s funny, and because I judge him, for being an addict. A judgment I can’t make anymore — knowing how short two hours actually is.

I’ve tried to quit for years. I promised my wife I’d quit before our oldest son was born. He’s almost twenty-three. I’ve gone so far as switching to cigars, little filtered ones, and not inhaling on them.

On a certain level, I know what bullshit that is, but I’m also aware it was a better step, and I don’t actually inhale, so on a smallest level it’s an improvement.

Moving into a new year, I’ve decided it’s not enough of a step. So I quit for two hours on Christmas Eve and realized what a junky I actually am.

I eased back my goals. From weight loss and writing, I’ve learned the best way to accomplish a big goal is to take little positive steps, baby steps, towards it, rather than a giant leap.

For baby steps to work, at least in my experience, there have to be rules. Simple rules that aren’t difficult to keep. For weight loss, my goals were simple: eat healthy six days a week. On the seventh, eat whatever. Exercise, a few times a week, easy exercise. I used DDPY, but anything works. If you’re really out of shape, any exercise is better than what you’re used to. You can read my weight loss post for more specifics on that.

As far as smoking goes, I’m really out of shape. I was smoking a pack and a half a day, at least. Buying my filtered cigars in bulk and a few months at a time, I can’t be sure what I was actually smoking. I didn’t refill my cigar order when I was running low in December. I buy two packs at a time now, that’s a baby step. I also bought a vape another baby step..

After a little over a week, I know I’m smoking 16 a day on average. That’s the most I’ll allow myself to smoke, a baby step and an easy rule to follow. That became my first baby step: don’t smoke more that sixteen a day. That’s cutting my habit in half, which wasn’t that hard.

Most of the cigars I smoked were mindless on the way to work. Or the first thing in the morning, and I was probably putting them out only about halfway through. It was nervous-smoking.

I’ve also decided not to smoke while driving, that was the biggest time of nervous-bored-smoking every day. That’s when I use my vape if I need to. I have used it a few times, but rarely.

In the near future, I’m going to cut the number of cigars I allow myself a day. I haven’t set a date, a goal, or a baby step yet, but I know it will happen, then I’ll do it again, and again.

I think this approach is working. I’m not an ex-smoker, but I’m closer, and no eighty-year-old children have been harmed yet.

https://scott-maiorca.medium.com/socrates-baby-steps-and-quitting-smoking-4b0625f62751?sk=7a2629710a718e158f1a9fb48191ffce

July 17, 2021July 17, 2021 dscottmaiorca Uncategorized

Serving The Amazon Algorithms: Or Why Pen Names Might Matter.

When I first started self publishing I made a decision to publish everything under my own name. It was a declaration for me— a chance to take ownership of my life. After years of hiding from who I was – a writer, or half hearted attempts because I was worried about what people would think, or that I would fail – I decided it was time to let my proverbial freak flag fly and just own who I was. I’m okay with whatever the outcome. It’s not about anyone’s recognition, but my own. It’s about doing my work.

In that vein, I’ve written pulp science fiction, like Carrie Starr and the Rings of Death, short horror flashes like Moon Dog Went Surfing, trippy almost-literary science fiction like Make Me Famous and Transcending the Electric Bardo, and of course essays on weight loss.

Every one of these stories is mine and they represent me and my journey as a writer. It was a great idea. The only problem with it is Amazon’s algorithm doesn’t like it. It likes writers who write one thing and one thing only. That’s how it knows what to recommend. “Fuck the AI Hellspawn algorithms,” I thought.

Unknown to me when I started, that meant fuck my readers, and consequently, fuck my book sales.

My readers, or my potential readers, need that algorithm. It helps them know what to read. Amazon is filled with billions of writers trying to get their stories in front of the right readers and the readers are trying to find the right books.

Not everyone who likes pulp fiction likes literary fiction. Not everyone who likes weight loss stories and tips needs or wants to read zombie tales.

I still think my decision to take ownership of my writing is one of the best I’ve ever made. It’s right up there with marrying my wife, starting my yoga practice, and deciding to eat healthy.

Taking ownership of my writing doesn’t mean I have to publish everything under my own name. Starting today I’m using pen names. My pulp stories will be published under Ray B. Burroughs and the literary-ish stuff will be under Phillip G. Heinlein. These names not only should help the Amazon algorithms to figure out where the stories fit, but also pay tribute to the authors who shaped me as a writer

As much as I like to think my stories are mine, they really are a continuation of the worlds Ray Bradbury , Pierre Boulez, and Edgar rice Burroughs took me to as a child. My edgy literaryish science fiction are as much my own creation as they are te creations of Phillip K. Dick, George Saunders, and Robert Heinlein.

I’ve decided I need to own my writning, pay tribute to my teachers, and of course serve our algorithm overlords.

I’ll let you know how it all works out.

May 18, 2021May 18, 2021 dscottmaiorca 4 am

Maybe Discomfort is a Blessing

I think we get comfortable very easily, at least I do. It’s not just me though. Culture likes to be in a steady state, and equilibrium of sorts, where everything runs smoothly. It’s human nature, it’s nature’s nature, everything moving the way it always has. We assume the way it always will be.

I know that was true with my health. Years of eating garbage, because it tasted good— it was comfort food. Ultimately that life style would have killed me quickly. Change, that change came because I hit a level of discomfort, literally. Back pain, not all the big goals, got me to start yoga, and a new steady state started.

There are other areas of life besides health. Discomfort there also causes movement. I’m comfortable with my income, but I’ve set goals that far exceeded it. Being comfortable means my goals are out of reach, because I won’t do the extra things needed to reach those goals. I’ll stay in the steady state even though I want more.

I’m feeling discomfort now, things are getting tighter. Maybe not really, but they feel that way. That discomfort is pushing me to a different steady state, the push to get back to comfort. For that I am grateful.