Motzie Dapul's Official Blog

I was reading one story where the apocalypse was impossibly-rising oceans. Like, water is appearing from *waves hand* the Earth's crust or something, and literally all dry surface land on Earth is going to become underwater in X years. Part of the story was about a giant research project to invent FTL to send a few hundred humans to a nearby star which might have a habitable planet. You know what they were hoping to find? A planet with liquid water. Their plan was to descend from their starship and restart civilization using just the tools they brought with them, on a world with no life and no breathable air and the wrong gravity and the wrong temperate and the wrong sunlight and the wrong day-night cycle, just because it had liquid water. You know where else has liquid water? The flooded Earth you just abandoned. Instead of researching starship technology, you could have spent that time loading up all the same civilization-restarter tools into boats.

Obviously a publisher is a business and a business needs to make money, but the idea used to be that you'd have a couple of very successful authors who bring in so much cash that they subsidise the new kid who is building a back catalogue of books that sell okay until they get name recognition and pay for themselves. I was told back then that a couple thousand pounds was very reasonable for a debut novel because you want to get royalties for the sales exceeding your advance and that way the publisher sees you as a profitable investment. The last couple of years I keep hearing about six figure book deals for debut (!) literary fiction (!) novels, what on earth?

My day job is as a freelance editor for nonfiction books, and I can safely say that if the publishing industry were operating as intended, I would either not have a job at all or be working for a specific press. Authors pay me directly to do the work that a press editor used to do as part of publication contracts. This is because so many presses have started outsourcing all their editorial work to either third-party contractors or, even worse, to genAI.

Anyway, I love editing. I think I love editing almost more than writing, and I'm pretty sure that I'm better at it. Last year I edited an academic article from 11k to 9k words for my supervisor and I felt like a god when I finished it, but when my supervisor asked if I'd thought about doing this professionally, I had to tell her that there's just not a viable career in editing anymore. Publishers used to employ! editors! Several different kinds of editors for different stages of the process! That used to be my dream job!

Editing is so essential to making a text good. It doesn't matter how talented or dedicated you are as a writer, you cannot achieve the level of quality by yourself that you could achieve by working with a skilled editor. That's normal! The lone genius who comes out of the cave with the perfect novel does not exist! The manuscript that gets sold to a publisher is supposed to be handed off to an editor who tells you to tighten up that plotline and reminds you that every day can't be Tuesday and sharpens your prose so your voice really shines. Skimping out on that part of the publication process takes money out of the hands of skilled professionals, leads to consumers (ew) receiving subpar products (ew!), and is such an injustice to the writers whose work can't reach its full potential (and the writers who won't get published because they can't afford to pay an editor out of pocket!).

Hi everyone! Sincere apologies, but because of a mix of busy days leading up to Toronto's pride weekend as well as a fully packed Pride weekend AND some body pain I haven't been able to fully recover from, I won't be able to get the Hi Nay Pride Episode 2026 up til Monday, June 29.

Same time as usual, 9pm ET!

Episode 86.1: The Jazz Man (Pride 2026) Len the Jazz Man had a fan. The same one, every night he performed at the Imperial Pub. He knew it was them - even if they wore a different face, a different body, every time they came. He knew them, and he loved them. If only they'd admit it was them. Maybe they could have a future together. (But they never would)

Thank you for your patience! Happy Pride!

Cheers,

Someone pointed out that the buko cart might be "Januel's Unbiyakabol buko" like "unbreakable" since biyak means to split, so basically the buko can't be split in half, which defeats the purpose of selling buko, but it's a fun ironic joke.

Also Januel is the director of the movie so it makes sense (the first letter seems to be an incorrectly written d).

Someone also said that the weaving store could be "Vangie's weaving" which makes sense because that's a very common Filipino name.

Happy Pride! Friendly reminder that we've got a pit-based pride collection up on the Hi Nay store because I have a terrible sense of humour and so do my listeners.

HI NAY EPISODE 82: TAO (HUMAN)

The Benefactor has forgotten what it feels like to be human. He yearns for someone to stand by his side and teach him again. Not Richard Henry. Not Mari. But…

Content Warnings: References to past murders, betrayal, threats

Songs used:

Send Me To The 'Lectric Chair Devil's Gonna Git You

by Bessie Smith