19 Comments
Nov 11Liked by James Garside

"Would you go out for coffee with Cthulhu?"

You've been offering for years. ;-)

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Bwahaha

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Nov 11Liked by James Garside

I think I should take these thoughts down to the tax office. They won't be impressed but I quite like them!

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Why down to the tax office? Isn't that place more like the mouth of madness?

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I am so sorry about that editor. That was shitty. That would kill my desire to write too. Fuck him.

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I'm English. We're far too nice and apologetic for that sort of thing. But for the record, I genuinely like the editor a lot. They were right, in a way, or at least I can see where they were coming from. Especially about writing for that particular place.

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So I hit "like" because I accept your reasoning (hey, you don't have to justify yourself to me or anyone), but I want to delve into this a bit more. Do I understand correctly that you're okay with the editor taking your name off the piece because of where it was being published? Were you not enough of a name author that they thought it would be better accepted by somebody more famous? I'm intrigued by this because of something I ran into years ago. I had a French pen pal when I was in high school, and one August she actually visited my husband and me (a French person trying to deal with Florida weather in the depths of summer - but she was working as a teacher and didn't have many options for travel dates, but yeah, it was rough on her and I felt bad). We took her to a couple of museums, and in the big one, she made an effort to remember the names of the artists whose work she had viewed because her friends would look down on her if she didn't have names to report. I was in disbelief. This sort of attitude is nonexistent in the US, or at least it was in my circle of friends. So I'm wondering if what happened to you was a similar thing; is this a European view? I don't know how you feel about being lumped with Europeans, being English yourself. In any case, I don't mean offense, but I would like to understand this some more if you have any insights.

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I should have been clearer: The piece was about my writing and content creation process. It was full of my ideas about writing. The editor didn't want to take my name off the piece. They wanted me to change the piece so it looked like I had been inspired by someone else. Someone famous. So that more people would read the piece. Because no-one would care about my thoughts.

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Ack. Not much better, in my view. It still has this need to have a "bigger name" somehow associated with your ideas. Thanks for clarifying.

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I absolutely would have ☕ with Cthulhu🤣 💕

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I offered Cthulhu tea instead once. They were not amused.

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Nov 11Liked by James Garside

I'm having Deja Cthulhu about a conversation with you about pet monsters. Has this piece seen the light of day elsewhere or have I well and truly lost the plot this time?

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Nov 11Liked by James Garside

Ah well if I'd been paying attention I'd have noticed the A & B links so I guess I read 'C' that one time I could be arsed going onto Medium 👍🏼

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If I publish it on Medium it will probably end up on Substack at some point.

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Nov 11Liked by James Garside

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

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Exactly. I believe in recycling. I want people to read my stuff. I'm also from Yorkshire. Neither platform makes me enough money to justify writing for them exclusively. And both don't own the copyright.

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Hey now. The Simpsons made a hero—and regular character—of Cthulhu, so why not love the creature?

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Like I said in the piece, I want a pet Cthulhu.

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