My paper has been accepted by the peer review process, provided I do some revisions. Most of the revisions strengthen the paper. There is one I will have to be very careful of to make sure it does not weaken it, and I can use some advice.
My paper basically is criticizing a proposal making 1) an overwhelming case that the proposal is unfair 2) making a case that the unfairness will very likely lead to actions that undermine the goal of the proposal.
Now there is a third point that I wanted to submit in a separate letter to the editor that they want me to integrate. The problem is that I think including it in the same work actually weakens the paper. My third point is a warning rather than a critique. Certain aspects of the proposal I'm criticizing lend themselves politically to weakening the goals of the proposal if improperly framed. Now one obvious response to this "OK, I won't frame the proposal that way. Thanks for the input." It is constructive criticism, and I don't think it really belongs in what is otherwise a demolition piece.
So what I'm thinking of doing is putting it at the beginning, and mention that it is the weakest critique and saying that I mention it only because the author has published this proposal several times without ever showing any awareness, and that it seems to suggest that the author has not thought through the implications of his own proposal. But that seems to be moving from a critique of an idea to a personal attack. I guess my problem is that I have two strong critiques to make. How do I include what is fairly weak tea as a critique without descending to personal nastiness or weakening the paper? I thought of moving this to the end, but I don't like to conclude a paper with its weakest point.
Maybe I should start by saying that unlike the rest of paper this is a constructive critique, dealing with flaws that can be fixed, whereas the rest of the paper is dealing with flaws that I think cannot be fixed? People will still wonder why I'm including a constructive criticism in paper where that is not the main point, but maybe that is lesser evil. Any thoughts would be welcome. You can see why I wanted to make this separate. Fixable problems are very different from problems fundamental to a proposal.
I don't even know what this is. But I wrote it, and I like it (even though it's just a draft) and it's the first thing I've written in months. So.
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Doesn’t everyone want to be a hero? Probably not: I’m a realist, and people can be really shitty. But even really awful people can pull out acts of compassion, of self-sacrifice, from somewhere. Most people, though, have a hero-fantasy. They want to save the girl, save the day, save the world.
But then you have to think about what construes a hero or heroine anyway. On the surface of the matter, it’s a no-brainer, easy as pie – a hero is someone who saves. The solider who humps her injured buddy 30 klicks through enemy territory to safety, the teacher who throws his body in front of a bullet for his student, the bystander who sees a woman dragged into an alley on his way home from a few after-work beers, goes into the alley and punches some would-be rapist in the nose. Pretty easy to say that’s heroic. They took a risk, they saved the day and most of all, they stood. They stood up, or walked, or crawled, to do what was right.
Those are pretty easy definitions.
But then it gets dicey. We have heroes embedded in our cultures – all cultures, daresay, though I’m sure some anthropologist could dig up a case study from somewhere and throw it at me. Maybe. Someone always wants to prove someone wrong, after all. It feels good. But think about it. We’ve got Gilgamesh, Aeneas, Theseus, Brunhilde, King Arthur, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman. Mythology, popular culture. And check out the media – “Local Hero Saves Child From Speeding Car,” “Heroic Woman Pulls Man From Under Car”. Hell, we have “Hero Guinea Pig Alerts Family To Fire.”
And then there’s the quiet heroes, the ones who don’t step in front of a car or dash into a fire. Years of grinding study to become a pediatrician; heck, not even a cancer researcher or an epidemiologist. Just Dr. Brown from down the street, who diagnoses pneumonia in Molly and Brad’s three-year-old and gives them a prescription. Little Johnny has a miserable month, and goes back to playing with Legos and waking Molly and Brad up to soon on Saturday mornings. The exhausted social worker who eats mac-and-cheese and drives a beater that really needs a new transmission, who goes into the shelter five days a week and talks to angry women, some of them drug users or child abusers. But Margarita’s twice-weekly groups are there for Racquell, and she finally leaves her man, and this time for good. Raquell gets a shitty job, but a job, one that D’monte said she was too stupid and lazy to get, and she pays for her crappy studio apartment and one day, she meets Lavonne. And he is a good man, and they marry, and have a perfectly boring life, a ordinarily lovely child, and they get into fights about money, sure, but Lavonne never raises a hand to her or calls her a stupid whore. Because Margarita helped her understand that she wasn’t. Had never been.
That’s a hero, too. And they don’t get the accolades and the pretty words or the keys to the city. But it doesn’t take that to make a hero.
We want heroes. We need heroes. And we want to be them, and sometimes we need to be them. And my god, do we love the biggies, the ones who straight up dash in in their flaring capes or their firemen’s gear and look death in the eye, shoulder him aside and say “Fuck you, get outta my way, I am DOING THIS.” We like to see it in the recycled cool of a movie theater with surround sound; we like to see it while munching chips in our underwear on a Tuesday night in front of the TV; we stare at it on the pages of a comic or a novel, and we click on links that take us to the Hero, The Heroine, the One Who Did.
But there’s always a price. And that’s why we love our heroes so much, because we don’t know if our pockets hold that coin. Things is, we have this sneaking suspicion that everyone’s pocket holds that coin, that hero-price, that shining, glittering piece of truest gold. And we don’t want to pay (continued...)
( continues...) it. Because that coin is precious. Priceless. And to be a hero means letting our fingers plunge into the depths of our pockets, comb through the bits of lint and the paper clips and receipts, touch that coin, feel its cool weight, its smooth edges and pull it out. And you look at it, you gotta look at it, because it shines so, it is everything that is beautiful and you can’t help but stare.
And then you have to give it away. And what do you get in return? Will you get fair trade for your coin? Or will you get scammed?
Let me tell you a secret. You always gets fair price for that coin. And you always get scammed. Always.
Let me tell you another secret: anyone can be a hero once. (Some people only get the chance to be a hero once, to be fair, and I spit in the eye of anyone who denigrate THAT. They made the choice, they tossed their coin to the gods and it didn’t come back.) But the heroes that get their hero-cherry popped and live? They have a choice. Sometimes their defloration is circumstance, sometimes it’s deliberate, but then they get a choice. Because that coin always comes back into your pocket and now it’s even more beautiful. And do they keep it? Or do they give it away, again and again?
Some do. For some, being the hero becomes the coin. For others, the price is simply worth it. So they’re heroes. Twice, three times, maybe a thousand.
But let me tell you straight. Just because you’re a hero doesn’t mean you’re good. Some heroes are assholes. And sometimes, to be a hero, you have to be an asshole. Like I said, there’s always a price. And that coin, sure, it’s life. But life is more than breathing and cognitive brain function. It’s made up of so much more than that. And heroes pay and pay and pay, and sometimes they steal. Because sometimes their coin alone doesn’t pay the piper.
We need heroes. We love heroes. But sometimes I don’t like them at all.
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(Nothing to do with the previous posts.)
I really like it too, Strix.
I have edited about 100 pages of novel today.(Cumulatively)
Get down with you bad self, erika!
Thanks, Typo!
I have the germ of an idea. We shall see.
Well, it's good, or at least the second draft is shaping up. I still have my doubts about whether it's exciting enough and stuff.
