Writing – @habits

A little allegory about deflation and inflation: Satoshi Cove and Fiat Reef

Pardon my silly meanderings, but if I can’t write stupid stuff on this blog then what really is it for

Here are two short stories, reasoning about deflation and inflation from simplistic first principles.

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Satoshi Cove: a little allegory about deflation

There is a small unspoilt island called Satoshi Cove. For generations, the villagers who live there have led simple and happy lives. They survive by growing corn and raising chickens.

The island’s currency is a rare wild pearl, which glows a soft pink. The best swimmers on the island dive for these pearls during the stormy winter months.

Because the search is risky, and the pearls grow slowly, the supply of pearls only grows by a few percent each year. So the currency supply is quite stable. In addition to pearls, the villagers have invented simple forms of credit and barter.

One day, one of the islanders – a noted eccentric – learns how to turn chicken poop into a rich fertilizer by adding salt and other natural compounds. At first of the other farmers don’t believe him, but the ones who do are able to use the fertilizer to improve their corn crop. By using this new fertilizer, the average corn farmer’s harvest increases by 25%, and because chicken feed is also composed of corn byproducts, the average chicken farmer’s output also increases by 5%.

Thus this entrepreneur has invented something – a new fertilizer – which leads to meaningful growth in the island’s production of corn and chicken. This is productivity-driven growth.

Most of the island benefits from this entrepreneur’s invention:

The inventor becomes wealthy by selling the fertilizer he creates.

The islanders can produce and sell more corn and more chickens.

The prices of corn and chicken fall, which enables the average villager to buy more.

But not everyone benefits. A few islanders are hurt by this change.

In particular, lenders who have made loans to be repaid in real goods like corn and chicken are hurt. Corn and chicken are now more plentiful, and thus less valuable. If a lender is to receive 10 chickens in re-payment, those 10 chickens would now be worth less.

It’s important to note that not all lenders are hurt. Lenders who have made loans to be repaid in pearls, conversely, have benefitted, because those pearls can now buy more corn and chicken.

In a similar way, borrowers who have received loans to be repaid in pearls are also hurt. The prices of corn and chicken have fallen, but the borrower is still required to pay back a fixed number of pearls.

And just like the inverse of the lenders’ situation, not all borrowers are hurt — those who have borrowed loans to be repaid in corn and chickens have benefitted.

This is a small example of productivity-driven growth leading to deflation, in a very simple economy. We have removed many elements of a modern “real” economy – for example, the island doesn’t trade with neighbors, and there is only one form of currency (pearls) – but hopefully it’s illustrative.

You can very clearly see that deflation here, which is caused by a valuable new invention, improves the quality of living for most islanders.

The price of food falls, which allows people to afford more. The innovator becomes wealthy. It enables farmers to produce more. And most importantly, it inspires people to create and invent more.

Imagine if this pattern were repeated over generations. The prices of food would continue to fall. Perhaps they would find new types of crops to grow. Or new farm animals to raise. The island’s productivity and output would increase, and along with it, so would quality of life.

So why is deflation a bad thing?

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Fiat Reef: A little allegory about inflation

Now let’s talk about a similar island called Fiat Reef. In just about every way, it is a copy of Satoshi Cove.

The only difference?

Instead of an inventive entrepreneur who creates a new fertilizer, a creative and brave diver realizes that he can artificially grow the rare pearls by adding tiny grains of sand into the oysters. By doing this, he can double his own pearl output during each winter harvest. For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume he is just one of ten divers. So each season, the amount of new pearls discovered grows by 10%.

This is a form of financial innovation that leads to an increase in the island’s currency supply. This is a very simple and pure example of money inflation.

Now who benefits from this inflationary change to the island’s economy?

First and foremost, the inventive diver benefits. He’s literally created money. He harvests it first, and he can spend it to buy more corn and chicken.

As the money supply on the island grows, others benefit too. His favorite seller of corn and chicken benefits, because their customer is now much richer. And as those sellers make more money, they may raise the wages of their employees.

But importantly – not everyone benefits. Those who benefit most are those who are first to receive the money; the ones closest to the diver.

Moreover, many people are hurt by this change. In the same way that deflation hurt certain borrowers and lenders, inflation also hurts certain borrowers and lenders.

As the new currency trickles into the economy, the prices of corn and chicken begin to rise. And while some islanders are earning more, most of them aren’t. Thus they are able to afford less food.

In addition, because the money supply is growing faster than its usual pace, the purchasing power of pearls decreases. You can buy less with the same number of pearls. So everyone who has saved pearls will begin to feel poorer.

Now, the inventive diver was only able to increase the island’s pearl supply by 10% each season. But where this inflation really becomes problematic is when the other divers learn to copy his technique. Soon, the supply of pearls is growing 20%, 40%, and even more during each harvest cycle.

For a time, the divers themselves feel rich as kings, and spread the wealth to their family and friends and favorite farms. But then prices begin to rise faster and faster. If there is double the money, but no change in the amount of corn or chickens, then necessarily the price of corn and chicken will increase.

Eventually, what everyone wants to do is become a diver, and hunt for pearls.

On Fiat Reef, everyone is now incentivized to make more money, instead of making new things. Everyone wants to be a diver, or to be close to the divers so they get first dibs. Few islanders want to invent new fertilizers, or produce more corn and chicken.

In short, far more people are hurt by this change, which is an inflation of the money supply. Prices rise for all goods on the island. A few people win big. But the outcome is more complicated, and the long-term effects are more damaging.

Reality is more complicated than this simple example, and there are winners and losers on both Satoshi Cove and Fiat Reef.

But ask yourself which island you’d rather live on. Would you rather live on Satoshi Cove, where the goal is to invent and make great things, an island where output is increasing and prices are falling?

Or would rather live on Fiat Reef, where the goal is to become a diver and make more money, where prices are constantly increasing so it’s a race to see who gets the most money and buys the most things first?

Yes this is massively over simplified and exaggerated. The islands are closed economies with no trade and only one currency (pearls). Both deflation and inflation can hurt people.

But why is there such a gulf in public perception between the two? Why are we led to believe that deflation is so dangerous, and could potentially lead to economic collapse? Conversely, why are we told that some amount of inflation is not only good, but even necessary for our very economy to function? How did things get this way?

James Bond author Ian Fleming’s writing advice: “You have to get the reader to turn over the page.”

Source: https://crimereads.com/ian-fleming-explains-how-to-write-a-thriller-circa-1963/

Direct quotes:

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There is only one recipe for a best seller and it is a very simple one. You have to get the reader to turn over the page. […] If you look back on the best sellers you have read, you will find that they all have this quality. You simply /have/to turn over the page.

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My contribution to the art of thriller-writing has been to attempt the total stimulation of the reader all the way through, even to his taste buds. For instance, I have never understood why people in books have to eat such sketchy and indifferent meals. English heroes seem to live on cups of tea and glasses of beer, and when they do get a square meal we never hear what it consists of. Personally, I am not a gourmet and I abhor food-and-winemanship. My favorite food is scrambled eggs.

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What I aim at is a certain disciplined exoticism. I have not re-read any of my books to see if this stands up to close examination, but I think you will find that the sun is always shining in my books—a state of affairs which minutely lifts the spirit of the English reader—that most of the settings of my books are in themselves interesting and pleasurable, taking the reader to exciting places around the world, and that, in general, a strong hedonistic streak is always there to offset the grimmer side of Bond’s adventures. This, so to speak, “pleasures” the reader

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I can recommend hotel bedrooms as far removed from your usual “life” as possible. Your anonymity in these drab surroundings and your lack of friends and distractions in the strange locale will create a vacuum which should force you into a writing mood and, if your pocket is shallow, into a mood which will also make you write fast and with application.

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I never correct anything and I never go back to what I have written, except to the foot of the last page to see where I have got to. If you once look back, you are lost. How could you have written this drivel? How could you have used “terrible” six times on one page? And so forth. If you interrupt the writing of fast narrative with too much introspection and self-criticism, you will be lucky if you write 500 words a day and you will be disgusted with them into the bargain.

Anton Chekhov’s 6 principles of writing: “To what end? He hardly knew himself. He only knew that he must see Anna Sergeyevna, must speak to her, arrange a meeting, if possible.”

In a letter to his older brother Alexander, dated 10 May 1886, Anton Chekhov set out his six principles of writing: ‘truthful descriptions of persons and objects; total objectivity; extreme brevity; compassion; no political-social-economic effusions; audacity and originality: eschew cliché.

From Marginalian:

…no depiction of reality is realistic unless it include an empathic account of all perspectives, which might be the defining characteristic not only of Chekhov as a writer but of any great storyteller.

Here are his 6 rules, with a few examples pulled from his classic short story, The Lady with the Dog (1899):

1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature

Repeated and bitter experience had taught him that every fresh intimacy, while at first introducing such pleasant variety into everyday life, and offering itself as a charming, light adventure, inevitably developed, among decent people (especially in Moscow, where they are so irresolute and slow to move), into a problem of excessive complication leading to an intolerably irksome situation.

2. Total objectivity

3. Truthful descriptions of persons and objects

He could remember carefree, good-natured women who were exhilarated by love-making and grateful to him for the happiness he gave them, however shortlived; and there had been others — his wife among them — whose caresses were insincere, affected, hysterical, mixed up with a great deal of quite unnecessary talk, and whose expression seemed to say that all this was not just love-making or passion, but something much more significant

4. Extreme brevity

When the Christmas holidays came, he packed his things, telling his wife he had to go to Petersburg in the interests of a certain young man, and set off for the town of S. To what end? He hardly knew himself. He only knew that he must see Anna Sergeyevna, must speak to her, arrange a meeting, if possible.

5. Audacity and originality: flee the stereotype

Anna Sergeyevna was accompanied by a tall, round-shouldered young man with small whiskers, who nodded at every step before taking the seat beside her and seemed to be continually bowing to someone. This must be her husband, whom, in a fit of bitterness, at Yalta, she had called a “flunkey.” And there really was something of the lackey’s servility in his lanky figure, his side-whiskers, and the little bald spot on the top of his head. And he smiled sweetly, and the badge of some scientific society gleaming in his buttonhole was like the number on a footman’s livery.

6. Compassion

And it seemed to them that they were within an inch of arriving at a decision, and that then a new, beautiful life would begin. And they both realized that the end was still far, far away, and that the hardest, the most complicated part was only just beginning.

Notes and quotes from Joyce Carol Oates’ Masterclass on “Art of the Short Story”

Hello world!

I recently finished Joyce Carol Oates’ Masterclass on short story writing. It is a short course and there’s a cool workshop segment at the end where she critiques the short stories of two students.

Here’s a collection of my notes from the lessons, much of it paraphrased

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NOTES

It’s about translating instinct into craft
So that instinct… if you feel like you’re a writer, you probably are

Everyone has a fantastic story to tell – and it’s often a mystery story

Writer as photographer, you have a magic camera, and with lens you can see the subject, and the camera is your writing

Characters generate the plot

Why is this character there? If you can’t explain them, then you should get rid of them

If it’s just a few characters, then it’s a short story. But if it’s a theme / larger world / political or sociological, then a novel is better

Short story is meant to be read in one sitting

“Burn through the first draft”

Orwell believed prose should be like a window, very clean
Faulkner, Hemingway were more interested in the language of a story, the “how” of the telling

“Your worst enemy will have the most beloved face” – whether a child, a dog or cat – someone you can’t say no to (the constant distractions)

She started writing around 14, and working with others at 19

Doesn’t recommend writing a novel if you’re a beginner – it’s important to learn how to finish your work
If you write a novel and take 20 years, your whole life will have a cloud over it
Need the psychological uplift from finishing something

If you get rejected, it means that if it was published it may not have been that good – sometimes you’re very lucky if your first novel is rejected (like James Joyce)

recommends writers keep journals because it’s intimate and private, keep in contact with innermost self
she’s kept journal since 18, she adds dialogue, impressions of places and things that happened

try different ways of writing:
-start writing when you only have 40 minutes
-write when you feel very tired
-next morning look at it, might be really worthwhile

she takes tons of notes, for a novel it can be 200 pages (!)
transcribes notes to laptop, adds them into scenes
has checklists of things, if things aren’t used, she can use them for future stories

critics told her she should leave the “social unrest” / “big novels” to Norman Mailer
she was never interested in what’s expected of women writers, the “domestic novel”
she wrote a lot about domestic abuse, wife battering

her father was almost killed because he wanted to try to help a neighbor suffering domestic violence

Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray is a novel about taboo, couldn’t express his homosexuality, uses the novel

most powerful writing comes from repressed, each taboo subject has a natural audience who have no outlet
memoirs on such subjects are astonished at the number of readers, eg, about alcoholism, obesity, bulimia
William Styron on depression – had no idea it would be that successful, he just felt a total failure
“secret audiences”

**only rule: “Don’t be boring”

bestsellers move fast, short and declarative sentences

writers want to write their family story, their ancestors, their generation

she memorized alice in wonderland as a kid, deeply imprinted
she thinks about it every day of her life
it’s playful, funny, subversive – inspires her writing

interview your own mother, she was astounded when she did this
found out she was given away at 9 months old to an aunt and uncle

wishes she’d also interviewed her grandmother before she passed

try not to exploit other people, never hurt other people (doesn’t think what philip roth did, writing about women he knew, was the right way)

“an unsolved mystery is a thorn in the heart”

take the earliest memory you have, try to evoke it and write it powerfully

Robert Frost: poetry is melting ice on a hot stove

beginning writers should write mini narratives, a paragraph, the shorter the better

really good acting is also an arc of emotion

theater is monologue, eg, Hamlet

good to be young and write an old person’s perspective, or vice versa, or men writing from woman’s PoV, it gives you more objectivity, and is a growing experience

Where are you going, where have you been? is one of her most popular stories, gets questions daily about it
a cautionary tale
based on true story, man who pretended to be a teenager, one by one he was murdering girls he met at the mall
some teens knew, but they didn’t tell anyone, they protected HIM. why?

take your old writing, take 3rd person and make it 1st person, or make past tense into present tense / historic present – this can completely revitalize prose

read from stratosphere to draw upon your mentors / influences

what you read and what intensity will determine how you write

for example, take a summer to read James Joyce – as the weeks go by, your vocab will improve, your language will elevate, etc

Hemingway’s novels are good, but short stories are where he was a master

readers only care about the characters — even though the writer spends so much time on the formal qualities

Hemingway says literature is an iceberg, all his short stories – what’s under the water is implied
Characters don’t have back story, move very quickly – feeling of modernism

for new writers often the story might be too subtle
workshops are helpful in this way, participants are like editors

writers are cooks – keep unused material in fridge, put it later in the casserole

better to have deadline, and readers, talk and revise
more “aerated” instead of isolated

really likes having a window to look out, a garden, natural world outside the window
“i don’t know what i’m gonna see out the window, and that’s part of writing”

hates only having a wall to stare at

think excitedly about what you’ll be working on – something surprising, novel, shocking will happen before noon – and no one will know about it but you

if you write one brilliant short story a year, that’s great!
if you write one novel at all, that’s great too

A funny writer teaches us how to write well (and funny)

This was a great and easy advice-interview on how to write, from a corporate blog of all places. The advice comes from Scott Dikkers, The Onion’s longest serving editor in chief. If you don’t know The Onion, please read this piece of genius.

Below are some verbatim nuggets of gold:

1. Concept is king

“Your concept — and I would equate that with your headline or title — is the flag you’re raising, it’s the shingle on your door. And if it’s not a good concept or the right concept, then you’re sunk before you’ve even written a word.”

2. The key to quality is quantity

“This is how professionals work,” said Dikkers, “because they understand that most of what they write is dreck.”

[…]

4. Ruffle some feathers

“Thing is, Horatian satire isn’t really remembered because it’s toothless,” said Dikkers. “It might get a lot of laughs today but it’s not going to live in our cultural memory. Only satire that angers or offends people will be remembered.”

[…]

10. Know your joke and make sure the reader knows your joke

“Readers want to know they’re in the hands of a master who is going to manipulate them,” he said, “the way Spielberg does in his movies. He takes you on a ride, through the highs and lows.