Pursuant to the Ender's Game morality conversation, here's a link to a blog entry discussing percieved warmongering in John Scalzi's Old Man's War, and John's response.

There really is no point at all in trying to control the reader. It's like riding a horse; you may have the reins, but he's a hell of a lot bigger than you, and if he really wants you gone, he just has to fall on you.

More precisely, I know there are writers who write from an agenda--what kateelliott mentioned in comments and truepenny expounded upon at length as the metaphor of writing-as-rape. They write fiction to convince, rather than to question. Being more of the questioning sort myself, I find it amusing when somebody tells me that the purpose of my writing is to instruct, and annoying when they try to instruct me via fiction.

I usually start, thematically, from a question I don't have an answer to, and then try to attack it from as many sides as possible. Which probably displeases everybody, but hey, it's how my brain works. Born to straddle fences. And keep your dirty thoughts to yourself.

In other writerly pondering, kateelliott: When Good Scenes Go Bad. I'm a big fan of #5, personally, also known as "send in a man with a gun."

And then to work, although the cat on my mousepad says "go back to bed."