Scots Taffer on 2/12/2006 at 23:30
Quote Posted by Sypha Nadon
Scots, you found the writing clunky?
Just the sort of unnecessary "I go to shave. I finish shave now. I walk to kitchen" type stuff. And what I said about the dialogue stands too. I'd read more to critique, but I'm not going to
buy what is quite obviously a wish fulfilment exercise (if you can't see it in your reply about "Mary Sue" that Vigil has emphasised).
piano-sam on 2/12/2006 at 23:39
Whats it about? Why should a potential consumer be interested ?
WAREAGLE on 2/12/2006 at 23:53
Quote Posted by Sypha Nadon
WAREAGLE, I think you're making the mistake of confusing the narrator with the writer. The first scene is more of Vinnie's narrative, and being something of a former radical from the 60's he's very idealistic. I don't think that homophobia would lead to world peace, but, I do think that less homophobia would be less negative energy, and I think the world has way too much negative energy at the moment (pardon me for sounding like a New Age hippy!)
oh i made no mistake, im just an asshole
but hey, you seem to have alot of potential so i hope you keep up your writings.
Sypha Nadon on 3/12/2006 at 00:11
Oh, my bad, I mistook the "Mary Sue" thing to be a case in which an author puts what is cleary an avatar of themselves in the text. But I see no problem with writing as wish fulfilment (I can easily think of many writers that could be considered guilty of the same thing). In this case, the dominant wish here was to exist in a decade that I pretty much just know from reading about it, listening to the music of the era, and so on, rather than specific character traits (I have no desire to be a hard-drinking, drug-using, club-going sex fiend in real life, but it's fun to write about!)
Vigil on 3/12/2006 at 00:34
Quote:
But I see no problem with writing as wish fulfilment (I can easily think of many writers that could be considered guilty of the same thing).
You see, that's kind of the problem here.
Writers who create characters for the purpose of wish fulfilment categorically lower the quality of their work by doing so. It's self-indulgent and it usually rings false; two things which should be avoided in writing, or in any other creative endeavour for that matter. Whether or not you have a problem with this, your potential readership does and they can spot it a mile off.
Sypha Nadon on 3/12/2006 at 00:55
I also have no problem with creative projects that are utterly self-indulgent... After all, I just love the movies of people like David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino. Really, when one goes about creating something the only standards that matter are your own. As long as you can please yourself on an aesthethic level, that's all that matters. One of the worse things you could do as an artist IMO is to create something wondering about potential readers. They either accept the personal vision or they don't. I think it's very important to stress that I wrote the book for my own pleasure, but at the same time if anyone else wants to get pleasure from it, I have no problem with that. I would hope it might inspire others on a creative level, but that's secondary to the original motivation. Now, you could say that with an attitude like that, you're just alienating a lot of people, but this doesn't bother me... I know I'll never sell as many copies as, say, someone like Nicholas Sparks. But that doesn't really bother me, so long as I know that the art wasn't compromised. Personally, I've always admired artists who adhere so strictly to a personal vision that it could also be called soliphism, and I don't like it when art tries to be all things to all people. Either take it or leave it.
Aerothorn on 3/12/2006 at 01:52
Quote Posted by Strontium Dog
Still as loveably clueless as ever hey ;)
Btw, you should totally hawk this book round all the gay forums, they love campy shit like this.
Sypha is twice the man you'll ever be, Stronts. Seriously.
Also, it seems your liberal/progressive views are unraveling as you reveal your bigotries one by one.
OnionBob on 3/12/2006 at 02:05
Vinnie was a good-looking thin white guy of medium height whose black hair was cut short and just starting to go gray: he looked like an older version of the recent movie star Tom Cruise.
Paz on 3/12/2006 at 02:22
Quote Posted by Sypha Nadon
my incredible approach to art
Look, I don't want to be too much of a shit here, but that's the easiest ideology in the world to shroud yourself in if you want to protect yourself from the fear of creative failure. It's the magical protective art blanket. Oh darlings, it doesn't matter if no-one likes my work, they just don't understand/appreciate/relate to it!
If you didn't seek some kind of peer-acceptance or review, you wouldn't have posted this thread. On some level, you want this to succeed beyond your own amusement. Otherwise the novel would just be sat on your computer, you'd be $1000 richer and you'd still be getting all the personal joy in the world you want from having written it.
This doesn't make you some kind of flunky-junky sell-out media tartwhore*
Now stop being a tit.
*Or, looking at it another way, this already happened when you tried to sell it and went with a company who took the pricing out of your hands. Compromises always have to be made, dude.
Scots Taffer on 3/12/2006 at 02:26
more like he looked like Tom Cruise in the recent motion picture "Collateral" directed by Michael Mann, who also directed a recent remake of MIAMI VICE
