Two excellent pieces on writers' blogs today:
Tom Piccirilli discusses eloquently the joys, frustration, heartbreak, terror and joys of writing full-time:
"Crises of faith, rages at peers, editors, and fans, disgust with the quality of work you read and the work you write, bouts of bitterness, thoughts of quitting, it's all a part of doing this insanity we do for a living. It's a part of the process, right up until the day that one of us actually quits and decides to 9-to-5 it and nab some health benefits.
One pal said that writing just wasn't fun anymore. It was a painful experience now having to make deadlines. Picking up the published books and seeing his work in anthologies and magazines didn't give him the same thrill anymore. The overwhelming, profound grandness of literature had downshifted into malaise. Writing had become just a job.
It's a lesson we all learn. Some early on and some later in life. I lost a lot of my bushy-tailed and bright-eyed sensility of fun early in the game. It's probably served me well over the long haul."
For the rest go here:
http://thecoldspot.blogspot.com/
-------The Nature of Heroes
Kristine Kathryn Rusch discusses heroism in the age of summer blockbusters:
"Okay. Explained that way, I understand that the filmmakers made the right choice after all. Just like I understand the machinations that Spielberg and Lucas went through to show us that 66-year-old Harrison Ford can play an action hero. Spielberg, Lucas, and the marketers of the film no longer trust us to recognize a very simple fact:
"A hero is defined by his (or her) actions in a moment in time.
"It took David Mamet to remind me of that fact. In a marvelous essay called, "Film Noir and He-Men," he talks about the way that modern moviemakers no longer trust us to appreciate an uncomplicated hero. "Their films," he writes, "depict the gentle progress of the protagonist toward self-actualization."
Note the words he chooses here: protagonist, not hero; gentle, not tough; and self-actualization, not action. Yet the box office this May (and probably throughout the summer) will yet again illustrate our desire for heroes—not just in our stories, but in our lives."
for the rest go here:
http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10493
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1 comment:
ED, about the joys, frustration, heartbreak, terror and joys of writing full-time, I think it's only going to get MUCH worse with the seismic changes going on in publishing right now. I have to think publishers are going to gravitate towards safer and safer books, all of which will need to be written in a "relentlessly commercial" style, and probably more and more by B-level celebrities. Fiction too will probably be ghostwritten with these B-level celebrity names + faces on the covers. Just like my buddy, Michael Black did Belzer's "I am not a cop!", maybe I'll be able to get a gig ghostwriting a book for Michael Chiklis "I am not a psychopathic scumbag cop!"
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