Should you sell your Arze?

[I, Brian]

Hey, I've just realised - you said you wanted to read my writing - but my current piece is sci-fi. Care to wait a few years until my fantasy is published?

Hound me all you want - completing 500 pages is a long time. You don't simply have to write them you see...

[Lacedaemonian]

I would read both mate. I may write a few thousand pages....

[I, Brian]

Your reading them isn't the problem - it's your reviews that may not be too flattering.

Anyway, good luck with the writing - feel free to ask on the writer boards about any particular issues.

[Lacedaemonian]

I would give you a good review, even if it meant talking through my hat! lol

[Hypes]

Do what you will, Brian, but take care not to become the next Dan Brown, writing by numbers simply to cash in on common themes and prejudices, dumbing down your work so that you may mass-market it to whatever is the most lucrative demgraphic at the time.

Who would you argue is the better, and most succesful writer? Umberto Eco, or Dan Brown? Which would you wish to be if you had the choice?

[Lacedaemonian]

I have read some Dan Brown and thought he was alright, not brilliant but alright.

[I, Brian]

Who wants to write dumbed down?? Not I.

I would also prefer not to write in Third Person or First Person - but instead in a completely cinematic-style Objective Point of View. That's my big concession.

Maybe some writers simply do not have brilliant ideas, therefore they cannot write them?

[Lacedaemonian]

Maybe?

[Hypes]

There's no idea at all behind Brown, it's all rehashed bunk from the 80s.

[polymorphikos]

Not to mention that i found a copy of The Da Vinci Code in a bookshop, read the first page, and realised that it was purile drivel with less employed-skill behind it than I have dried figs.

*muttermuttercoughhackianflemingandrobertludlumrul eandsodoeswilbursmithhackcough*

[Lacedaemonian]

Well I have only read two of his novels and found them alright, nothing novel, but entertaining enough to pass the hours.

[Hypes]

Yes, they're certainly page-turners, but after the last page, you've already forgotten whatever it was about. Poor literature.

I read each of his books from cover to cover, but it gave me nothing in the longer-than-immediate-term. It's generic fluff- air, even.

[Lacedaemonian]

There are certainly lesser known writers, who write in this genre, who are much better. You analysis of Brown was absolutely correct.

[knivesout]

Yes Hypes and I intend to start the world's 1st International Anti-Dan Brown Spitbomb Squadron.


The whole question of commercialism is an interesting one to someone with a little knowledge of sf's history, or that of fantasy too. Many of the pioneers whom some of us hold in such regard were not writing from a literary standpoint of pure art, but churning out sellable copy to low-grade pulps, often at an astounding rate, simply to earn enough money to scrape by on. Yet, one cannot help but feel that if commercialism was all they aspired to, they could have chosen a more lucrative genre to pursue it in. Many also wrote crime and horror fiction, equally marginal in their own right. So there's always been a trade-off between art and commerce.

[Cricket]

Hmmm, this is a difficult question. I do not think I could, because, I write only from my heart my own experience. I do not think I could write just to write, so, I am lacking as the writer then. If I want to write, I will do it as my father says to do, write, and seek the craft or trade first. Then, I can write, post on my website, and let people read for free. The same with music or drama, whatever. But that is only my opinion. Still, I understand that so many great writers we know began in the employ of others.