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(04.41 PM, 09 Oct 2008, The Writer Myth or: Why I'm Doing NaNo This Year) Arthur B says...
FWIW, I am on the actual site, partly because my misconceptions as to how you submit novels for word counting have been sorted, partly because enough of our circle are on there that it's worth it to keep tabs on each other. :)
I agree that the big deal is having a deadline and a word count, and I suppose having something publicly accessible which shows your wordcount is a good spur (especially if you are writing alongside people whose opinions you respect ;) ).
I also think that it's past time we started referring to the thing as WoNoWriMo, because talking about your "nano project" implies you are fiddling with nanotechnology or iPods.
(04.24 PM, 09 Oct 2008, City of Stupid) Kyra Smith says...
You make me so damn glad I stopped reading at page 63.
So. Damn. Glad.
(03.49 PM, 09 Oct 2008, The Writer Myth or: Why I'm Doing NaNo This Year) Kyra Smith says...
(I am dithering on the borders of Nano ... I may join you insanity, or I may not. I'm not sure I'll have time.)
But I felt embarrassed and unentitled to the... um... title.
Fascinating, isn't it, that 'writer' is a title in a way that administrator or plumber just isn't. I suppose it's because it brushes up against ideas of authorship and authors and, oh gosh, then it's Foucault all the way to insanity and back :)
(02.46 PM, 09 Oct 2008, The Writer Myth or: Why I'm Doing NaNo This Year) Rami Chowdhury says...
(I'm also amused that the canonical abbreviation is 'NaNo' when 'WriMo' makes so much more sense in most contexts...)
(02.45 PM, 09 Oct 2008, The Writer Myth or: Why I'm Doing NaNo This Year) Rami Chowdhury says...
I have to admit that part of the reason I want to do NaNo is on the off chance that I'll end up with something like The Eye Of Argon, and gain infamy that way ;-)
I've signed up to the official site, because I agree it's useful to make the numbers public, but I've turned off everything else because, like Arthur, I think the fact that I have real-life friends participating is sufficient community for me.
(11.39 PM, 07 Oct 2008, The Writer Myth or: Why I'm Doing NaNo This Year) Montavilla says...
Um. That wasn't what I meant to say. I just hit the button by accident. Not that I don't want you to have fun. Do have fun.
What I wanted to say was that it took me the longest time to call myself a writer, even though it's what I do that brings in the biggest bucks. (Not that those bucks could be called big by any stretch of the imagination.)
But I felt embarrassed and unentitled to the... um... title. Precisely because a writer is someone like Dickens or Hemingway or Steinbeck, who write IMPORTANT BOOKS and get written about by critics. And collect royalties.
Whereas I am merely someone with a talent for typing quickly and stringing words together in a coherent fashion. And, although there are actual books with my name on them that are available at Amazon.com, they were all written for hire and I'll never see another penny from them.
Also, since I'm freelance, writing seems like something that could disappear at any moment. It often does.
So, it was with a surprised thrill that I finally once answered when someone asked what I did, that I replied, "I'm a writer."
(11.27 PM, 07 Oct 2008, The Writer Myth or: Why I'm Doing NaNo This Year) Montavilla says...
Have fun!
(10.48 PM, 07 Oct 2008, The Writer Myth or: Why I'm Doing NaNo This Year) Daniel Hemmens says...
If you do decide to do NaNo, I strongly recommend signing up officially. The whole point of NaNo is that the clear, concrete challenge of writing 50,000 words in a month, and making the number public, will encourage you to actually get writing instead of prevaricating. Essentially it's about providing a metric for success which *isn't* "getting published".
(04.01 PM, 07 Oct 2008, The Writer Myth or: Why I'm Doing NaNo This Year) Arthur B says...
Disregard that, I misunderstood what they meant when they talked about verifying the word count - I thought they expected you to upload the unscrambled text of the novel. Which wouldn't be something I'd ever want to do, ever.
(03.52 PM, 07 Oct 2008, The Writer Myth or: Why I'm Doing NaNo This Year) Arthur B says...
Oh, that said I won't actually be registering for it, for the following reasons:
- I'm not interested in comparing my lamentable progress with other people's, or reading excerpts from complete strangers' works in progress.
- I don't want to feel obliged to stop once the month is over, and I have no interest in being a "winner". If what I've written is any good, I want to be able to spend more time polishing it and submitting it to an actual publisher; if it's crap, I'm not going to broadcast it all over the internet.
- Having at least three of my RL friends (at the last count) participating is all the community I need.
(11.43 AM, 07 Oct 2008, The Writer Myth or: Why I'm Doing NaNo This Year) Arthur B says...
I'm doing it this year too, partially because I write so much about books on Ferretbrain. It's not so much that I feel that I have to have some experience of writing to slam crappy authors like Cecilia Dart-Thornton, any more than I have to work in a kitchen for years before I can complain about being served poo on a stick for lunch - it's just that having seen so many ways people do it wrong, I'm wondering whether I can actually do it right, or whether I'll just produce something which is so keen to avoid my particular bugbears it makes all kinds of other mistakes in the bargain.
(04.29 PM, 06 Oct 2008, Nildungsroman) Daniel Hemmens says...
Possibly a stupid question as you have clearly read a lot of stuff ABOUT fantasy (where on earth do you find it? I mean I do like to read fantasy, but I can barely ever find anything interesting written about it - except on Ferretbrain, of course) but have you read On Fairy Stories by Tolkien? It covers a lot of the themes from above, and it's one of my favourite essays with some really well-made points.
I've not read it actually (I'm far less well read than I pretend to be, I just shout my opinions loudly and hope people assume I've done some research).
As for Star Wars, the "real world" if you want to call it that in the SW saga is (IMO) the Rebellion, the big deal is that while Luke goes off and learns from Jedi Masters and confronts Darth Vader, it's the regular guys in the guns-and-bombs shooting war that he comes back to. Our Esteemed Editor also points out that Luke's return to Han and Leia is a quite literal return to family at the end of the series.
(09.15 PM, 05 Oct 2008, Nildungsroman) Arthur B says...
As far as I can tell, the supposed precise mapping of Star Wars to the Hero's Journey is a bit ropey, and came about mainly because John Campbell was all "Hey, Star Wars fits the Hero's Journey perfectly" and George Lucas said "Oh... really? I mean, yes. Yes it does."
So working out where all the various bits and pieces fit in is sometimes tricky, but I think the Hero's Return is very much there, although it's pretty much described in a single scene - it's the bit at the end where they're all getting their medals and all the rebel forces cheer them. Having ventured into the depths of the Death Star's chasm and faced the dark lord, Luke emerges victorious and the community (said community being the rebellion) is enriched for it. That's all you really need for the Hero's Return - tenuous, I know, but so's the entire Hero's Journey idea to begin with.
(The end of Return of the Jedi is interesting in this light, actually - the community is having a big party, but Luke isn't really part of it - he's off at the edge, burning his father's body and communing with ghosts, his experiences finally alienating him from his community because he's endured so many things that have no parallel in the common experience of the war - hundreds of people can claim they were involved in the attack on Death Star II, for example, but only Luke actually saw Darth Vader's true face.)
(08.52 PM, 05 Oct 2008, Nildungsroman) Andy G says...
Great article! That really put the finger on something that had been bugging me, except actually I hadn't realised it had been bugging me until I read the article. I was just wondering how you think Star Wars would fit into the pattern of the Hero's return, as you'd given that as an example of one closely written to the pattern, but it doesn't seem as clear-cut an example as the LotR or others where the magical world/magical powers are left behind?
Possibly a stupid question as you have clearly read a lot of stuff ABOUT fantasy (where on earth do you find it? I mean I do like to read fantasy, but I can barely ever find anything interesting written about it - except on Ferretbrain, of course) but have you read On Fairy Stories by Tolkien? It covers a lot of the themes from above, and it's one of my favourite essays with some really well-made points.
(12.17 PM, 30 Sep 2008, The Precise Moment I Stopping Reading City of Bones) Rami Chowdhury says...
I think these are still worse, but you're getting there ;-)
(12.10 PM, 30 Sep 2008, The Random Review Returns!) Rami Chowdhury says...
Gordon Brown's "Um. Yes. That's not great" upon hearing the news is pretty good too ;-)
(12.07 PM, 30 Sep 2008, The Random Review Returns!) Kyra Smith says...
The Tila Tequila story terrifes me...
(12.26 AM, 30 Sep 2008, The Precise Moment I Stopping Reading City of Bones) Arthur B says...
"Minus three hundred points for turning the comments section into Harry Potter fanfiction," muttered Harry, glowering at his Nintendo DS. He was pretty sure he was on the right track in this Phoenix Wright episode, but the game was being evasive about precisely which investigative avenue he should pursue. Harry was not looking forward to the half hour he'd have to spend looking for the plot, but he supposed he couldn't complain: he normally had to doss about for half a year before getting anything done in real life.
"How's my hair looking?" asked Ron, anxious about his big date with Hermione. He had spent the last six hours smearing his skin with Hackiburr's Very Useful Ointment in order to conceal the telltale marks of gingerness, and was now in the process of rubbing the stuff into his scalp. Harry glanced at his bare-torsoed chum and then returned his attention to his game.
"Your hair is all carroty," quipped Harry, "like someone was just sick in it."
Draco giggled and ran his hands through his hair, which was bright yellow like artificial egg yolk.
(11.51 PM, 29 Sep 2008, The Random Review Returns!) Arthur B says...
My favourite bit of the News 24 coverage is still George Bush saying he's "very disappointed" that the House hasn't passed a bill to plug the big gushing leak in Wall Street, in the same sort of tone you'd imagine him saying he's "very disappointed" that his souffle didn't turn out quite right.
(09.20 PM, 29 Sep 2008, The Precise Moment I Stopping Reading City of Bones) Kyra Smith says...
Oi! Minus three points from Slytherin for being meta.
(04.59 PM, 29 Sep 2008, The Precise Moment I Stopping Reading City of Bones) Arthur B says...
Her hair was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel.
(04.32 PM, 29 Sep 2008, The Precise Moment I Stopping Reading City of Bones) Claire E Fitzgerald says...
Her hair was almost precisely the colour of a grey cat in a room that was totally dark, such that the colour of the cat was indistinguishable from black.
(04.01 PM, 29 Sep 2008, The Precise Moment I Stopping Reading City of Bones) Kyra Smith says...
We are now mainly haggling over semantics, dear boy.
So instead I would like to play the "Her hair was" game.
I submit: Her hair was almost precisely the colour of one of those motorola telephones, the ones with that come with a gloss finish not matte."
(03.47 PM, 29 Sep 2008, The Precise Moment I Stopping Reading City of Bones) Arthur B says...
I think direct stylistic mimicing is, as you point out, actually rare, especially since a lot of fanfic is written about TV series, so you're translating a visual format into a literary one. But at the same time I think that the aim of a lot of fanfic is to emulate the source work in the sense that the writer's trying to tell a story that is a) reminiscent of the source material, in that it establishes a mood and tells a story which could recognisably fit within the source, and b) features the characters behaving in a manner recognisable from the source (unless the explicit point of the fic is something like "What if Captain Lolcats got possessed by a brain worm?"). At the very least, a lot of fanfic authors seem to want to produce something where the reader would look at it and say "Yes, that's very much how it would have happened on my favourite show if the screenwriters had only had the courage to write an episode where the ship's doctor and the robot owl consummate their love".
I say "a lot of fanfic" because I've seen the occasional piece (generally AU fics) where the premise is so utterly far removed from the source material that I start scratching my head and wondering why the author bothered retaining the link to the source material in the first place. Sure, perhaps the characters retain scraps of their personality, but they're in such an utterly different scenario it becomes a stretch to call them the same characters; to my mind, at least, characters are at least partially defined by context. Being a cheeky black marketeer on Deep Space 9 is a very different proposition from being a cheeky black marketeer in Blitz-era London.
(02.16 PM, 29 Sep 2008, The Precise Moment I Stopping Reading City of Bones) Kyra Smith says...
Since we're playing Favourite Lines, my personal shoutout goes to: "He had electric blue dyed hair that stuck up around his head like the tendrils of a startled octopus..." I guess it's just the awkwardness of the construction coupled with that startled octopus...
Arthur: I would suggest that this may be the result of people writing to indulge the sort of mores that have grown up around fandom-in-general, as opposed to writing to emulate the original work.
I'm not sure emulating the original work has ever real been the goal, well, not unless there's specific stylistic feature *to* emulate if that makes sense - like Lovecraft. I mean, you want to make your characters sound like the characters they are but ... well ... to indulge a bit of JKR bashing just because that's what we do here, most of the Harry Potter stuff I've read has been stylistically objectively better than the author.
"Her hair was almost precisely the color of laser toner. In a really old printer. You know. The black-and-white kind."
Hehe!!!