zom-zom wrote:I was trying to find information on "STP" and I keep coming across things saying they were a "Supergroup".

tommydski wrote:Why even book the damn show if you don't have your shit together?

alex maiolo wrote:it keeps the ruckus level down. The hubbub too.

Ty Webb wrote:

sparky wrote:

tommydski wrote:Thanks a lot, sparky.

That's an excellent response that has given me a lot to think about.

Thanks tommy.

It was a good question, which I've been thinking about myself a little. I am writing a novel (along with 75% of British university-educated males of my age) and am wondering to what extent, if at all, I need to think of someone actually wanting to read the horrible thing.

I'm no musician and I've been leaving it to fellow musicians to comment so far, but as a writer, I can relate to this one.

My gut instinct, strictly as the "artist," is absolutely do not think of it. If a writer does not allow the audience to come to him, he hasn't written the book he's had inside him for years. He's written a de facto commissioned piece.

sparky, you know how difficult it is to write something about which one is uninspired. And the vast majority of fiction authors, to be brutally frank, only have one good novel in them. (Actually, most of us don't even have that.) It's the one they've burned to write since they first knew they were to born to put pen to paper. I think changing a single period or comma of that novel based on a hypothetical reader's expectations is the worst kind of self-sabotage.

And I'm not talking strictly for reasons of "artistic integrity" or any other high-minded but nearly impossible to define ethical concept. I'm talking about the quality of the work itself. Pandering is transparent to any semi-conscious reader and will kill not only the novel itself, but the sort of burning inspiration that leads a writer to write one in the first place.

katie, a princess wrote:

alex maiolo wrote:it keeps the ruckus level down. The hubbub too.

what about the riff-raff?

katie, a princess wrote:

alex maiolo wrote:it keeps the ruckus level down. The hubbub too.

what about the riff-raff?

connor wrote:

Ty Webb wrote:

sparky wrote:

tommydski wrote:Thanks a lot, sparky.

That's an excellent response that has given me a lot to think about.

Thanks tommy.

It was a good question, which I've been thinking about myself a little. I am writing a novel (along with 75% of British university-educated males of my age) and am wondering to what extent, if at all, I need to think of someone actually wanting to read the horrible thing.

I'm no musician and I've been leaving it to fellow musicians to comment so far, but as a writer, I can relate to this one.

My gut instinct, strictly as the "artist," is absolutely do not think of it. If a writer does not allow the audience to come to him, he hasn't written the book he's had inside him for years. He's written a de facto commissioned piece.

sparky, you know how difficult it is to write something about which one is uninspired. And the vast majority of fiction authors, to be brutally frank, only have one good novel in them. (Actually, most of us don't even have that.) It's the one they've burned to write since they first knew they were to born to put pen to paper. I think changing a single period or comma of that novel based on a hypothetical reader's expectations is the worst kind of self-sabotage.

And I'm not talking strictly for reasons of "artistic integrity" or any other high-minded but nearly impossible to define ethical concept. I'm talking about the quality of the work itself. Pandering is transparent to any semi-conscious reader and will kill not only the novel itself, but the sort of burning inspiration that leads a writer to write one in the first place.

Actually, I do think writers need to think of The Reader but just one: the writer himself. Write something that you'd love to read or you're fucked. Yeah, you'd think a lot of beginning writers would think of this. And you'd be wrong.