Comments on: “Art Hides Art”

By: bonne

bonne — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 03:03:04 +0000

We’ve got a great Kootenay Group meeting every Sunday afternoon to write at a coffee shop, our lappies open, typing away. People must think we’re planning to take over the world. It’s been a great experience.

By: Carla

Carla — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 21:55:19 +0000

hey! how’s the novel going? Are you panicking that you’re running out of time? I hope you aren’t This morning on BBC Breakfast news there was a featured story on Nanowrimo, how it’s really taking off in the UK. Apparently York is a real hub for it, the piece showed a coffee shop and a library where everyone had their laptops open and tapping away, it was kinda funny, to be a social thing but at the same time a very individual endeavor as well. But…it’s 10 PM and I am losing the ability to type coherently so I’ll get some sleep and will try to catch up with you soon.

By: bonne

bonne — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 03:24:30 +0000

There are certainly varying degrees of effort among writers, and sadly very little that is fair on this terrestrial ball, particularly when it comes to compensating the most deserving.

Whatever degree of excellence is reached for or achieved by a writer, the fact remains that it requires work to get it down. I can respect the effort taken to put pen to paper and keep going.

My Nanowrimo novel is a horrible first draft of a potentially marketable story. It would be a sin against God and nature for it to be published in its current form. But the sucker takes work! This is how I’m learning to respect that others have worked too, even if they could have worked harder.

By: Daan Van der Merwe

Daan Van der Merwe — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 10:55:08 +0000

I fully agree with you. Moreover, take for an example THE SEVENTH SCROLL by Wilbur Smith, THE LAST JUROR by John Grisham and TRANSGRESSION by Randall Ingermanson. It took Randy 15 years researching TRANSGRESSION and a further 2 years to write it. I realise that Wilbur Smith also put in a lot of effort and research but I find it hard to believe that it came even remotely close to Randy’s efforts. As for John Grisham, I seriously doubt that he did any research at all and it probably took him less than three months to write the novel. If I understand the quote correctly, TRANSGRESSION should have been a bestseller while THE LAST JUROR would not have been published because John would still be looking for an agent.

To my taste there was very little to choose between TRANSGRESSION and THE LAST JUROR. As for THE SEVENTH SCROLL, I never read further than chapter two more than seven years ago and I have no desire to read it any further in future.