About
Content
Store
Forum

Rebirth of Reason
War
People
Archives
Objectivism

Post to this threadMark all messages in this thread as readMark all messages in this thread as unreadBack one pagePage 0Page 1Page 2Page 3Forward one pageLast Page


Post 20

Friday, March 18, 2005 - 1:33pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
This conversation is like water in the desert!

Jason thank you for this:
"...it's ok to simply write a scene, for the sheer pleasure of writing it, that it's ok not to set out to write a short story, or a novel, but simply a scene in one's mind.  I had placed a certain completely unnecessary set of chains on my mind and I've only now just realized it."


Post 21

Friday, March 18, 2005 - 2:44pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
John, it's so wonderful to finally see you!!  :)

Post 22

Friday, March 18, 2005 - 2:49pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
I suppose I should answer Barbara's call, since I'm completely set on writing as my primary profession in life. But I'll have to make it short, because I'm not nearly confident enough to be comfortable with meta-writing. (Especially about fiction.)

I am very very liberal in this regard -- and I repeat Barbara's FIRST, DO WHAT YOU WANT. Indeed, it was Rand's artistic rigidity and moralizing that repelled me from the orthodoxy, in such short time as I was vulenerable to it.

Anything else I can say would amount to a disconnected brainfart, so I'll spare you.

Alec


Post 23

Friday, March 18, 2005 - 3:17pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Jason, Jennifer, I have nothing strange and wonderful to say about how not to sleep, except that it's a good idea to start out in life as decidedly a night person.



Barbara

Sanction: 5, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 5, No Sanction: 0
Post 24

Saturday, March 19, 2005 - 8:07amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Barbara - "JUST WRITE! Write about anything you want to, in any form you want to."

What wonderful advice. I do not see where this goes against Objectivism at all (and all those poor uptight repressed spoilsports be damned). If a person wants to attain the best within him/her, that person must first discover who he/she is. Self discovery (i.e. JUST WRITE!) can be one of the most passionate and even fun parts of becoming a writer.

My first experience with writing (unfortunately most of my stuff is in Portuguese) was in motion pictures in Brazil. I was HUNGRY to break into the field, so I was willing to do almost anything. I became part of a horrible slash-trash Grade Z horror flick as a sort of assistant (to bide time while waiting to be able to write the soundtrack). Right in the middle of the production, the lab accidently destroyed half of the negative shot and the screenwriter was travelling. The director asked me if I could write a horror scene, so I sat in a corner and got started. After about an hour or so later, I turned in a scene to him. Here is an outline of my first serious writing:

A man goes into his living room and goes about his normal affairs of getting settled in. Little by little the door locks, the windows shut and the typewriter starts typing all by itself. (I can't even remember the phrase that was being typed anymore - it had something to do with something in the film.) The man slowly goes over to read the message and gradually becomes aware of his confinement, trying to open the door to get out and whatnot. He starts going into a panic while the typewriter starts going faster and faster. Tense music swells. The typewriter innards like the type-head spoke-arms start flying off the typewriter and zipping all over the room, eventually decapitating him. As his head drops on the ground and rolls to a stop, a frog (a symbol in the film) hops by.

Well, that's not too Objectivist, is it? I can state from first-hand experience that it was a hell of a lot of fun to write (who can take that kind of stuff seriously anyway?). Also, I was invited to examine what was left of the film and create a new script based on it. Once again, not a very Objectivist film, but I learned most of my movie-making knowledge off that whole adventure. Regardless of whatever else I may do or create in life, I would not trade that experience for the world. And, I love writing.

Back to your advice, the reactions of the others in this post bears testimony to your wisdom in how to nurture talent. I am proud to be a part of all this.

Michael


Post 25

Saturday, March 19, 2005 - 1:39pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Michael K,
It's great fun reading the living room scene your wrote. Could you be so kind and write something about the kitchen scene here


Sanction: 5, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 5, No Sanction: 0
Post 26

Saturday, March 19, 2005 - 2:57pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Hong,

Your answer is over there.

But I started thinking that maybe a another word would be in order for those who think that something like what I wrote is sort of like prostituting your soul (or whatever).

I wrote that particular leap into the face of immortality as an exercise and test to get a job (btw - it never made it into the picture - budget problems). I take that stuff tongue-in-cheek - basically like going into a horror house at an amusement park.

Also, I certainly was not "discovering" myself with that...

But no apologies. I did it. I'm guilty as charged.

Michael


Post 27

Saturday, March 19, 2005 - 6:54pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Michael, I am deeply touched by the lyrical beauty of the scene you wrote. Have you tried your hand at poetry?

Sanction: 5, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 5, No Sanction: 0
Post 28

Sunday, March 20, 2005 - 12:38amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Barbara,

Ah debated with mahself, and debated and debated and debated and then lost the argahment.

Ah will reepeat mah liddle gem that tchu so deahly loved.

Basing mah rhythm on the following magnificent inspirashun by our venerable Prahme Moveh, Ms. Ayn Rand, and so genrusly ressurected on this heah forum by the amiable Ms. katdaddy:

Toothbrush in the jaw toothbrush brush brush tooth jaw foam dome in the foam Roman dome come home home in the jaw Rome dome tooth toothbrush toothpick pickpocket socket rocket

Ah generously added some ingrejunts from Abjectavist histry - that you ahre all too awah of - to my modest endeavah:

Branden in the rand branden done done brand rand meek seek in the meek peikoff seek so weak weak in the rand peek seek brand branden brand pig gigolo polo solo

Do pahdon me foh mah redundancy.

btw - That really was a copout. But I've got something cooking in the oven to be posted soon like an article. Also, thank you so much for being moved by my lyrical inspiration. The frog was such a nice touch, don't you think? Ah... I feel so... so... so very visible...

//;-)

Michael


Post 29

Sunday, March 20, 2005 - 5:51amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Motives and motivations are as numerous as the writers who have them.  The ranges and measures of "talent" or  "success" reflect the prejudices of the readers.  I have yet to find any endeavor for which this is not true.  Different people are different and they are perceived differently.

My experiences at  writing are old and deep.  That I "liked" it and was "good" at it made it easy to continue, even as I tried many other disciplines.  I grew up in a family of readers.  I also grew up with music.  In high school, my electives included journalism and band.  Journalism was a lot easier.  Not only did I make fewer mistakes, but fixing them was not painful. 

Completing a curriculum in transportation management, I took an elective in FORTRAN.  I learned to instruct a machine to perform calculations.  I already had learned other languages, growing up with Hungarian and taking seven years of German before college, and then three more.  Computer programming was another language skill. Reading "good programming" articles in media such as Creative Computing, the lessons were easy to learn and apply. 

On a project to create a distributed  database at General Motors, no one wanted to write the documentation.  I wrote it.  In the last 20 years, I have created about 50 user manuals for large and small businesses in finance and automation.  On a project at Digital Equipment, they wanted me to prove that someone with a high school education could read and understand the user manual.  This was intuitively obvious to them, but they wanted proof.  So, I read some books on reading metrics and wrote a Fortran program to parse the user manual.  On a project to create a multiprocessor high speed industrial controller, I pushed the manual for the interactive debugger down to the sixth grade reading level.  Good writing is easy to understand.

Working in technology and business, I meet entrepreneurs and creators.  Writing magazine articles about them is extra money for me.  It also allows me to honor them among their peers. 

When I was in high school and read Ayn Rand's Objectivist Newsletter, I was shocked by her condemnation of the Encyclopedia Britannica.  I survived.  Since then, I have had three good opportunities to take the EB to task.  Their opinions on the Spanish Armada and the Battle of Lake Erie were easy to balance against the facts presented by the Catholic Encyclopedia and the Americana.  When I discovered numismatics, I started writing about coins in particular and money in general. While citing the Britannica in print, I told myself a joke in my head. One consequence of that was a literary award from the American Numismatic Association. I now write a monthly column ("Internet Connections") for the ANA's Numismatist magazine.

As a "radical for capitalism" I find annoying inconsistencies within numismatics.  It is a hobby where people buy and sell money in a laissez faire economy.  Yet, anti-capitalist attitudes seep into the common expectations.  I am preparing a paper for a festschrift in which I establish a capitalist context for the "wildcat" banking era in American history.

"Nonfiction" is an anti-concept.  We have no word for writing the truth.  Yet, that is what I do.  I have published two poems, both in computer magazines.  I have published two science fiction stories.  One appeared in a Loompanics catalog.  The other won first prize in a contest to describe the future of design reprographics.  I told the story of a designer, living on Mars as it is being colonized.  They paid me a dollar a word for that. 


Post 30

Sunday, March 20, 2005 - 9:03amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
For me, the blank page (or screen) never gets any easier to look at.  I write every day, as Barabara suggested in a previous post, and when I come back after a break - say a vacation, for example - it always takes a while for me to get back into the routine.

I personally like Stephen King's comparison of writing with laying pipe.  A plumber can't wait for inspiration, or the muse, before he starts laying pipe.  And the writer can't wait for those things before he puts one word after the other.  If a plumber doesn't "plumb" regularly, he's not a plumber.  And if a writer doesn't write regularly, he's not a writer.


Post 31

Sunday, March 20, 2005 - 9:56amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
"If a plumber doesn't "plumb" regularly, he's not a plumber. And if a writer doesn't write regularly, he's not a writer."

Nice comparison, Ian. Thanks for sharing it!

Jason

Post 32

Monday, March 21, 2005 - 5:27amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Ian Bruce wrote: "I personally like Stephen King's comparison of writing with laying pipe."

There was a Saturday Night Live skit with Jon Lovitz playing Stephen King, being interviewed, by Dennis Miller, I think.  "King" is typing away and answering questions, typing and talking, rapid fire.  Then he stops typing for two seconds.  And starts again. "What was that?" the interviewer asked.  "Writer's block!" King replied.  It cracked me up.  It still does.

I've told this story on SOLO before. I was working as a technical writer for a software provider whose principals finally went to jail, though not enough of them.  After a hard session of getting it all right, the owner came into my office and demanded changes that made it all wrong again. So, I came home in a bad mood.  "What's wrong?" my wife asked.  I told her.  I got down a dictionary and looked up "hack."  (A writer who works for pay without regard for personal or professional standards.)  "See," I said, "I'm a hack."  Laurel smiled back at me, "Don't feel so bad, honey," she said. "Most writers have to quit their jobs to become hacks."


Post 33

Monday, March 21, 2005 - 3:57pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Michael M, I love both of your stories!

But all I can say about Stephen King's more recent works -- such as the one whose title I have mercifully blocked from memory, in which his characters, before dying, spend all of their time defecating and vomiting, which activities he lovingly describes in ever richer detail -- is that I wish he'd had a REAL writer's block, say for the five minutes he probably spent writing that book.

Actually, this is not all I can say about King. But it's all I shall say.

Barbara

Post 34

Monday, March 21, 2005 - 4:48pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Barbara,
It seems we have the same estimate of Stephen King's books. I've tried a few times, but have never been able to read more than a few pages of his fiction before giving up.

It's interesting to note, and probably no accident, that he describes Rand's writing (in his book On Writing, which I was able to read most of) as "pedestrian prose", or words to that effect. (Can't locate the exact quote just now.)


Post 35

Monday, March 21, 2005 - 5:00pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
I don't have the exact quote, but I remember King in On Writing saying that honest writing can make up for a lot of other errors, "as the wooden prose of Ayn Rand proves", or something like that.  So he seemed to like her books, but he thought her prose was wooden.

Personally I love the Dark Tower series.


Post 36

Tuesday, March 22, 2005 - 2:46amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Although I quote King on the topic of writing, I don't think he's the best out there by any means.  I think a fiction writer could learn a lot more from Lee Child and Terry Goodkind than from King.  In fact, I think that every writer should create their own rules.  But the bottom line is that they need to write regularly in order to find out what works for them and what doesn't.

Post 37

Tuesday, March 22, 2005 - 3:07amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
The only Stephen King book I read was Pet Semetary and only most of that.  Horror is not my genre.  Of course, I read science fiction, but not much of that, either.  When cyberpunk came out, I got into it, but that did not last long.  My daughter and I read Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises a couple of years ago.  We did not do so well at Moby Dick or Don Quixote.  I got flamed on a writer's board when I confessed all of that and then closed with the fact that I read and enjoyed The Bridges of Madison County. 

Objectivism carries a curious duality about the markets for art.  As capitalists, Objectivists have to admit that the market is always right.  However, as individualists, we know that most people are usually wrong. Objectivists want to stand like bronze gods against torrents of public disfavor, but no one likes rejection.  I found Robert Heinlein's advice helpful: keep sending it out until it sells and keep writing. 

On coin collector boards, I have recommended that regulars write something for the trades.  I find it curious that people who post thousands of words here are waiting for something undefined before they can become published writers, as if this is not that.


Post 38

Tuesday, March 22, 2005 - 4:14amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Since Stephen King's On Writing has come up, I have to quote this actual sentence from that book. It is hilarious:

“With adverbs, the writer usually tells us he or she is afraid he/she isn’t expressing himself/herself clearly, that he or she is not getting the point or picture across.” 

Talk about a sentence being an unintentional parody of itself! To top it off, it's in a book called "On Writing."

For the record, I loathe Stephen King (even the most idea-lacking detective novel has the element of logic -- with entirely pointless, random action, King lacks even that). But I was recommended this book from a number of other anti-Kingers, who said they liked it. After enduring about a hundred benign pages, I just couldn't continue past this sentence.

Alec


Post 39

Tuesday, March 22, 2005 - 8:58amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Sheesh. No one here enjoyed "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption," "Apt Pupil," or "The Body" (which was made into "Stand By Me")?
J


Post to this threadBack one pagePage 0Page 1Page 2Page 3Forward one pageLast Page


User ID Password or create a free account.