Scottie, you missed half my post. That crap is taught by people who don't publish. That's junior college writing workshop stuff. The MFA programs I described had a number of significant authors (who you would recgonize as very, very good) on their faculty. I was just using the Iowa Writer's Workshop as an example, but SUNY's program has some pretty notable people in it and so does Florida Atlantic University.
Published authors don't do the nonsense you were talking about.
Salinger wrote, what, 40 stories or so that we know of? And was only willing to republish 13 of them?
You gotta write and publish a lot of crap -- or even just moderately good fiction but not spectacularly good -- before you can write and publish a _Catcher in the Rye_. So all the stuff in between isn't a waste of time. It's like exercising a muscle.
Admittedly, sometimes the bowel...but even that has its purposes.
Jim
-----Original Message-----
From: "Scottie Bowman" <rbowman@indigo.ie>
To: <bananafish@roughdraft.org>
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 21:20:03 +0100
Subject: Re: intelligence of the author vs. intelligence of the characters
'... it's a terrible mistake to think that it has nothing to offer
someone who can ...'
Principles of Plotting ... Timing of Climaxes ... Varying the Dialogue
... Four Parameters of Character ... Tailoring the Word Count...
Stimulating while not Offending ... Nobbling the Agent ... A Handy
Review of Reviewers ... The Signing ... How to Fuck the Public ...
The National Book Award in 2008. And in 2028 - oblivion.
Come on now, no cheating. Who won the Nobel Prize for Literature
in 1982? And the Pulitzer in 1999?
I've said it before & I'll say it again. It really is the most dreadful,
dreadful waste of time if you ain't Joey Conrad or little Janey Austen.
Scottie B.
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Received on Sun Sep 1 07:42:43 2002
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