It’s frustrating, to say the least, to be here working my butt off to make my manuscripts as good as they can possibly be when there are people like Meyer that publishes first draft material and shoots from the hip while proudly wearing the fact that she doesn’t research anything on her sleeve that’s not just violated the semantics of writing we know but violently raped them to a bloody pulp, all while making millions doing it.

It’s not the success that gets my panties in a twist about her. It’s the way she shits on the craft as if she’s above it all. That’s what’s come to really bother me.

But it’s not like I seek this stuff out. That article I posted in my blog came from Children’s Bookshelf on Publisher’s Weekly, a site I visit every week. It just happened to be there. But when I do see it, I twitch a little.

But like you, I don’t mind much about the success of these types that I wouldn’t read anyway.

And then someone makes a million with an idea that everyone has seen before. The sentence structure, gramma, etc isn’t worth a toss, and the story tends to spiral into chaos with crappy endings.

Little wonder it causes issues with writers. Every single one of them wishes they’d come up with it first. They wish they’d stopped worrying about writing well and just written a tale which took hold of the publics imagination (or at least a lot of teenage girl’s imaginations).

As for the story telling aspect of it, it’s no better or worse than others, it just struck a cord with a particular group at the right time. Good for them. Every writer hopes to do the same each time they get a book published. It is just a fairly rare event that when it does occur, everyone jumps up and down about it.

I’m happy people are still reading. Books will never die. People will still want books during bad economic times. They will still read regardless of who is president or who is bombing who. Left, right or somewhere in between doesn’t matter as long as we are still able to lose ourselves occasionally in a well told tale.

Personally, I don’t give a shit about other writers successes. I enjoyed Eragon, Potter (what I have read of it), and I love King. I’ll probably read Twilight one day and I’ll probably enjoy that as well. I enjoyed Dan Brown’s code as well. I just hope one day, I’ll be able to write something that people will give me lots of money for.

I love writing, but one day it would be great to be able to do it for a living, and that means getting paid enough so I don’t have to do the shitty job I currently do. I get paid pretty well at the moment so I’ll need to write a crappy series to cover it.

Better get to work ;c)

The thing about Obama is that there are things he won’t do, because he’s still at the head of US Capitalism. He very much wants to reinvent the US Empire which I find quite disturbing, because some how be puts a new gloss on war justification and then everyone supports it.

I think his stance on Israel-Palestine will show him for who he really is. At the demonstrations for Gaza, I found these people are the most critical of him.

I got over vampires w/Anne Rice. And yeah, I’ve seen the fights about Twilight. I’ve seen the same ones about Harry Potter. Even moreso. And I agree that it’s the storytelling that’s the thing people respond to more than the writing.

But you’re forgetting one other thing — in writer groups you’re running into a lot of BITTERCAKES because writers have yooge egos and to think that someone who can’t write grammatically or use words quite correctly is making piles of $$$$ with compelling stories rather than sentences of literary merit drives them into green-eyed tizzies.

As to your Obama skepticism? It’s not so much about what HE will do or wants to do, it’s what Congress, his advisors, and so on will LET him accomplish. And he can’t do it all at once. Nor should he.

Me? I’d love to have the WPA again so artists and others would have funding and a way to make a living wage. And yeah, national health appeals to me a LOT. Well, duh, right?

xoxo

I guess the abstinence thing is one of many similar issues, to do with relationships and such. Are you getting at the idea that its sending a message that women need a man to be happy? Because I could see that being a serious problem.

Even fans of the books admit that this isn’t the best writing, not to mention how horrible the final book was because of all the plot holes, character deviations and such. So it’s not just the “elitist writers” that are condemning the book for being poorly written. It’s a lot of the masses too.

Read the books. You’ll have a better understanding of where the writers are coming from and I’m sure you’ll shift your view on the abstinence thing, since there are greater message issues with the book than that.