On Jul 15, 2012, at 3:42 PM, Lorn Faulkner wrote: > Ray, > > You tell me if you get this feeling as well. Do people these days seem to not > be able to take criticism as well as individuals our age? It seems the > internet age has made so many either 1) sensitive to debate or 2) too > sensitive to debate. Everything is taken too damn personal when you don't try > your super duper best to word things careful enough. > > Lorn
Well, criticism is pointless, for a start. As David Gerrold is fond of telling readers and want to be writers at workshops, "Where the hell were you at 3 am the week before deadline when I needed a better idea?" It's always in process, so if you want to praise or condemn a work I finished over a year and a half ago, it's your prerogative. Either way I ignore it because it does me personally no good regarding the craft. See, if you think quality has fallen off, I've got readers sending me notes and e-mails saying they like the new stuff better than anything I did back in the day. So, who am I to listen to? The guy who thinks Magician is the best ever or the guy who thinks Kingdom Besieged is the best ever? Best advice my dad ever gave me was "If you believe the good reviews, then you've got to believe the bad one's too. So best to not believe any of them." The first big time review I got was above the fold in the Sunday Book Section of the Washington Post, two columns and the guy liked Magician better than my mom did. One week later the book reviewer at the Charlotte Observer pretty much said I should be shot for writing in the English language and everyone at Doubleday should be fired for publishing Magician. I think my ex-wife put those two side by side in a scrapbook she made for me. She always had a quaint sense of humor. My opinion is you're catching flak not because you liked Magician better than Besieged, but because you characterized the work as falling off because I'm bored with the world. We've never met; you don't know me. You and I have never had a conversation about how my process works, what my overall vision is, or any other meaningful aspect of the story arc, to the best of my knowledge, yet you presume to characterize it as an aspect of my respect or lack thereof for the material and my readership. Me, I don't care. You're free to like what you like. But apparently some of the others on this board took umbrage. And I don't debate my work with anyone (save my editor) because the work must speak for itself. Which is one of the points I stress with want to be writers at workshops, i.e. "If you're telling me what you're doing in chapter 4, put it in chapter 4 because you're not going to be standing in every bookshop on the planet explaining to the buyer what you're doing in chapter 4." I'll take about pretty much anything that interests me, but I'll never debate the work. Best, R.E.F. ---- www.crydee.com Never attribute to malice what can satisfactorily be explained away by stupidity.
