I don't know what's stranger: the fact that they don't consider poets to be writers, or the article itself
Posted by JBShearer (Member # 9434) on :
OMG. Poets. Think about it; poetry is the SHORTEST of the styles. Playwrights only live a little longer---and plays are LONGER than poems, but SHORTER than novels! Novelists live a few years longer, because they write longer work! It only makes sense, right? Nonfiction writers . . . must live longer than fiction writers because creativity drains you.
So, Robert Jordan will live virtually forever. Yeah, figured as much anyway. C-you guys later, I'm off to write an encyclopedia set.
Posted by TheoPhileo (Member # 1914) on :
Isn't 70 years the average human lifespan? Even if novelists live longer than poets, they still die younger than non-writers. Hmmmm....
Posted by Lord Darkstorm (Member # 1610) on :
But the question should really be, do non-writers live as well?
LDS
Posted by Pyre Dynasty (Member # 1947) on :
So how long did the writer of the alphabet live? All his works were a single letter long.
Posted by Gwalchmai (Member # 1807) on :
Could be a bonus though, if you live in a country where the average life span is below 60. . . .
Posted by Kolona (Member # 1438) on :
Like we really needed another health scare -- rhyming words. Or would we call this an occupational hazard?
Posted by teddyrux (Member # 1595) on :
I'm sure that OSHA is looking into it and will come up with some new regulations. We all know that employers of writers don't treat them properly, and the government should step in and do something.
Rux :}
Posted by Alias (Member # 1645) on :
quote:OMG. Poets. Think about it; poetry is the SHORTEST of the styles. Playwrights only live a little longer---and plays are LONGER than poems, but SHORTER than novels! Novelists live a few years longer, because they write longer work! It only makes sense, right? Nonfiction writers . . . must live longer than fiction writers because creativity drains you.
Does that mean Victor Hugo lived forever?
Posted by Rahl22 (Member # 1411) on :
I was thinking about Tolstoy. But then, he's dead now, isn't he. Oh well, his books read like non-fiction.
Posted by rjzeller (Member # 1906) on :
Robert Jordan. My goodness. I keep thinking with all the abuse he gets that I just have to stop in the "J's" the next time I'm in the bookstore. Problem is everytime I get there I see these 500-600 page books and I think about what people have said about and I'm like, "I just don't have the patience".
This, of course, from someone who read a 700+ page "Sword of Shannara" and just loved it. So maybe I do have the patience....
Posted by EricJamesStone (Member # 1681) on :
My advice on Robert Jordan is: Wait until he finishes the series, so you can read the whole thing. If you decide you don't like it, no problem. But if you do like it, you won't be stuck waiting for a seeming eternity for the next book to come out and incrementally move the plot along.
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
Okay, who actually read the article?
There is no mystery here. The guy doing the study noted that very few people can become accomplished novelists, let alone non-fiction writers, without living to a fairly ripe age.
The history of literature is full of promising writers that died young, yea, even the 'history' (such as it is) of SF. In SF the guys that died young were mostly known for short stories...because those form the main body of their works.
I would backform Rahl's statement, the reason this effect appears is because we don't consider novelists and all other writers as poets. OSC still writes poetry. I personally stopped writing formal poetry when I was...when I stopped getting assignments to write poems, I guess. I suppose it still happens every now and again.
But for various reasons that have a lot to do with our ingrained responses to literature, we prefer reading poems by the young and non-fiction by the old. When a great novelist or biographer/historian/whatever dies young, the great novel or encyclopedia or whatever doesn't get written. As the man said.
By the way, you can read the first three or four books set in the Wheel of Time series as individual books, with individual storylines and individual dramatic closures. It's really only with the last few books that he's committed the sin of "let's go for another 7-8 hundred pages and then call it a book even though I introduce no dramatic resolution of any kind." Really, the first three books (it is at the end of the third book that Rand and the rest of the world both find out for sure that he is really the Dragon Reborn) work just fine as three self contained books and as a self contained trilogy.
That doesn't excuse the fact that every woman has breasts/lips/lashes noticably fuller than the last, or the egregious amount of fashionable clothing, or...well, you can fill in the blanks. But over the course of only three books those things are all much less irritating.