Now, like most of you, I no longer have 8 hours a day to devote to reading or writing. I get 3 hours of writing tasks in during baby naptimes (this includes critiquing and the business end of things). I read a bit each evening.
I'm often torn between reading and writing and if the book is good enough, reading wins out every time...
I have robots that take care of the vacuuming, mopping, and lawn. I keep up with the dishes and laundry. My husband (supportive of my writing aspirations) helps me with the bathrooms and dusting. And once my son gets old enough, I'm making him help too!
It's never easy to find time to do the things you love, but what else is life for? Family comes first, then you. Housework is definitely at the bottom of that list!
[This message has been edited by Christine (edited August 18, 2006).]
Thanks for letting me vent!
The thing about writing, IMHO, is that it's about more than getting yourself published. Some people like to shop, others like to read, some like to fish or hunt or play golf or go bowling or play bridge. There is no reason why any of these is more important than any other. We do these things because we enjoy them, because they are a part of who we are, and because we want to become better at them.
If bowling was your thing, would your husband not take you seriously because he didn't believe you would make the women's bowling circuit and start making thousands of dollars? Do you not take his fisghin seriously because he hasn't been able to join fishing competitions and make money?
Money is not the end all be all of life and it is not what's important to me. I want people to read ane enjoy my stories and I want to get better with each successive attempt. Very few writers get rich off of it. That doesn't mean it can't make us happy.
I know a lot of people don't have families supportive of their dreams in this area and I don't understand why it's so different from anything else. My dad's a golfing nut. My mom likes to cook and cross stitch. My husband tinkers with robots. All these things are important and I hope that everyone can find a way to make the things that make them happy a part of their life -- especially moms! I, for one, want my son to see that he can and should do the things that make him happy.
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He has been listening to...the Harry Potter series.... I hate it when he tells me he liked the movie(s) better.
I'm going to state this as a simple matter of fact, which it is.
The movies are better.
I'm going to go lie down now.
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I'm going to state this as a simple matter of fact, which it is.The movies are better.
Well, based on having seen films 1 and 4, then those books must be really, truly, deeply terrible.
[This message has been edited by tchernabyelo (edited August 19, 2006).]
Rowlings spins a pretty good yarn. I'm told that the story in the books is deeper and more complex than what's in the movies, and I'm willing to believe it. But the fact remains that I'm never going to make it all the way through any of those books, and I was able to watch the movies (except for the fourth one, I'd made the mistake of forcing down an entire chapter of the fourth book beforehand, so I wasn't able to tolerate anything associated with it).
That might be a subjective judgement, so let us confine ourselves to clear facts. When you look at issues of actual fact rather than subjective judgements, it is clear that the movies are "better" in every objectively measurable catagory.
The biggest problem with Rowling, that I can identify, is a lack of consistancy. The magic lacks cost and lacks rules, therefore the entire setting and story is in danger of zipping any random direction at any given moment. The funniest part is that this wild-randomr oller coaster effect, graphically similar to drug heights, is very addictive and enjoyable to the vast majority of persons. I myself have read the books and, mostly, enjoyed them. Not without a gripe here and there, however, her tremendous success and fanciful but fun stories have put smiles on millions of kids faces. Even encouraged a few to develop a taste for reading. Since tehre is no true scale that I know which identify's a book as good or terrible, I don't agree that the books are "deeply terrible." I think the plot is flawed and on a technical level the books are deeply imperfect. However, it is clear that enjoyability wins out over craftsmanship, and since she so strongly met her onjective of creating an enjoyable read... well, on this scale I have to admit the books are good, clever, and of course ridiculously successful. Not randomly either.
The trouble with Rowling is her tendency to ramble. She's spent chapters going on about adventures that went nowhere to benefiting plot or characterization, and by the time they're done, I'm often left wondering why I spent that much time in those chapters. That's been the biggest improvement from the last two films, getting rid of the useless sideplots.
Regardless, they're still one of my favorite series and I'm eagerly anticipating the concluding volume. And with the costless, ruleless magic, who cares? This is necessary in stories where magic exists in a non-magic world, but since Harry Potter takes place in a magical world, it's accepted as the regular way of life. In fact, using this logic, using non-magical items in a magic world should have its cost and rules.
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using non-magical items in a magic world should have its cost and rules.
That is an intriguing concept.
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quote:using non-magical items in a magic world should have its cost and rules.That is an intriguing concept.
No, it isn't. Every fantasy story with magic is already written that way.
I'm not sure what scenes and adventures didn't go towards plot and or characterization, though. I guess I had fun with everything so maybe I just didn't mind or notice when they happened.
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...aren't there enough "I hate Harry Potter / J. K. Rowling because..." threads around already?
No, there's enough Harry Potter / J.K. Rowling threads, period.
As far as the price of magic goes, I was just pointing out that in non-magical settings, magic is more demanding to the user. Either it requires some sacrifice in order to work, or it affects more than one person or place, or it alters the user when used too long.
In Harry Potter, the price has a real-world focus. In the real world, everything we do exacts a price. If we want to build a car, we have to have the knowledge and the resources to make and operate it, as well as time and physical labor. And in the HP world, they have to do the exact same thing. If they want to make a potion, they need the knowledge, resources, time, and labor. It's a mundane price, but then, the magic is just the setting, not the story.
My point was that in a magical setting, it may be possible to let the price of not using magic be a bit heavier, like using magic in the real world often demands more of its user.
I'm probably overthinking this, though. I'm in the camp where Harry Potter is just a fun series to kill time with, after all.
The entire reason that we say that magic should have costs and rules is by comparison to the non-magical world we know. The appeal of magic is our naive belief that it might be free of those constraints. But if you try to write a story where magic is free of those constraints, you inevitably end up with a linear plot or one that is utterly incomprehensible.
Whether or not the universe as a whole is really orderly or we merely impose that paradigm on our experience, we can't tell interesting stories in which things happen arbitrarily. So though our longing for magic is based on our desire to "get something for nothing", the magic in our stories has to be of the "no free lunch" variety.
I put down both Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix after a couple hundred pages. The first because I lost interest and the second was too whiney. It is apparent to me that liking Harry must require having read earlier books. And yes, I've already had the discussion with people about depicting teens realistically. Well, I hope he and Voldemort are able to put each other out of their mutual misery.
As near as I interpret that, it means that magic and everything else still works. The laws of physics and chemistry and biology (presumably as affected by magic) still work. You could build a steam engine [and railroads are present in the series] and it would work as a steam engine would work. Presumably its action could be affected by magic as it could by anything else, say, by casting a spell to prevent the boiler fires from lighting.
I think there's some confusion between magic on the one hand, and miracles on the other hand. A miracle would have no constraint...magic would need rules and need to be codified.
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited August 21, 2006).]
Sometimes I like to write in the morning and sometimes I like to write before bed.
I, unfortunately, am one of those writers who usually- but not always-hates movie adaptations of books. I'm a pretty detail-oriented person, and in film there just isn't enough time to outline everything that I think makes the book as great as it is. I'm also not fond of the liberties that directors and screenwriters take with a writer's "baby," if you will. Anyone who has seen the LotR movies and read the books will see various and sometimes blatant changes between the two. I enjoyed the movies, but I will admit that I had a hard time sitting through "Two Towers" without cringing a little. Arwen's storyline made me mad, too; she was NOT that important in the books for a reason. Grr.
As for the 4+4 idea, I try to do both reading and writing at once. (Yay for multitasking skills!) I will work on my story for a while, and then when I get stuck on a scene I'll pick up a book and start reading until I have my creative "oomph" back. Then I'll switch back and forth between reading and writing until it's time for me to put it aside and do the things I should have been doing hours before. Like homework. Or yardwork. Or sleeping, which is something I don't do a lot of.
I sort of tend to do it that way anyway because if, like Christine, I get started reading anything really good, I don't want to put it down. It's better for me to do my writing first.
Also, writing first helps me feel that what I'm writing hasn't been influenced by something I read just before I started writing.
We could call the story "Survivor Behind Bars, and the dark days that brought him there"
Or I could shut up, yes, I suppose I could do that.