tlgabelman wrote:Said very well and no you are not a jerk! I think we often get our hopes up based on all the promise what the writer presented. That feeling of being let down though is rough and to experience something great we must keep going and enduring the 'un-creative' to get to the really good stuff. Its all about perspective. A lot of times I read something and think "crap!" and have a discussion with a friend and they loved it...of course I have little respect for their literary opinions after that but I digress. Now that I think about it, im pretty sure that what drove me to seek out this forum.Himmelslicht wrote:Excellent development. A good extension of the opinion I also share.tlgabelman wrote:I think all of you make excellent points!
I hypothesize that perhaps what happens a lot is that details stored in our subconscious from our personal experiences make their way into our conscious. We never really know what impacts us through our life, every experience shapes us and nuggets of our history are constantly being stored in our mind for later retrieval. Our challenge is to take these pieces and shape them into the original, its a labor of love.
I think that every great work that can be considered a breathrough comes from a very tiny flame or spark. A diamond in the rough.
What we create is a gathering of our past experiences as human beings traveling through time in this planet, therefore, all we create can only have base on what we lived before reaching an outcome we consider ourselves satisfied with.
I see originality as a road that, to discover new and great things, you need to travel further a little everyday. I think that's what's wrong with many writers (not only writers, but since this is a book forum) is exactly that: they walk exactly the same distance everyone has walked before them. It's bland, it's boring and I'd thank said people to stop writing altogether because it gets really hard to find GREAT books nowadays.
From the starting idea, that, probably 99,9% of time is nothing original, you can achieve something that hasn't been done, but this does not require creativity. Creativity is the distance you travel from having an emtpy mind to having that first flame or spark. Perspiration and hard work is what you need to develop the rest of your idea to create something original. And that's terribly difficult because that will requite an author to walk a path that hasn't been explored yet.
Do something great, or else don't waste your time or other people's time that is simply non-refundable.
I'm a jerk.
It's not about getting hopes up. Unfortunately I, as a former art student and photographer, I'm used to seeing a lot of art and works everyday and to go through all of this, you very rarely find something worth spending your money or time with. It's a terrible thing because these people who spend their time doing something that's been done time and time again, are people lacking experience that only write because they think it's pretty and are, probably, in for the money. If I spend my hard-earned money (and I'm talking about EVERY art/work consumer in this world) is to get in return something WORTH consuming. I feel offended everytime I buy a book that really lets me down: I wasted money, I wasted time. Wasting time is what makes me the saddest.
You can't rewind in time. You can't get it back. You probably spent some hours of your life when you could be reading a better book.
That's why I'm offended at these people that see writing as a shallow and careless hobby: it's NOT a hobby. It's something MANY people take seriously. If you do something, do it with passion, commitment and hard work, or do nothing at all.
I'm thankful for those people who sell their book for free after they see it's not worth the money and are aware of its quality as a work of "art".
Do I sound like a jerk now?
