On something of a tangent from this... I took in Sturgeon's Law (as a wee writer) as "90% of what you (the unschooled writer) turn out is crap. If you're serious about writing, you'll find the 10% and polish it, then do it again."
Maybe it fits what what Sturgeon ultimately meant, though applied to the individual. The crap is inherited, the rest is what the writer brings from that unique place where they intersect with life. It's inherent. The skill is in grasping that 10% buried in what you churn out and expanding on it.
As for the larger version--I've had to come to terms with the fact that a lot of people are happy buying "crap". That it's been done before or that it's obvious to me is irrelevant, because what they are seeking is familiarity and reiteration of what they hold true, and they don't spend time pondering and digging like I do, so the obvious is revelatory. Writing romance (if you want to pick a genre more derided than SFF) has been an education for me, in that regard. I'm not sorry that's where I ended up when I fled academia and lit fic.
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Date: 2010-11-04 03:58 pm (UTC)Maybe it fits what what Sturgeon ultimately meant, though applied to the individual. The crap is inherited, the rest is what the writer brings from that unique place where they intersect with life. It's inherent. The skill is in grasping that 10% buried in what you churn out and expanding on it.
As for the larger version--I've had to come to terms with the fact that a lot of people are happy buying "crap". That it's been done before or that it's obvious to me is irrelevant, because what they are seeking is familiarity and reiteration of what they hold true, and they don't spend time pondering and digging like I do, so the obvious is revelatory. Writing romance (if you want to pick a genre more derided than SFF) has been an education for me, in that regard. I'm not sorry that's where I ended up when I fled academia and lit fic.