All that water under the bridge
1) Chances are that most people reading this will have been around during this time and thus would be less surprised by fairestcat's post about the OTW and WisCon. But it's still a bit eye opening to think about how much has happened in 10 years.
2) An article about multiauthored works raised some points about writing that one rarely sees. (Use this link if you're blocked by a paywall).
"The Alices worried, initially, that readers wouldn’t know what to make of a “weird five- headed” author, or would think that they were “gimmicky.” They wondered, too, if the fun they had might dampen the reception of a group-written work. “With a novel, people seem to want proof you suffered while writing it,” they said. But everyone they met was intrigued by their group-creation story. Book tours for all three groups were a riot. Even turning up for readings in empty regional libraries wasn’t soul-destroying, because they weren’t there alone."
I found the statement about author suffering curious. Is that true? Do you know of people who expect that?
"They insist that the general inability to see the possibilities of novelistic collaboration has everything to do with ideology. “It is all about capitalism, all about expectations you have in the marketplace of ideas, of books, of the publishing industry,” they said, “not about the novel being intrinsically more difficult to write together.” "
I imagine that it is actually more difficult depending on one's personality and writing style, as well as time limitations. But then writing alone has its downsides too.
3) An informative read about how the news media abandoned the working class decades ago in pursuit of high income readers.
"Today, the upscale news audience is the normal objective of news organizations’ marketing efforts. Nearly every mainstream news organization’s media kit claims they have an above-average audience of high-income, highly-educated consumers and influencers.
As the labor beat was left to wither, newspapers pursued more upscale readers with workplace “lifestyle” columns featuring the lives of young professionals and their concerns about office gossip, job interview strategy, expense accounts, and office party etiquette…Data on readership from 1967 to 1997 from the Newspaper Association of America reveal a sharp decline of the “downscale” readers the industry rejected."
4) Not much to say about Derry Girls whose 2 seasons' worth is still only 6 hours. But it was a fun watch and I'd recommend it. We also watched "The Kid Who Would Be King" which was less than inspiring. The extras discussed how the director had been plotting some version of it since he was a teenager after having seen Boorman's "Excalibur" film and "E.T." I'm afraid this is no E.T., though whether or not anyone could do that these days is also questionable since there's been a lot done since those times. The kids were good actors, as was the actor playing young Merlin, but I didn't find it very engaging. It was just all too pat. The final battle was rather fun but that was about it.
5) I came across this post in my Google Alerts – what on earth are "Tumblr books" and why is Yahoo excerpting posts on Tumblr to include them in Yahoo News?
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2) An article about multiauthored works raised some points about writing that one rarely sees. (Use this link if you're blocked by a paywall).
"The Alices worried, initially, that readers wouldn’t know what to make of a “weird five- headed” author, or would think that they were “gimmicky.” They wondered, too, if the fun they had might dampen the reception of a group-written work. “With a novel, people seem to want proof you suffered while writing it,” they said. But everyone they met was intrigued by their group-creation story. Book tours for all three groups were a riot. Even turning up for readings in empty regional libraries wasn’t soul-destroying, because they weren’t there alone."
I found the statement about author suffering curious. Is that true? Do you know of people who expect that?
"They insist that the general inability to see the possibilities of novelistic collaboration has everything to do with ideology. “It is all about capitalism, all about expectations you have in the marketplace of ideas, of books, of the publishing industry,” they said, “not about the novel being intrinsically more difficult to write together.” "
I imagine that it is actually more difficult depending on one's personality and writing style, as well as time limitations. But then writing alone has its downsides too.
3) An informative read about how the news media abandoned the working class decades ago in pursuit of high income readers.
"Today, the upscale news audience is the normal objective of news organizations’ marketing efforts. Nearly every mainstream news organization’s media kit claims they have an above-average audience of high-income, highly-educated consumers and influencers.
As the labor beat was left to wither, newspapers pursued more upscale readers with workplace “lifestyle” columns featuring the lives of young professionals and their concerns about office gossip, job interview strategy, expense accounts, and office party etiquette…Data on readership from 1967 to 1997 from the Newspaper Association of America reveal a sharp decline of the “downscale” readers the industry rejected."
4) Not much to say about Derry Girls whose 2 seasons' worth is still only 6 hours. But it was a fun watch and I'd recommend it. We also watched "The Kid Who Would Be King" which was less than inspiring. The extras discussed how the director had been plotting some version of it since he was a teenager after having seen Boorman's "Excalibur" film and "E.T." I'm afraid this is no E.T., though whether or not anyone could do that these days is also questionable since there's been a lot done since those times. The kids were good actors, as was the actor playing young Merlin, but I didn't find it very engaging. It was just all too pat. The final battle was rather fun but that was about it.
5) I came across this post in my Google Alerts – what on earth are "Tumblr books" and why is Yahoo excerpting posts on Tumblr to include them in Yahoo News?
Comments at Dreamwidth