2/ John Barnes looked at the third draft of my novel and told me "You can probably sell it to Baen" ouch
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3/ Now, that's prima donna BS on my part. Howeverpic.twitter.com/bu95PLjG86
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4/ It's entirely reasonable for working men to deliver decent quality product to earn money to pay the rent. More power to them. But I am not writing for my audience. I am writing a very specific thing that I want to exist for my own reasons, with my own name on the cover.
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5/ When I deliver a thing, it will find an audience. That audience may be zero people, or it may be 200 million. (So far, it's at the "rounds to zero" end of that continuum). But that's OK.
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6/ It would be wonderful if readers enjoy my novels, but I am not writing for the readers. I am writing for arete. Moldbug, as usual, is right.
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ⓘ Dogs don't have thumbs Retweeted Eddie, Son of Richard
7/ yep, I thought of this earlier and decided not to include it in the thread bc "no one will question me on THAT" (sigh) yes, art has to imagine / posit / create a standard of merit, which is more or less synonymous with an audience >>>https://twitter.com/random_eddie/status/1187479777902551051 …
ⓘ Dogs don't have thumbs added,
Eddie, Son of Richard @random_eddieReplying to @random_eddie @MorlockPOne can imagine a performing artist who doesn't care whether anyone shows up - let alone enjoys the work - but even so the performance is FOR a hypothetical audience, even if that audience never actually exists. ... but that's sidewise to your point, which of course is correct.1 reply 0 retweets 5 likesShow this thread -
8/ So I tended to think along lines of "well, if Heinlein, Niven, Stephenson, and a variant of me who hadn't written this novel were to read this novel and discuss it, what would they call out as delightful? and what as disappointing?" goal: maximize former, eliminate latter
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Replying to @MorlockP
I balance that against "I'm never going to learn to write a great novel if I don't keep cranking out books, and if people will pay me for them, all the better..."
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Replying to @robkroese
entirely reasonable ! I think my approach to a first novel was kind of objectively stupid
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> stupid well, except for that, yes. :P
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Replying to @MorlockP
My approach was also stupid, but that book sold 60k copies so...
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