They must think so. I can't count the number of times when, after identifying myself as a writer, I get, "Oh, yeah. I'm going to write a book when I get a little spare time." I'm thinking that surgeons don't get that so much.
BTW, @Wreybies, several years ago, I gave a talk to a large number of parents of pre-schoolers, many of whom were Spanish-speaking. So, there was an interpreter. I was amazed at how she immediately spoke in Spanish what I was saying in English, and I had a hard enough time just trying to pace my talk to allow her to translate. But she never faltered, never got annoyed at me, never even signaled me to slow down. So, I for one have huge admiration for those of you who do this work.
I hear you about the language thing! I don't know any other languages. At all. Not one bit so when I wanted to use a foreign language I went to google translate and then went to an actual foreign person for clarification/verification. What a difference a real life person makes! The ability you have to speak other languages is a gift but one you have earned through diligence and hard work. As an interpreter, it must be so much more difficult to understand and apply the grammatical rules for that particular language than it would be if you were simply in that country and asking directions to the nearest coffee house. Sir, I doth my hat to thee!
True, but OTOH writers don't get asked to discuss surgical procedures at cocktail parties. (Overhearing that really kills my interest in the hors d'oevres)
OTOH??? No, but I bet doctors at cocktail parties get fed up of other guests removing an item of clothing and saying "Oh, Doc, while you're here can you just take a look at this for me ...?"
Some of my own family feels that way so I assume they represent a decent portion of society. Some people just can't see past the surface of a product. I made jewelry and leatherworks for a few years and sold on etsy and had booths at craft fairs...you'd be surprised how many people think a bracelet is just stringing some beads together or that making a guitar strap is a five or ten minute project. No thought goes into the cost of materials at all let alone the creativity and time put into crafting each piece. Like @Wreybies said, a lack of understanding plays a big role...and I think we're all guilty at some point. When I started running last year I thought I'd be able to go that first mile nonstop easy and work my way up fast. Yeah...I about passed about at the quarter mile mark. It looked so easy on tv and when my friends did it and even though I knew I wasn't in the shape of a "good" runner, I totally overestimated my own abilities and underestimated how challenging it would be. Sometimes I think it takes trying _____ to gain an appreciation for it, the work that goes into it, and those who do it.
Your topic reminded me of this... I think far too many people believe the hard part is coming up with an idea, and that the rest is just "getting it down on paper." If only that were the case...
I think it's rather apparent that there are many who don't know how much learning and expertise it takes to create a first draft that isn't complete rubbish. They just assume a writer sits down, writes, and fixes typos at the end before clicking a big shiny submit button. Only the most experienced and oldest authors get away with that like Stephen King. A side note about artisinal works, it is hard for us who make handmade objects. I make chainmaille jewelry on the side now and then as I find it funand relaxing, I never sell a bracelet under $25 but I've had people look at me funny when I felt I was underselling my product and was selling it for cheap cause I am nice. People are so used to factory made or child labor made items that they can only compare to the prices they get at big box stores or other cheap places that can sell for little to no cost. I work at a candy shop at the moment, I have so many people not realizing that candy isn't 5 cents anymore and that I, as a small business, might have to charge a bit extra for chocoilate bars and hard to find candies that are sold to me at a higher cost than others. It's rather offensive anfd annoying when people walk away saying it's too expentive or we're overpriced when they're thinking of just going to Wal-Mart or the Dollar Store. Ugh.. and when they ask for a free piece... I tell them to go into the jewelkry store next to me and ask for a free diamon bracelet and if they get it for free I'll give them the whole tub for free. Unless I feel they deserve a free piece of candy or they wanna taste before they buy, I generally tell them no. But yeah.. back on point.. I understand why people became Ludites back in the day of the first industrilization. @xanadu Lol, I love those little movies. Never saw that one, though. But yeah, this is a conversation I have had many times with new wanna-be writers who send me their first drafts and get all excited about how it'll be an epic trilogy and as I struggle through the first oage, I ask: "How long have you been writing for?" and they reply with either never or my whole life and either or makes me cringe as they write as well as a pre-schooler. Too many of them are focused on novels too. I think they should stick with smaller works they can learn the basics with before wasting their time writing five hundred pages of rubbish.
It think it varies greatly, but the only extreme cases I've encountered are people who don't understand how writers do it, why they want to, or why anyone wants to read their stuff (it may manifest itself in any combination). A lot of people (who aren't writers), from my experience, would be able to sit down and write fantastic stuff and also have a very realistic view of how difficult and time-consuming that would be and how much effort they'd have to put in and how likely they would be to achieve success, but they don't because they don't want to, their life never headed in that direction or just because it isn't feasible for eighty percent of the world's population to be writers. That's possibly the largest group of people. I stereotype them as the ones who keep society running (intelligent, normal adults working as teachers, doctors, lawyers, builders, waiters or office workers and such, rather than being homeless, unemployed, criminals or extremists). And there are also the ones that just don't have it in them to be writers (aren't good with words, aren't creative, aren't patient or can't focus etc.), who are similar to those in the previous group in that they are rational people who know and appreciate what writers do, they just can't do it themselves and wouldn't ever want to, but understand that people are different and that some people should be writers because that's what suits them. But there's also those I mentioned even before that, the ones who are stupid, ignorant or just so diametrically different in terms of tastes and interests from the typical writer that they don't understand any of it, and often get angry at the whole concept of books. This group overlaps with the kind of people who never open a book if they don't have to (they're just not interested). Some of them spend their free time travelling, excercising or just staring blankly at their living room wall, while others make sure they watch the film version of all the popular books at the time and prefers to do it that way, and some just don't have the time or can't read or something similar. We're all different, and that's great, but what we need to watch out for is ignorance and hatred. Almost every profession is at its best when people know what is constitutes and why it matters. This also applies to authors, and we should try to teach people that writing isn't just sitting down, thinking of the first best idea, jotting it down, calling a publisher and Bob's your uncle, it's much more complex than that; and we should also try to make them understand that just because they don't read or enjoy our stuff, someone does (hopefully), and that justifies our existence, and, after all, writers wouldn't exist if noone bought literature, so obviously we fulfill a role in this capitalist, free market, democratic system we live and work (with)in (well most of us do, at least of us here on these forums).
This discussion makes me feel kind of bad for bashing writers like Dan Brown, Stephenie Meyer, and E. L. James. They all did what I couldn't do: finish a novel.
Go finish your novel! I have to admit, I did envy writers before I finished mine, I still envy them but not as much!
I'm not working on a novel right now because I don't have any ideas worth turning into a novel and I don't really have the time. I prefer short stories instead. Some day, though, I will finish a novel!
You mean short story collection, right? An anthology is a collection of stories written by different writers.
I have to admit that I really don't know my native language Finland, meaning I don't understand how it works. I still have a high Finnish grade. And I'am in High School! I blame the system that is all about speeches. You don't really have to write very well. And when you write you write your feelings about books subject like death, so you don't even have to read the book. Finland might high test scores but we don't really know our own language. To really be intelligent you have to understand some language deeply. Back to the original subject, I think most look all kinds of artist that aren't "popular culture" as parasites who live of tax payers. Because in Finland some artists get quite big checks from the government. In a nutshell if you don't follow Football you don't understand why people see ballers as role models, if you don't read books you don't understand why author is more than loafer.
I do - my mistake - just shows how frazzled my brain is right now! (I wrote myself into a brick wall)
This question reminds me of my old math textbooks. It's easy to look at a proof of a theorem and think, well that's the easiest thing in the world. There it is, laid out for you logical step by logical step, right up to the inevitable conclusion, the big QED. The books do not explain the struggles the mathematician went through to get to that proof. There's no documentation of the wrong turns; the weeks, months, or even years of banging his head against the wall; the despair, feelings of inadequacy, bad health, maybe too much alcohol, etc. that went into solving that problem. If I remember correctly, Kepler was the only famous scientist who let the cat out of the bag: he documented all the wrong turns, the years spent on wild-goose chases, and so on that eventually led to his laws of planetary motion. The laws themselves are simple and can easily be stated, and even explained, in a half a page. But it took a genius years to come up with them. Writing fiction is kind of like that. We only see the final result, never the effort that went into creating it. Of course it looks easy - we don't see the struggle! We only see the triumph. If all we ever see is the triumph, we take triumph for granted.
I'm looking for it now, though I don't think I'll be successful, but a while back I read an article lamenting the dynamic loss of the rough draft as part of the written tradition. Where we have the early scribblings and versions for some works of importance for some writers, the digitalization of the writing process has pretty much eliminated this small, sometimes collectable, facet of written history.
One reason I love the series of interviews the Paris Review does with writers is that they publish sample pages of the writer's manuscripts. In the old days, these would usually contain the strikeouts, margin notes, rewrites, scribbles, etc., but these days they usually look like clean copy, because everyone's writing on a word processor. I often write by hand just to keep in touch with that tradition, and to be able to see later what I went through.
I must have been going to quote cutecat22 earlier, ended up not posting the post for the myriad reasons that happens, and when I quoted you, her quote was still saved in the respond box. I must not have noticed and when I abbreviated your post to quote just the part I was making reference, I cleared up to her opening quote tag. It's not the first time it happens to me. (how did I ever get along without that whistle smiley??)
