What would you rather be? A nobel/pulitzer prize winning influential literary figurehead, or a NYT bestseller? In other words, would you rather be Salman Rushdie or Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or Stephen King of John Grisham? I would personally like to be taken as a serious literary figure, even though I might end up earning peanuts and bestsellers earn by the bucketloads.
I'm with you. Fame and fortune are not despicable, but respect is a coin whose value always appreciates.
I want to be both. Respected and wealthy. But I'll take wealthy. You can buy respectful worship of people.
"Respecftul worship" is an oxymoron, and putting it into the context of buying makes it totally ridiculous. For one, respect is different from worship. Respect is holding something in special regard because you know they are good at something and that they do good, honest things. Worship is devoting your life to something because you're scared out of your mind that if you don't, something bad will happen. And to buy either respect or worship, in true form, is impossible. You can buy "friends", but not friends.
It seems to work for Al Gore. All joking aside now. I would still go for the money. It can be put into worthy projects that will get you respect. Like hospitals, charities, and things like that. And I'd rather have my work enjoyed by the masses, then respected by a few elites.
Actually now that I think about it, I would have money than respect, atleast for now. If I have money, then I can work on my movies without cutting down on budgets waaayy too much or begging (literally, you have to do that) people to finance my films. Money can't hurt my musical pursuits either... So I think I could use the money more than the respect, even though I would want to later earn that respect too...
I think I write interesting stories, but SF and Fantasy novels are generally not the "stuff" that earns Nobel prize nominations. Thus, I would like my novels to reach the widest audience possible...more readers to share my stories with. While that may mean big bucks in royalties, that's not my goal...but would be a nice side-effect. Terry
I would go for the money. In 50 years nobody is going to remember or respect me anyways. So I may as well enjoy the time with lots and lots of money and good ol fashioned writing.
Come on...its in fact the other way round. Don't we all respect and remember the great writers? I mean, we still talk of TS Eliot or Hemingway or Hardy in respectful tones...
I'm not sure I would vote for respect or money. I would just like to write something that helps others. Weather that be a sci-fi novel that has its lead character changing his life for the better or a self-help book telling how to beat addiction. Although if anyone wants to throw money my way....
Would we not all wish for success and respect? Though I couldn't cope with success and no respect, so out of the two I would aim for an aesthetic sense of respect.
To be honest, I would just like to be myself. It might be great to have literary recognition today but I reckon that half of the books that are studied in English classes today and are hailed as great classics were viewed like we would view works of John Grisham and Stephen King ( Charles Dickens comes to mind).
m m m money. Sure I think many great writers are remembered, but guaranteed we only remember like a 1/4 of them. So I will stick with money
