h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is interesting.

Because, yes, when you're writing, you have to be true to your own vision of the world - your moral values and your sense of that line between the credible and the incredible. There's an argument for staying firm even if people are saying to you 'We want a happy ending," when you've planned tragedy.

And, of course, you write alone, even if you subject your writing to peer reveiw. So, in that act of writing, you're drawing on you own memories and preferences - and prejudices.

But when you write fiction, you're writing about people, so you need to understand people, which means you've got to go out and meet them. You can imagine a bad writer saying "There's nothing wrong with my writing, it's these pesky characters that let me down."

So writers take their tinfoil hats and venture out into the world, process those perceptions through their own understanding and come up with something which, hopefully, is both uniquely theirs and understandable to others. Quite a juggling act.

Amen.

A very delightful essay DG!

Even with big words like hypnagogic and contentious advice
like not watching Steven Colbert at every opportunity.



Some well written insights with a casual air of sincerity.

~jwf~

Thanks, jwf!