[Kalimac]

Certainly they have the right to say it. And we have the right to tear their arguments apart as well. Fair enough? [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]?

I write a lot of stories, and of course I'm nowhere near Tolkien's caliber; for one thing, he was a genius, for another thing, he'd been writing a LOT longer than I have. Practice, my friends, practice. No matter how much innate talent you have, it'll come to nothing if you don't worked incredibly hard at it. So yes, I'd be a bit sensitive about being directly compared to Tolkien - it's a little like if some critic went to see a slapstick comedy and said that it was no good because it was no Citizen Kane. We're talking about entirely different levels of enjoyment.

I'd like to see the article where the authors are quoted, but I'm betting that they don't speak for the majority - it does sound like the kind of thing that some young writer over-gifted with ego just might say out of resentment and thoughtlessness - maybe a sense of entitlement as well; "Hey, I'm alive. I've got more right to be a bestseller than he does. What good does it do him now, anyway?" The thing writers have to realize is that writing is not an industry in which everyone gets a turn in order to be fair. If someone manages to be a bestseller for forty years, chances are he's doing something right that you aren't. So don't waste time whining about it - you're not going to make people like your books more by issuing some sort of fiat that we have to buy a quota of books written by living writers. You'll make people like your books by writing them well. So work at that as hard as Tolkien did. Writer, go thou and do likewise.

Sorry if I sound a bit lecturing; this isn't directed at anyone here, obviously - just at any writers who were crass enough to say such things in a magazine.

[ March 23, 2002: Message edited by: Kalimac ]