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Hope everybody had a good Thanksgiving who was having one. My brother, sister-in-law and I went to the Botanical Gardens on Friday to see their train expedition. They have all these buildings from the New York area made out of trees, twigs etc. with trains running through them. Of course Friday was the worst day to go--we had to wait for far over an hour to get in, but all the kids waiting were pretty patient.
I read something yesterday that for some reason I keep thinking about--I guess it's like getting a particularly memorable fortune cookie. And it kind of leads to a "Thankful for Fandom" idea. You wouldn't expect to get that in anything related to
For years Slacktavist has been reading Left Behind, pointing out all the bad writing, bad characterization, bad morals and bad theology therein. He's only done the first book so far, and before going on to the second he's paused to do the movie.
For this third section he concentrates on a rather big elephant in the room--or in the movi--Kirk Cameron's horrible acting. In looking back at Kirk's career, the writer mentions a quote from Cameron from a 2003 article in Christianity Today that drives him crazy:
What drives him crazy is not just the fact that Kirk Cameron seems to still believe that "the top of the ladder" in acting means being on the cover of Tiger Beat (surely he can't mean being the poor man's Michael J. Fox on a poor man's version of Family Ties, right?) but that at the point Cameron was feeling this way Leonardo DiCaprio had just joined the cast. Iow, Cameron was working with another kid who was far better than he was at his craft and he didn't seem to see that as something to work towards. In fact, according to Slacktavist, this would not only have been the smart thing to do but the virtuous thing--the virtue being craft. He says:
This is the quote I kept thinking about, I guess because it comes up so much in fandom. You're surrounded by writers, and some of them are just damned good. You can put together a flist, for instance, that includes many writers who are good at different things or who have very different styles. And they're probably going to write different types of stories too, in various fandoms or genres, which can make it easier to look at what it is they're doing well across all of them. You can also look back at their earlier stuff and see how exactly they got better. (Not that it's that easy, of course, to pinpoint something like that, but it's there.)
In fact, even having bad writing around can be helpful--or if not bad, just writing you don't like. You can compare it to the stuff you do like, figure out what things you don't like about it. Obvious point here is obvious, I know, but I figured it was a good time of year to be thankful for it. We always go through cycles where people talk about criticism and whether it's mean to give it or whether you're supposed to give it and most people have their personal preferences that make sense for them, but it's good to remember that even without people giving criticism on fics the people who want to learn do by example.
I read something yesterday that for some reason I keep thinking about--I guess it's like getting a particularly memorable fortune cookie. And it kind of leads to a "Thankful for Fandom" idea. You wouldn't expect to get that in anything related to
For years Slacktavist has been reading Left Behind, pointing out all the bad writing, bad characterization, bad morals and bad theology therein. He's only done the first book so far, and before going on to the second he's paused to do the movie.
For this third section he concentrates on a rather big elephant in the room--or in the movi--Kirk Cameron's horrible acting. In looking back at Kirk's career, the writer mentions a quote from Cameron from a 2003 article in Christianity Today that drives him crazy:
"There was this aching, empty feeling that left me very disillusioned with the business I was working in," he says. "What else was there? What else did I have to shoot for? I'd basically reached the top of the ladder, and I was 18."
What drives him crazy is not just the fact that Kirk Cameron seems to still believe that "the top of the ladder" in acting means being on the cover of Tiger Beat (surely he can't mean being the poor man's Michael J. Fox on a poor man's version of Family Ties, right?) but that at the point Cameron was feeling this way Leonardo DiCaprio had just joined the cast. Iow, Cameron was working with another kid who was far better than he was at his craft and he didn't seem to see that as something to work towards. In fact, according to Slacktavist, this would not only have been the smart thing to do but the virtuous thing--the virtue being craft. He says:
"At some point, each of us has been in such a situation. Each of us has been engaged in some pursuit when we encountered someone demonstrably and immensely better than us at whatever that pursuit might be. When that happens we really have only two choices: We can give up and find some other activity to pursue, or we can shut up, take notes and learn as much as we can."
This is the quote I kept thinking about, I guess because it comes up so much in fandom. You're surrounded by writers, and some of them are just damned good. You can put together a flist, for instance, that includes many writers who are good at different things or who have very different styles. And they're probably going to write different types of stories too, in various fandoms or genres, which can make it easier to look at what it is they're doing well across all of them. You can also look back at their earlier stuff and see how exactly they got better. (Not that it's that easy, of course, to pinpoint something like that, but it's there.)
In fact, even having bad writing around can be helpful--or if not bad, just writing you don't like. You can compare it to the stuff you do like, figure out what things you don't like about it. Obvious point here is obvious, I know, but I figured it was a good time of year to be thankful for it. We always go through cycles where people talk about criticism and whether it's mean to give it or whether you're supposed to give it and most people have their personal preferences that make sense for them, but it's good to remember that even without people giving criticism on fics the people who want to learn do by example.
