Who is your favourite scientist character?

[henrygee]

Jodie Foster can do no wrong, and was the only good thing about the film, which was otherwise a complete disaster. You really do need to forget the film and read the book.

[The Prof]

I think we can all agree that one must write to please the audience if one wants to earn a living at writing.

Meanwhile, isn't it a bit sad to churn out fiction that only you like, even if it is fine and pleasing, that no-one else will ever read?

I guess I'm a bit old-fashioned, but I don't feel that a novel is really real until it is read and loved by others.

[Mad Dan Eccles]

I think we can all agree that one must write to please the audience if one wants to earn a living at writing.

yes

Meanwhile, isn't it a bit sad to churn out fiction that only you like, even if it is fine and pleasing, that no-one else will ever read?

I guess I'm a bit old-fashioned, but I don't feel that a novel is really real until it is read and loved by others.

Um. I think that you have to write to please yourself first. Otherwise it's soul-destroying. But if you do write like that, with passion, then others will love it even if not many people buy it. IYSWIM.

[The Prof]

Obviously! The point is it doesn't have to be one or the other. Write to please yourself in a way that will also please others. Yes, it's damned hard. But if it were easy, we'd all be great novelists.

[The Prof]

Mind you, I'm not saying I could do it myself. But really good authors can and do.

[amy c.]

Meanwhile, isn't it a bit sad to churn out fiction that only you like, even if it is fine and pleasing, that no-one else will ever read?

See, I don't know, Prof. Almost every writer I know would agree with you. It just doesn't bother me. All I'm really interested in is hitting the mark. And now that this sketchy science book is done I can get back to it, for a while.

Also I guess I assume most people don't want to read my stuff, or any fiction. There's so much of it out there clamoring -- I hardly go into bookstores anymore unless there's something in particular I want (it doesn't help that people have forgotten how to be quiet in bookstores). You don't know where to start. Too many books, too many voices, most of them talking about the surface of everyday life, all radio-ready. Maybe that's why I like the aggressively quiet and plodding ones like Coetzee.

amy

[Freddie]

Aggressively quiet and plodding ones like Coetzee.

Spot on! But that's exactly why I loathe him.

Bookshop overstimulation...I know the feeling well. I can browse for 45 minutes and still emerge empty-handed.

[edman]

I would like to be the one who writes for own pleasure and yet appeases others. Sure everybody would like to do that and is very hard to achieve.

Abovementioned is a given, for almost everybody. So, the discussion really is about choosing from the following options.

a. don't write.
b. write for yourself.
c. write for others.

If I have to choose from these later options, I would chose c, get rich, go to bahamas in non-typhoon seasons, then adopt option a- if sexy blondes are around and b -blondes are around.

edman

[Dr Mike]

Welcome edman!

Are you a writer or a reader? If the former, what sort of stuff are you working on at the moment? Does science play a role?

[edman]

Thanks, Mike.

Neither. Science doesn't let me do any of those

Well, seriously, none of these in a serious manner.

[Daughter of Darwin]

Hi Edman.
If you had the time, what sort of literature would you read? Do you like reading about science/scientists, or do you prefer escapism?

[edman]

Hi Dau,

Here is a partial list of a few books I have read (two months) that I can remember:

The Google Story
Harry Potter and the order of Phoenix
On Wings of Eagles
The Walmart effect
Doing Good
A man in full
The God delusion

It is all over the place in terms of genre and era. Nothing profound. Whatever is closer to my hands when I have time to read. Yeh, I don't have any particular preference for science. I love good SF, but so do I love anything well-written (except for poetry). Looking at how much I like to read about issues and reality, I find it amazing that I snore while reading a well-written treatise about global economy or warming. Well, it takes time to read non-fiction, but I do a lot of it.

When it comes to writing, being a scientist, my writings can have a scientist's insight and knowledge; Science can lurk everywhere but not necessarily be a central issue. I haven't written anything big yet for sending it out there.

[henrygee]

The discussion about for whom one writes is somewhat academic, as these days even previously published writers with a good track record can no longer get their books published. Over the past couple of days I've been corresponding with a seasoned British SF writer who tells me that he has two novels that he can't get published, and is trying not to have to resort to PoD. Now, if this author, who has written at least four veritable classics, cannot get published, what hope for the rest of us? I think all we can do is write to please ourselves and any of our friends who care, and perhaps hope that our fiction might one day be published, in the way that we hope one day to win the lottery. REally, to have a book published these days you have to fulfil at least two of the following criteria
(a) famous for something else besides authorship (presenting a TV show, appearing on reality TV, sports, pop music, politics ... so long as it isn't anything worthwhile);
(b) under 25;
(c) good looking.
And the rest of us can go hang.

[Octavia]

How depressing; even more so because I suspect you are right.

Although there are plenty of non-celeb non-attractive authors out there. Lionel Shriver springs to mine. In your analogy, was she the 'lottery winner?'

I do confess my blood boils when I see that Katie Price (a.k.a. Jordan) is about to release her second novel.

Henry, maybe you need to go on Big Brother!

[edman]

I have never used PoD for reading anything. I wonder if it is really any successful medium at all, and to have to resort to that at all is depressing.

While the odds of getting published are getting less favorable, with increasingly literate population, one would hope that situation is not completely hopeless.

When you write for others, you need to have some of the qualities that henry has mentioned. If you don't have those, may be you can go all in and make yourself famous. And when the only easy way to become famous is to be infamous, write something controversial or really nasty, and you are on radar!

Not a novel idea! I am sure many beginners have already resorted to this and it has worked in many cases.. so much for the state of art.