From: mumble@nomail.invalid   
      
   On 06/16/2014 01:28 AM, David Friedman wrote:   
   > On 6/15/14, 12:10 AM, mumble wrote:   
   >> We all have our own views on the whole "career" gizmo, and mine has   
   >> certainly evolved; if I was a young person who wanted to write fiction,   
   >> I would study enough English to gain the necessary basics, then study   
   >> something absurdly pecunious and mercenary... accounting, business,   
   >> marketing, that sort of thing, with the objective of making a boatload   
   >> of money as quickly as possible, and I'd live in a slum and spend   
   >> nothing avoidable until I'd accumulated the necessary amount (much less   
   >> than most think, I suspect).  Then I'd retire and write fiction, or just   
   >> sit in the sun and slap mosquitoes or whatever.   
   >   
   > Long ago, I knew someone who had had that strategy. I think by the time   
   > I knew him he was on his second million, long enough ago so that was a   
   > good deal of money, and hadn't yet written the novel.   
      
   Some novels are written and can be published in book form, while others   
   are lived by their author; it isn't the form that is most important imo,   
   but its effect upon the world.   
      
   There are authors who simply make up stories and tell them, and some of   
   those stories have a point that is hidden from the author but affects   
   his readership.  Those are no less significant than the novels that are   
   carefully researched and designed toward a known effect.   
      
   Some of us research our first novel for our entire lives and, having   
   completed the research, learn that its writing is unnecessary, or that   
   its message is nothing we could ever have imagined in the beginning;   
   sometimes we find a way to present that message in novel form, and I   
   suspect that sometimes our lives end before we figure it out.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)