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Topics - Aen Elderberry

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Brandon Sanderson / Brandon mentioned in an obituary
« on: May 14, 2008, 06:31:43 PM »
I'm not sure if this is of interest here but I thought I'd post it just in case.  Seems Brandon's name comes up all over the place.

My wife's friends lost their son to a brain tumor last week.  Wonderful young man.  My wife reported that the funeral was inspiring.

From his obituary:

"He loved fantasy novels, especially those written by Terry Brooks and Brandon Sanderson. He would often read a book in one day, and talked about eventually becoming a writer himself."

(http://www.legacy.com/heraldextra/Obituaries.asp  Obituaries and Guest Books for 5/11/2008)

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Brandon Sanderson / Value of Fiction
« on: August 31, 2007, 06:17:10 PM »
http://brandonsanderson.com/blog.php?date=1188025200

I was one of the people told by the Israel-book-guy at Brandon's BYU Bookstore signing that  "Mine is the only book worth reading at this table."  I saw him using that line on another person -- as if tearing down others would convince people to buy his book.

I was surprised at his nerve.  Then I felt a little angry at his hubris.  I asked him how he knew.  Had he read any of the books?  "No, but I know about those kinds of books.  They are just Fluff.  A waste of time."

I wish I'd included Brandon's point in my response to him but I did come up with three points all by myself.

First we need recreation.  "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."  Even if the stories are only entertainment we  need entertainment.  We need to relax.  Unstring the bow lest it lose its spring.

Second, we learn from stories.  And some things are learned best from a story.  "Did you ever tell your children stories?  The three pigs?  The three bears?"  I don't think this was at all convincing to him.  I realize it just reinforces the stereotype that stories are for little children.  Adults are supposed to be interested in reality, right? 

(Two days later I'm listening to G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy -  ". . . ethic and philosophy come from being fed on fairy tales. . . . I could note many noble and healthy principles that arise from them. There is the chivalrous lesson of "Jack the Giant Killer"; that giants should be killed because they are gigantic. It is a manly mutiny against pride as such. For the rebel is older than all the kingdoms . . . There is the great lesson of "Beauty and the Beast"; that a thing must be loved before it is loveable."  Chapter 4, The Ethics of Elfland, http://www.leaderu.com/cyber/books/orthodoxy/ch4.html)

Third I believe that the fight between right and wrong goes on at many levels.  We need imaginative literature that appeals to various audiences that inspires the reader to do good, to be heroic.

If I'd felt like he was listening to me at all I'd have given him more detail.  And here I'm getting even more religious.  A good story includes part of the hero myth.  I think the hero myth is part of us and it's healthy for our minds and spirits to "indulge" in the universal story.  Whether contemplating the sacrifices of Frodo, or Aslan, or Kelsier, or Vin, or Harry, or Christ we are really contemplating the example we need to follow.

I did try to affirm the value of what he had written and tried to understand his arguments.  "Yes, the house of Israel is an important topic.  It's mentioned a number of times in the scriptures."   "Yes, our society does spend too much time on Fluff, junk food, american idol entertainment and we, myself included, could be more enthusiastic about learning."  But I don't think he really heard anything else I said.

Later I looked at his book.  I'm no longer sure it is of much interest to me.  I haven't read it so don't rely on my impressions.  But it does smell like an effort to prove the superiority of many early LDS church members and their descendants based on uncertain evidence that they are descendants of the Kimmerians, or Cimmerians.  He repeats an old, very questionable claim that the Kimmerians are the the lost tribes of Israel.  Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Israelism and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cimmerians to get a feel for the issue.  You're probably thinking the same thing I thought.  "Who'd have thunk?  Conan was an Israelite.  I'll have to write a book - Conan the Levite."  You skaa, and you mudbloods as well, had better read this book to learn of the superiority of the blood descendants of the Kimmerians.

I whole heartedly agree with Brandon.  What he is doing is "MORE important than a deep and scholarly book about something boring."   I believe that the greatest of all virtues is charity, which is based on kindness and understanding, so it is MORE important than even an exciting scholarly book. 

The Israel-book-guy could learn something from reading Mistborn or Harry Potter.

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Rants and Stuff / ARPEEGY
« on: May 18, 2007, 05:32:51 PM »
Which of you drives the red Saturn Ion with the vanity plates that say ARPEEGY?   I saw you pull onto the freeway this morning at 500 East in American Fork.

Or maybe ARPEEGY means something different that what I think it means.   Someone please enlighten me one way or the other.  :)

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Writing Group / The Talent Myth
« on: April 11, 2007, 03:38:44 PM »
My brother told me about Gym Jones.  They were responsible for getting the cast of 300 in top physical condition.  I read this article on their site and thought it applied to writing.  Tell me what you think.

(from http://www.gymjones.com/knowledge.php?id=26)

TALENT

The Talent Myth

BY SCOTT SEMPLE

"My mother said to me, 'If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.' Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso."

A friend and training mentor once told me, "The secret of the pros is that they train in secret." For a while that made sense. It seemed that where performance is highly optimized -- and where optimization is highly coveted -- it would make sense that methodology would be closely guarded.

But secret methodology is the province of world-class athletes; not of participants; nor of enthusiasts. Most people -- if sufficiently motivated, and if unencumbered by lame excuses that they assign to genetics -- want to know the secret that distinguishes the pros from themselves. The real "secret" of the fit, the fast and the "talented" is no secret at all; it's a much harder pill (than genetics) to swallow. And no one will accept it because of what it demands: real commitment in the form of regular, consistent, indefinite practice. And real practice demands devotion.

THE PROS TRAIN. And they train consistently and indefinitely. In other words, they commit.

People love to say that they don't train (or practice or study...) They think it makes their mediocre performance more impressive. Or they use a hero as an example, saying he or she doesn't practice either. But the truth is that anyone who becomes really world-class good at anything has devoted a large part of their lives to that thing -- often to the exclusion of all else. They may not call it "training" or "practice;" the actual labels are irrelevant. It's the time spent that counts.

"Practice" and "training" are not timelines and diet plans -- although those are effective parts of it. Real training means committing to the process: showing up at the keyboard or behind the lens or in the ring or on the rope, and doing it religiously, even when you're tired, even when you've got nothing to say, even when it's too cold, too hot, too hard.

People wish they had talent. They see it as a practice-free ticket to crowd-stunning skill. But talent doesn't exist. "Talent" doesn't get results; practice and devotion do.

Was Picasso gifted from birth with the talent to become an artistic genius? Or was he gifted with the tenacity to become a genius at anything? As he wobbled down the street on his first bicycle, did his mother see her son's uncommon ability, or his uncommon focus and determination? What led her to predict that he would be great? Was he out-of-the-womb a brilliant finger-painter? Or was he just stubborn?

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Writing Group / A Few Lessons Learned from Publishing in America
« on: March 22, 2007, 03:59:01 PM »
Came across this in the show notes for a podcast I listen to.

A Few Lessons Learned from Publishing in America By Olga Gardner Galvin
http://writingshow.com/?page_id=45

Some things I found interesting, such as "Any author owes it to himself to try every route available to get his book published by one of the big players. Only after he has exhausted all the avenues into the big presses, should he consider alternative publishing."

But overall her view seems rather bleak for authors.

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Movies and TV / Gamers: Dorkness Rising
« on: March 05, 2007, 07:42:25 PM »
Has anyone seen "Gamers: Dorkness Rising?"

I learned about it from the D&D podcast.
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/pod/20070223e8

The "Uber Goober, the documentary on role-playing gamers"  sounds amusing as well.

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Writing Group / Podcasts for Writers
« on: January 29, 2007, 08:17:26 PM »
Some podcast info has already been posted at TWG -

   Post your favorite podcasts... (http://www.timewastersguide.com/forum/index.php?topic=991.0)
   Podcasts you should be listening to (http://www.timewastersguide.com/forum/index.php?topic=948.0)

And Brandon on the Dragon Page (http://www.timewastersguide.com/forum/index.php?topic=4603.0 http://www.dragonpage.com/2005/07/11/cover-to-cover-174/ )

I'm interested in podcasts for Writers.  Here are some that I've listened to.  (I've used iTunes to find and subscribe to these.)

  Dragon Hearth  Tracy and Laura Hickman.  They sometimes discuss the craft of writing.  Approximately every month plus special editions.
  I should be writing  Mur Lafferty- from the perspective of an aspiring fiction writer.  Occasional interviews.
  The Dragon Page good stuff.  Including Brandon.
  The Survival Guide to Fantasy  Tee Morris - says, in one episode, that the podcast is for marketing his fiction.  So the podcast is misnamed.  I heard some interesting stuff about being on panels at a con but not much about writing.  Strong personality, which isn't a bad thing but the noise to signal ratio is a little high for my tastes.
  The Writing Show weekly - lot of interviews as well as podcasting of fiction
  Writers on Writing My favorite so far.  Weekly show hosted by Barbara Demaro-Barrett.  Interviews of writers.  Barbara is an excellent interviewer which is why this one is my favorite.  Few fantasy or sci-fi authors but good general writing stuff.  Among my favorite interviews are those of her frequent guest Dennis Palumbo, a writer turned psychologist.
 
A few I'm aware of but haven't listened to yet.
  The Naked Novelist
  The Rev up Review

Any good ones I'm missing?

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Writing Group / Writers discuss Writing: R. A. Salvatore on Description
« on: January 05, 2007, 12:34:41 AM »
From the Dungeons and Dragons Podcast, "December: R.A. Salvatore"  (I got it off iTunes but it's also available at http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/pod/20061215a)

Salvatore says that not everyone likes the same thing and writers do things in different ways.  He speaks with admiration of  a brilliant multi- page description of a door in Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose.  Then he says:

I don't do that.  My style is much more sparse.  What I try to do is give enough hooks to the reader that the reader will conjure up his own image of the door and put it into the story.  I know I've succeeded when someone comes up to me and says: 'You're so vivid in descriptions.'  No, I'm not, at all.  But that means that I've latched on to those common shared memories, themes, whatever, and they've brought it forward. . . .

I really believe that back in the day, pre-TV, when readers were pre-TV, Tolkien's readers, you had to give more information because we had less common, shared images.  If I say 'dragon' now, everybody knows what a dragon looks like.  If I say 'goblins,' or 'orc,' everyone conjures images whether from the Peter Jackson movies or from the Monster Manual.  When you go back to Tolkien's time, or back when Melville is writing Moby Dick there were a lot of people who never saw a whale.  How many people today have never seen a whale?  I don't mean in real life, you've seen it on TV.  It doesn't matter.  You know what it looks like.  If I say 'whale', you've got an image in your head.  If I say 'killer whale' you've got an image in your head.  If Herman Melville said 'whale' half of his audience would say 'What's that?' . . . . So back then it required a lot more description whereas today it requires a faster pace.


He has a good point but it leaves me with some questions.

Does the modern reader of fantasy require such "shared" images?  If so then where is there room for originality?

Is Salvatore's comment apply mostly to new readers that don't want lots of description so they relay heavily on what they have seen at movies or on TV?

In his class didn't EUOL say that lots of new writers say something like "I've got this great idea for a new fantasy race.  They're like elves only they have blue skin."  Seems like that is too much reliance on the 'shared images.'  How does one strike the right balance?

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Table-Top Games / question on Three-Dragon Ante
« on: December 11, 2006, 07:34:02 PM »
Anyone here ever played Three-Dragon Ante?  Is anyone able to give us a review?

Supposedly it's the popular card came played by all your D&D characters.

There's a Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Dragon_Ante

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Writing Group / National Novel Writing Month 2006
« on: October 04, 2006, 01:22:00 PM »
Is any one else planning on doing this insane thing?

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)

What EUOL said about it two years ago.
http://www.timewastersguide.com/view.php?id=897

Sign up Now!
http://www.nanowrimo.org/

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