So who's getting ulcers from anticipation?

[BiggusGeekus]

Some people drew their settings from scratch or from games they'd been playing for years. My setting was developed to flesh out a fantasy world on which novels would be based. Some thousand pages of notes and one 150,000 word book later, I'd want first refusal rights at least for fiction before selling the whole concept.

I think I would console myself by buying a car ... twice.

BG

PS If you get to the ten-pager, tell them you have a novel ready to go. They may want to use it as a tie-in. Two birds. One stone.

 

[Hakkenshi]

Erm...I'd like to think I was being at LEAST partly facetious with my post. I don't actually get ulcers from thinking about the setting search; however, when I think about it, I do get kind of excited at the possibilities (as someone mentioned earlier, I believe), and daydreaming is fun, as I'm sure you all know

I don't have any delusions of grandeur, but the article was interesting to say the least. I think I write fairly well outside of messageboards

And George R.R. Martin had BETTER not be taking time to make a setting when his next book is so far off!
(By the way, I'd heard it was going to be called something else instead of A Dance of Dragons...I think it was going to be A Feast of Ravens or something...I can't remember!)

 

[Fast Learner]

http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html

he he, this isn't aimed at you hak, just a thought for many who don't seem to realize who they are up against. i, too, took the plunge and sent something in, but i think we may all be seeing some very familiar names on the short list

Yeah, but the conclusions of the authors of the study are faulty (I discussed this study at some length with folks on another board). If you look at the charts at the end you'll see that almost everyone regardless of their actual ability rated themselves as slightly above average. Even people who were very good rated themselves as slightly above average. There is no correlation between how bad or good you actually are to how good you think you are. Fatally flawed interpretation of the test evidence. They even point how how fatally flawed it is and then dismiss the flaw for no reason.

Additionally the first test was completely flawed: they used a few low-grade comedians to determine which jokes were actually funny? The most humorous joke they use as an example (based on their scale) would be considered incredibly offensive to people who are religious, making it impossible to rate how "funny" the joke is on any kind of objective scale.

Sad study, meaningless results.

And stunningly common in science, most especially in psychology.

 

[Chromnos]

I think I would console myself by buying a car ... twice.

BG

PS If you get to the ten-pager, tell them you have a novel ready to go. They may want to use it as a tie-in. Two birds. One stone.

Ah, the wonders of wishful thinking!


-C

 

[Chromnos]

Erm...I'd like to think I was being at LEAST partly facetious with my post. I don't actually get ulcers from thinking about the setting search; however, when I think about it, I do get kind of excited at the possibilities (as someone mentioned earlier, I believe), and daydreaming is fun, as I'm sure you all know

I don't have any delusions of grandeur, but the article was interesting to say the least. I think I write fairly well outside of messageboards

All in good fun Hak! No need to be self depricating about your message-board writing. It is certainly engaging enough to keep us all chatting. It WAS a good article. A well finished and composed piece. That says more about the writer's than anything posted in a thread.

Whether or not the premise was faulty is moot. You've got, IMHO, a great topic for discussion. I mean there are alot of arrogant people out there who don't seem to really know what the hell they're doing.

But I still think that, arrogance aside, the keys to success or failure in any endeavour is more related to persistence than anything else. Look at Ray Bradbury. I mean he lived in a library basement for quite some time before being successful. Tolkien took 9 years to publish The Hobbit. Buy one of those books that contains Tolkien's original notes. What you will find amazing is not his innate genius. Rather, it is his persistence. His willingness to work and re-work a sentence, an introduction, until it just sang.

I mean, the beginning of Fellowship (in J. R. R.'s notes) started out something like- "It was Bilbo's 70th birthday and he had gathered all his relatives together..." Pretty flat writing compared to what it became. We can only imagine the work involved in transforming. Then you've got someone like Lovecraft whose method was to write something as bare-bones as possible and then tweak the hell out of it.

I guess what I'm saying is that success and greatness lies not in the beginning- the inspiration. Rather, it is the willingness to go the distance, to do whatever it takes- to finish (follow-through). Swallowing pride is a huge part of this. You can't view your text as sacred. Words are clothes for your idea. Keep experimenting until (with the right set of words) it looks real sharp and the substance of your idea will shine through.

So taking into account the article, it doesn't matter if it comes out as slush first off. If it sings in the end, that's all that matters. If Shakesphere started his orginal notes for Romeo and Juliet as "There were these two families in Verona that didn't like each other..." doesn't matter if what we get in the end is something like "Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona where we lay our scene, from ancient grudge break forth to new mutiny...."

Same is true with these chat-rooms. All you need to do with a first draft is get the idea across. Where you fish or cut bait is how well you polish up.

-C

 

[Chromnos]

And stunningly common in science, most especially in psychology.

Statics is the one study that, IMHO, is most likely to blame here. I mean, where else would you get a premise as unsound as If x=y then I presume z?

Psychology does come up with some duzies though, doesn't it?

-C

 

[Chromnos]

Holy lack of editing Batman!

I mean- statistics (fondly calles sadistics by college students worldwide).

Arrrggghhh.

-C

 

[Fast Learner]

Statistics as applied to psychology. There's your real culprit.

We understand so very little about how people's psyches function that applying almost any generalization to them will result in huge errors. Applying actual statistics is a sure road to failure.

And back on topic: No anxiety here. As someone else mentioned, I will or will not be selected. Being anxious won't change the result, at least not for the better.

 

[drnuncheon]

George R.R. Martin?

Do you think he would enter this? Has he ever done any work with gaming?

George edited the Wild Cards series of shared-world novels, the setting of which came from the campaign of a superhero RPG that he played with several of the other writers. (I'm not sure, but I think it was Superhero 2044.)

So yeah, he's a gamer.

J

 

[Chromnos]

It seems a good number of Fantasy writers were gamers. There's Brust, Cook, Fiest, Zelazney (I don't know about Jordan) and now Martin. Seems to me like alot of the mainstream names. Kinda makes you wonder why the gaming companies didn't tap the talent long before now.

Hmm, maybe it was more a contracting issue than anything else.

Did Martin ever speak at a major Con?

-C