artists and businessmen
Miki Kocic
haven't met an exception yet)." This opens up a question that has probably
been discussed before in this NG, probably back in 1977 and 250 times since
then, but please indulge me.
Joe Konrath, a published mystery writer, once said to me: "Publishers don't
want to deal with artists. They want to deal with businessmen." But
David's comment vaguely suggests that we can't help being artists first.
If you're published, do you find your contacts in the publishing industry
have a low tolerance for the aspects of an artist that make him "nuts," and
that you have to suppress those aspects when dealing with them?
If you're not published, what are your expectations of how you'll be forced
to relate to your editor and his/her associates once you get the chance to
be?
Miki
Nicola Browne
news:116h2uf...@corp.supernews.com
Actually I dislike the perpetuation of what I see as the myth of the
artist. I worked for an international oil company before I began
writing and but for having children would probably still been
shinning up some corporate greasy pole. Most people are more
than one thing and I'm no more 'nuts', as you put it, than your
average corporate employee.
You don't have to be 'nuts' to be creative and people who are 'nuts'
are not necessarily creative. It irritates me when people
tell me how artistic and creative they are, as its almost always
being used as an excuse for bad behaviour and self indulgence.
Writing is a job like any other. You deal with your editor
professionally, you deliver on time, you make editorial changes
when requested etc etc. I don't have much time for 'artistic'
behaviour.
Nicky
--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Miki Kocic
"Nicola Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:92d0af1f11391d328d...@mygate.mailgate.org...
>
> Actually I dislike the perpetuation of what I see as the myth of the
> artist. I worked for an international oil company before I began
> writing and but for having children would probably still been
> shinning up some corporate greasy pole. Most people are more
> than one thing and I'm no more 'nuts', as you put it, than your
> average corporate employee.
So I gather you disagree with David's original statement?
We have a part-time orchestra musician at the office who not only fits the
description of the temperamental artist, but has described to me meeting
dozens upon dozens of others just like her in the music business. But I
don't know enough successful arts people to be able to make a
generalization. I myself do have loads of eccentric opinions and a number
of eccentric habits, none of the latter destructive.
> You don't have to be 'nuts' to be creative and people who are 'nuts'
> are not necessarily creative. It irritates me when people
> tell me how artistic and creative they are, as its almost always
> being used as an excuse for bad behaviour and self indulgence.
> Writing is a job like any other. You deal with your editor
> professionally, you deliver on time, you make editorial changes
> when requested etc etc. I don't have much time for 'artistic'
> behaviour.
Is there room in your world for people who are both nuts *and* creative, or
should they give up writing and become crane operators?
Miki
Mike Peat
>
> "Nicola Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
> news:92d0af1f11391d328d...@mygate.mailgate.org...
>
>> You don't have to be 'nuts' to be creative and people who are 'nuts'
>> are not necessarily creative. It irritates me when people
>> tell me how artistic and creative they are, as its almost always
>> being used as an excuse for bad behaviour and self indulgence.
>> Writing is a job like any other. You deal with your editor
>> professionally, you deliver on time, you make editorial changes
>> when requested etc etc. I don't have much time for 'artistic'
>> behaviour.
>
> Is there room in your world for people who are both nuts *and* creative,
> or should they give up writing and become crane operators?
>
IMO it is not about being nuts, it is about thinking for yourself. You are
pretty unlikely to be creative if you don't do this at all, and I'd guess
that the greater the extent to which you do, the more creative you are
_likely_ to be. Of course this may be compartmentalised: a very creative
sculptor might just go with the consensus view (i.e. _not_ think for
themselves in that area) in politics, science, literature... whatever, but
I'd guess that the SF community are prone to think for themselves in more
areas than most.
If this holds water then I'd reason like this: If you think for yourself it
is perfectly possible that you will come up with a view of the world that is
close to the "general consensus", and hence not be "nuts" (a technical terms
from psychiatric medicine which I apologise for burdening you with here
<g>), however it would be a remarkable coincidence if you came to a view
that was an _absolute_ match with that consensus in every way, so, to some
degree or other, highly creative people are almost bound to be a little bit
"eccentric". Of course there is also a fair chance that the view arrived at
_will_ depart radically from the consensus... and then they really _are_
nuts! <g> (Or geniuses - the difference is in the sales volume. <g>)
OTOH, you can be (a bit) nuts and hide it well ("he was always such a quiet
man, kept himself to himself... who'd have thought he'd..." <g>) in
situations where letting it show is going to be a problem, and arguably any
other behaviour is just lazy and/or selfish. When you deal with an editor
or an agent, things will go more smoothly (and probably more profitably) if
you deal on the basis of their slice of consensus reality. If you think for
yourself (and the more you do), you are, after all, the one with the
flexibility to adapt, and hence, I'd judge, the ethical responsibility to do
so.
Or to put it another way: just because you are a nut doesn't mean you have
to act like one! <g>
Mike
Nicola Browne
>
> So I gather you disagree with David's original statement?
Yes unless you define 'nuts' as capable of creative thought which
I wouldn't.
> We have a part-time orchestra musician at the office who not only fits the
> description of the temperamental artist, but has described to me meeting
> dozens upon dozens of others just like her in the music business.
I know a lot of writers the only ones who come over all artistic on me
are the ones who produced a slim vilume of verse in 1973 and haven't
stopped
dining out on it ever since.
( My father was a painter and so is my sister)
>>
> Is there room in your world for people who are both nuts *and* creative, or
> should they give up writing and become crane operators?
>
Yes. There is also room for all the other people who are eccentric,
unusual or nuts who work as crane operators in banks, are accountants,
barmen, shop assistants whatever.
The asumption that only creative people can be non confromist,
have mental health problems, suffer from mood swings, want to kick over
the traces etc winds me up quite as much as the assumption that
creative people are hopeless at managing the real world. It is a lazy
characicature and is fair neither to those with or without
creative/artistic ability.
Charlton Wilbur
MK> We have a part-time orchestra musician at the office who not
MK> only fits the description of the temperamental artist, but has
MK> described to me meeting dozens upon dozens of others just like
MK> her in the music business. But I don't know enough successful
MK> arts people to be able to make a generalization.
Having met a wide variety of people in music myself -- the only reason
temperamental artists are tolerated is because they can deliver
something that nobody else can. Given two equally talented artists,
one who is temperamental and "crazy" and one who is reliable and
delivers when called upon, the one who is reliable and who delivers
will *always* get the gig. The one who is temperamental and "crazy"
is likely to impress people who have bizarre romantic notions of what
is actually involved in the arts, but people who are interested in the
art and not the personality will (not surprisingly) look at the art
and not the personality, unless the personality gets in the way of the
art. As it frequently does for temperamental artists.
In some places, this tolerance of temperamental behavior is common
because there simply are no reliable people who can do what the
musician can -- it's expensive and takes a lot of hard work to be an
orchestral harpist, for instance, and if the only one within 100 miles
of your orchestra is temperamental, well, that's what you settle for.
(Brief statement of artistic philosophy: success in art is the result
of about 5% creativity, about 70% technique and hard work, and about
25% luck and self-promotion. The creativity is essential, but you get
a lot farther with lots of technique and a little creativity than with
a lot of creativity and little technique.)
MK> Is there room in your world for people who are both nuts *and*
MK> creative, or should they give up writing and become crane
MK> operators?
If they're genuinely nuts, it can't be helped; if it's costing them
gigs, it's probably in their best interest to try to get over it. If
it's a studied act -- and for many of the "crazy" people I've met in
the arts, it was -- then they should, frankly, grow up.
Charlton
--
cwilbur at chromatico dot net
cwilbur at mac dot com
Patricia C. Wrede
> Joe Konrath, a published mystery writer, once said to me: "Publishers
> don't want to deal with artists. They want to deal with businessmen."
> But David's comment vaguely suggests that we can't help being artists
> first.
I would say that David's comment vaguely suggests that we can't help being
"nuts." It's perfectly possibly to be a nutty businessperson, as well as a
nutty artist.
And frankly, knowing David, I think that by his definition, "all writers are
nuts" is too weak a statement. I think if he wants to be accurate he needs
to say "everybody is nuts" by his definition. Which lets out "nuts" as a
particularly unique or relevant factor in being artistic.
>
> If you're published, do you find your contacts in the publishing industry
> have a low tolerance for the aspects of an artist that make him "nuts,"
> and that you have to suppress those aspects when dealing with them?
I have an M.B.A., six or seven years worth of day-job experience as
accountant and financial analyst, and about 16 books published (if you don't
count the foreign editions and retitling). I've never had any trouble with
either sort of job, before or after quitting my day job, and I have never
seen business and writing (or "artistic creativity," if you prefer that
terminology) as incompatible.
If that doesn't answer your question, I don't know how, because I have no
idea what you mean by "the aspects of an artist that make him nuts." Oh,
and in case it isn't clear, I disagree with David's comment. I don't think
writers are any more "nuts" than anybody else (they're not *less* nuts,
either, but as I said, if everybody is like that, it's not really a relevant
factor).
The idea that artists are "special" and can't be have like "normal" people
and can't or shouldn't be subject to the constraints of usual business
practices is, IMNSHO, stupid, stupid, stupid. Also extremely damaging to
young/new writers. The absolute top of the list of "qualities you must have
to become a professional writer" is, again IMNSHO, discipline, and giving
people the impression that they are, for some unknown reason, exempt from
the disciplines of common courtesy, common business practice, and common
sense encourages all sorts of counter-productive behavior that frequently
spills over into the writing end of things. Writing for pay is a business,
and refusing to recognize that is silly. *Anything* you do for pay is a
business, according to the IRS, and they want their cut, no nonsense. I
have two sisters who are painters (fine arts, not house painting) and they
have to keep just as many records and do just as much marketing and
record-keeping and other "strictly business" activities as I do.
As for Joe Konrath's comment, I would phrase it as "Publishers don't want to
deal with Artistes; they want to deal with businesspeople." If a plumber
came to your home to discuss cleaning your drains, got upset, and threw a
chair through your window, you wouldn't want to deal with him; I see no
reason why editors should be expected to overlook similar behavior by
writers who come to their offices to discuss changes to a manuscript. On a
less dramatic level, I don't particularly like it when I'm stood up for
dinner by a friend, or when somebody I know promises to give me an address
or loan me a book and then never gets around to it despite reminders; I
don't see why editors should "make allowances for the Artistic Temperament"
when a writer delivers a book late or suddenly decides to make a fuss about
a change they'd agreed to make months ago.
Patricia C. Wrede
David Friedman
"Mike Peat" <mi...@unicorn-fs.com> wrote:
> If this holds water then I'd reason like this: If you think for yourself it
> is perfectly possible that you will come up with a view of the world that is
> close to the "general consensus", and hence not be "nuts" (a technical terms
> from psychiatric medicine which I apologise for burdening you with here
> <g>), however it would be a remarkable coincidence if you came to a view
> that was an _absolute_ match with that consensus in every way, so, to some
> degree or other, highly creative people are almost bound to be a little bit
> "eccentric".
I'm not sure you should limit this to "creative people," unless you are
willing to expand that category to cover practically everyone.
My impression is that if you know someone well, it is quite likely you
will discover peculiarities, whether in belief, tastes, or whatever. To
put it differently, it sounds as though you are imagining that a
consensus exists because most people agree with all of it. Isn't a more
plausible account that a consensus exists because most people agree with
most of it--different parts for different people?
Also, of course, what the consensus is also varies from one part of the
society to another. In the part I have spent most of my life in, it's
the deeply believing Christian, not the atheist, who is "eccentric."
--
Remove NOSPAM to email
Also remove .invalid
www.daviddfriedman.com
Nicola Browne
news:d4aqfs$gik$1$8300...@news.demon.co.uk
> ...
> >
> IMO it is not about being nuts, it is about thinking for yourself. You are
> pretty unlikely to be creative if you don't do this at all, and I'd guess
> that the greater the extent to which you do, the more creative you are
> _likely_ to be. Of course this may be compartmentalised: a very creative
> sculptor might just go with the consensus view (i.e. _not_ think for
> themselves in that area) in politics, science, literature... whatever, but
> I'd guess that the SF community are prone to think for themselves in more
> areas than most.
To be honest I don't even think that is true. I don't think people who
paint
or write are necesarily independent or original thinkers. Some are,
but then so are a number of non creative people.
You ought to evesdrop some of the meetings I go to with other
writers for teenagers.
We are as a group indistinguishable from a group of school teachers
or librarians.
Nicola Browne
news:d4aqfs$gik$1$8300...@news.demon.co.uk
> ...
> >
> pretty unlikely to be creative if you don't do this at all, and I'd guess
> that the greater the extent to which you do, the more creative you are
> _likely_ to be. Of course this may be compartmentalised: a very creative
> sculptor might just go with the consensus view (i.e. _not_ think for
> themselves in that area) in politics, science, literature... whatever, but
> I'd guess that the SF community are prone to think for themselves in more
> areas than most.
To be honest I don't even think that is true. I don't think people who
paint or write are necesarily independent or original thinkers.
Some are, but then so are a number of non creative people.
You ought to evesdrop some of the meetings I go to with other
writers for teenagers.
We are as a group indistinguishable from a group of school teachers
or librarians.
Nicky
Eric Jarvis
>
> If you're not published, what are your expectations of how you'll be forced
> to relate to your editor and his/her associates once you get the chance to
> be?
>
I have no specific expectations other than that I'll need to relate on a
person to person basis in a way that suits both them and me. If that isn't
possible I'll have to deal with somebody else, so it's going to pay me to
be flexible in my approach.
--
eric
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
all these years I've waited for the revolution
and all we end up getting is spin
Eric Jarvis
> "Miki Kocic" <em...@munged.com> wrote in message
> news:116hnd1...@corp.supernews.com
>
> >
> > So I gather you disagree with David's original statement?
> Yes unless you define 'nuts' as capable of creative thought which
> I wouldn't.
>
> > We have a part-time orchestra musician at the office who not only fits the
> > description of the temperamental artist, but has described to me meeting
> > dozens upon dozens of others just like her in the music business.
>
> I know a lot of writers the only ones who come over all artistic on me
> are the ones who produced a slim vilume of verse in 1973 and haven't
> stopped
> dining out on it ever since.
> ( My father was a painter and so is my sister)
>
I know artists who are EXTREMELY pernicketty about their work. That
sometimes gets put down to them being temperamental, but in my experience
is generally down to them being perfectionists and expecting the same
level of commitment from the people around them.
So a lot of the myth of artists being temperamental is actually down to
some being MORE professional than the people complaining about their
behaviour.
Sometimes there are also genuine disagreements in the collaborative arts
where neither side can compromise far enough to reach a consensus, though
I haven't actually encountered it happening very often. More often there's
a clash between an artist's requirements and "financial necessity". I
don't count that as temperament. An artist has the right to set a standard
to which their work should be produced.
By and large the people I know in music are the most pragmatic, and those
in contemporary dance the least pragmatic. I've worked professionally in a
wide range of arts (theatre, music, dance, and visual arts), I've worked
in a wide range of other industries (plant hire, steel making,
advertising, plastics moulding, politics and web development) and by and
large I wish that people in other industries were as professional and
sensible as artists generally are. The big difference is that almost
nobody works in the arts in order to get paid for having an easy life, in
all other industries I've worked in the people who really care about the
end result of what they are doing are the exception.
Eric Jarvis
<m2br86x...@ubiquity.chromatico.net>:
Pop/rock music is a little unusual in this respect. For one thing a lot of
successful musicians are thrust into a situation they don't have the
coping strategies to handle at a very young age, consequently quite a few
burn out and end up with severe psychological problems. That's nothing to
do with them as artists, it's to do with an industry that has unrealistic
expectations of what young people can handle.
There's also a PR aspect to it. I know a fair number of notoriously
reckless consumers of mind expanding substances who are in reality
extremely professional most of the time and just putting on a show now and
again to keep up the image. The classic rock and roll bad boy is Mick
Jagger, a man who is scrupulous about eating healthily and staying fit.
However jogging and tofu just aren't very rock and roll.
I've also met a fair few childish idiots, but I can't think of a single
one who has actually succeeded as a musician.
Patricia C. Wrede
>> We have a part-time orchestra musician at the office who not only fits
>> the
>> description of the temperamental artist, but has described to me meeting
>> dozens upon dozens of others just like her in the music business.
>
> I know a lot of writers the only ones who come over all artistic on me
> are the ones who produced a slim vilume of verse in 1973 and haven't
> stopped dining out on it ever since.
> ( My father was a painter and so is my sister)
Yes, and I notice that the guy who fits the description is a *part-time*
musician.
Most of the people I know of who behave badly out of some sort of presumed
"artistic temperament" do not rely on their art for their livelihood. In at
least two cases, the "temperament" seems to be a quite calculated display
for publicity purposes, as it is only ever on display when the person is out
in public dealing with fans and official appearances.
In a completely different instance, a friend who is an opera singer and who
does a lot of traveling to various venues told me that in her experience it
is sometimes necessary to "play the diva card" in order to get decent
treatment (as the time when she and the other singers with her were offered
the use of an un-emptied-out janitor's closet behind the auditorium as a
"dressing room," and only got access to the perfectly decent proper dressing
rooms below-stage by pitching a fit and threatening not to perform).
> The asumption that only creative people can be non confromist,
> have mental health problems, suffer from mood swings, want to kick over
> the traces etc winds me up quite as much as the assumption that
> creative people are hopeless at managing the real world. It is a lazy
> characicature and is fair neither to those with or without
> creative/artistic ability.
Stereotyping, in short. What you said.
Patricia C. Wrede
Mike Peat
news:MPG.1cd34c0d9...@news.dircon.co.uk...
>
> I know artists who are EXTREMELY pernicketty about their work. That
> sometimes gets put down to them being temperamental, but in my experience
> is generally down to them being perfectionists and expecting the same
> level of commitment from the people around them.
>
> So a lot of the myth of artists being temperamental is actually down to
> some being MORE professional than the people complaining about their
> behaviour.
>
I'm not sure I'd equate perfectionism and professionalism. IMO,
professonals tend to be pragmatists rather than perfectionists.
Mike Peat
news:ddfr-1E3E46.0...@newsread1.mlpsca01.us.to.verio.net...
>
> I'm not sure you should limit this to "creative people," unless you are
> willing to expand that category to cover practically everyone.
>
> My impression is that if you know someone well, it is quite likely you
> will discover peculiarities, whether in belief, tastes, or whatever. To
> put it differently, it sounds as though you are imagining that a
> consensus exists because most people agree with all of it. Isn't a more
> plausible account that a consensus exists because most people agree with
> most of it--different parts for different people?
>
> Also, of course, what the consensus is also varies from one part of the
> society to another. In the part I have spent most of my life in, it's
> the deeply believing Christian, not the atheist, who is "eccentric."
>
David
Well you are right of course and we are talking about a gradual spectrum
rather than sharply demarcated categories. I agree also that there are
different varieties of consensus (what is the plural of consesnus?
consensii?).
What I was trying to get at is the idea (quite possibly wrong) that the more
an individual forms his/her own judgements, as opposed to "going with the
crowd" in an intellectual sense, the more likely it is that those judgements
will, to some degree or other diverge from the consensus, making the
thinking individual simply more prone to - quite rational -
non-conformism... which, from the consensus viewpoint is likely to look
eccentric, or even 'nuts'.
Mike
Miki Kocic
Your analysis is extremely sound and well-worded, and of great help to a
relative beginner like me. I have preserved it below for people who missed
it on first reading. Sorry to top-post, but I didn't want to force you to
scroll all the way down to read this brief paragraph. Thanks very much.
Miki
"Mike Peat" <mi...@unicorn-fs.com> wrote in message
news:d4aqfs$gik$1$8300...@news.demon.co.uk...
Mike Peat
>
> To be honest I don't even think that is true. I don't think people who
> paint
> or write are necesarily independent or original thinkers. Some are,
> but then so are a number of non creative people.
>
> You ought to evesdrop some of the meetings I go to with other
> writers for teenagers.
> We are as a group indistinguishable from a group of school teachers
> or librarians.
>
Yes, I'm probably being overgenerous (_not_ my usual problem! <g>). My
mental model of artists may be coloured a bit by the "Renessiance Man"
ideal. OTOH, I do know a few, and I can't think of a single one who didn't
have interesting and thought-provoking views. (Utter tosh, in some cases,
IMO, but interesting none the less.)
Also, I feel you are perhaps being unfair to school teachers and librarians,
who, in their quiet way, are members of the "thnk for yourselves"
fraternity.
Mike
Nicola Browne
>> Also, I feel you are perhaps being unfair to school teachers and librarians,
> who, in their quiet way, are members of the "thnk for yourselves"
> fraternity.
>
Um, that was my point.
Miki Kocic
>
> The asumption that only creative people can be non confromist,
> have mental health problems, suffer from mood swings, want to kick over
> the traces etc winds me up quite as much as the assumption that
> creative people are hopeless at managing the real world. It is a lazy
> characicature and is fair neither to those with or without
> creative/artistic ability.
The original poster, and I, probably didn't intend that. I apologize for
pushing one of your buttons and perhaps being unclear--again! (Grr. I'll
start to figure out this writing thing yet one of these days.)
I think that the assertion was that anybody can be nuts, but creativity
predisposes one to it, as Mike explained, although a creative person can
also manage his own mind and emotions so as to deal with people in a
socially acceptable fashion. I do think that creativity does, however,
create something within us that needs to be managed, which may be different
from but confused with other forces in a different kind of person that
create something that needs to be managed.
The theory is: If people need to make sense of the world, most do it by
either focusing (i.e., shutting out what doesn't make sense) or interpreting
it in such a way that it does make sense even if the interpretation
falsifies it (what the psychologists used to call "top-down processing").
Most people either have no interest in weird things or perceive largely
their own assumptions about them rather than the things themselves. But I
know that I am charmed by sights, sounds, smells that don't fit into my
picture of the world, and they stick in my mind, and, some time later, I
give them a context and a place to belong, where they do make sense, by
injecting them into a fictional world. My stories are usually full of
minor, random observations I've made over the course of the years that sit
in the back of my head, waiting for me to build them a home.
This may be only one aspect of creativity, but seeing what other people
don't--and sometimes missing what other people see--is necessarily going to
make you different from other people. I'm not saying that there is a
homogeneous block of non-creative people who are all identical, but, in
general, I know my mind works differently from the minds of others I deal
with on a daily basis. That, in their eyes, makes me nuts. And I'm proud
of it!
I just realized that writing stories actually makes me fit in. Because the
writing manages all those odd observations I make, they don't force
themselves to the surface of my daily contact with other people and damage
my relationships with them. Instead of being this weirdo who talks about
weird stuff, I can be a normal guy who passes around pieces of fiction
people enjoy reading. (I don't feel safe going to a coworker and saying,
"Did you know that, in Medieval times, people used to shit out the window?",
but they laugh themselves silly when I put it into a story, and seem
grateful for the laugh.)
But, then, I'm a schizo, so all of this could be just mental illness.
Miki
Miki Kocic
Sorry to top-post, but I just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to
post the detailed reply. It's very useful to me. Especially the insight
that the art needs to be managed too, just as interaction with others does.
Our stories don't spring whole-formed out of nothing; they have to be worked
into shape, and we need to acquire the skills to work them. A parallel but
similar set of skills exist for managing social relationships, and, although
I haven't had a substantial relationship with an editor, it's no doubt a
social relationship like any other. Make any sense?
Miki
"Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:116i57l...@corp.supernews.com...
David Friedman
"Mike Peat" <mi...@unicorn-fs.com> wrote:
> Also, I feel you are perhaps being unfair to school teachers and librarians,
> who, in their quiet way, are members of the "thnk for yourselves"
> fraternity.
>
But then, who isn't?
Two of our favorite people are a wholesale butcher and his wife. One
could argue that, as a small businessman, he too has to think for
himself. Then there is the friend in advertising. And ... .
Marilee J. Layman
<pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
>"Miki Kocic" <em...@munged.com> wrote in message
>news:116h2uf...@corp.supernews.com...
>
>> Joe Konrath, a published mystery writer, once said to me: "Publishers
>> don't want to deal with artists. They want to deal with businessmen."
>> But David's comment vaguely suggests that we can't help being artists
>> first.
>
>I would say that David's comment vaguely suggests that we can't help being
>"nuts." It's perfectly possibly to be a nutty businessperson, as well as a
>nutty artist.
>
>And frankly, knowing David, I think that by his definition, "all writers are
>nuts" is too weak a statement. I think if he wants to be accurate he needs
>to say "everybody is nuts" by his definition. Which lets out "nuts" as a
>particularly unique or relevant factor in being artistic.
I was looking to see if DDB had responded, but yours is close enough.
DDB also lives with two published authors and I suspect his post was
at least a bit humorous.
(I do beadweaving, have been published in jewelry magazines and won
awards, etc., and people are always surprised at my "artist's
statement:" "Marilee J. Layman is a retired engineer." I believe I'm
creative and to some extent artistic, but I'm still a scientist at
heart.)
--
Marilee J. Layman
Julia Jones
Layman <mjla...@erols.com> writes
>(I do beadweaving, have been published in jewelry magazines and won
>awards, etc., and people are always surprised at my "artist's
>statement:" "Marilee J. Layman is a retired engineer." I believe I'm
>creative and to some extent artistic, but I'm still a scientist at
>heart.)
I've just given a romance review website a couple of prizes for their St
George's Day scavenger hunt. I didn't have time to set some questions,
so they did it for me. One of the questions turns out to be "What is
Jules' original profession?" I suspect that this may be to do with
"materials scientist" and "romance writer" not being an entirely obvious
connection to many people. :-)
--
Julia Jones
"We are English of Borg. Your language will be assimilated."
Nicola Browne
>
> "Nicola Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
> news:8f8de2b4566adc063c...@mygate.mailgate.org...
> >
> > The asumption that only creative people can be non confromist,
> > have mental health problems, suffer from mood swings, want to kick over
> > the traces etc winds me up quite as much as the assumption that
> > creative people are hopeless at managing the real world. It is a lazy
> > characicature and is fair neither to those with or without
> > creative/artistic ability.
>
> The original poster, and I, probably didn't intend that. I apologize for
> pushing one of your buttons and perhaps being unclear--again! (Grr. I'll
> start to figure out this writing thing yet one of these days.)
>
> I think that the assertion was that anybody can be nuts, but creativity
> predisposes one to it, as Mike explained, although a creative person can
> also manage his own mind and emotions so as to deal with people in a
> socially acceptable fashion. I do think that creativity does, however,
> create something within us that needs to be managed, which may be different
> from but confused with other forces in a different kind of person that
> create something that needs to be managed.
>
I'm probably not the kind of person for whom this is true.
I don't even recognise what you are talking about here. We are
probably defining creativity differently or something. I don't think
writing novels makes me different from people who don't write novels in
any meaningful way, though I probably drink more coffee and spend more
time on the internet.
I have not observed this 'thing that needs to be managed' in other
people I know doing creative jobs either. While it may be true for
you and others too, I don't think it is a reasonable generalisation
for all creative people (-unless I'm not really creative which might
be true too.)
> > This may be only one aspect of creativity, but seeing what other people
> don't--and sometimes missing what other people see--is necessarily going to
> make you different from other people. I'm not saying that there is a
> homogeneous block of non-creative people who are all identical, but, in
> general, I know my mind works differently from the minds of others I deal
> with on a daily basis. That, in their eyes, makes me nuts. And I'm proud
> of it!
People who know me and have read my books - a mercifully small number -
are a little surprised. I think that is because there isn't much overlap
between the stories I write and the things I chat about. I don't think
my mind does work differently except when I'm writing -
which is a very particular kind of activity and requires you to do
things you don't do the rest of the time.
I am only a writer for a very small part of my life and it
really doesn't impinge on the way I think the rest of the time.
I hardly ever think about writing except when on this ng or
occasionally,
in the bath. I don't know whether this is unusual or not - it seems
the norm for the other writers I know.
Patricia C. Wrede
> "Nicola Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
> news:f5918bb3c396007b71...@mygate.mailgate.org...
>>
>> To be honest I don't even think that is true. I don't think people who
>> paint
>> or write are necesarily independent or original thinkers. Some are,
>> but then so are a number of non creative people.
>>
>> You ought to evesdrop some of the meetings I go to with other
>> writers for teenagers.
>> We are as a group indistinguishable from a group of school teachers
>> or librarians.
>>
>
> Yes, I'm probably being overgenerous (_not_ my usual problem! <g>). My
> mental model of artists may be coloured a bit by the "Renessiance Man"
> ideal. OTOH, I do know a few, and I can't think of a single one who
> didn't have interesting and thought-provoking views. (Utter tosh, in some
> cases, IMO, but interesting none the less.)
Um, I think that was Niky's point -- that librarians and schoolteachers are
just as interesting as writers-for-teenagers. I'd go further and say that
*everybody* is interesting, if you can get them going.
Patricia C. Wrede
Patricia C. Wrede
news:ha5FZpCR...@jajones.demon.co.uk...
I got the same sort of double-take for years when I had a day job, and it
still tends to be one of the first questions I get whenever I'm interviewed
by someone who's actually read the bio sketch -- "How do you get from
accounting to writing for a living?" (In fact, now that I think of it, that
was one of the questions the attorneys asked me when I was being interviewed
for jury duty three weeks ago...) My standard answer is that anyone who has
ever been the bottom-level employee responsible for coming up with an
explanation for the boss's boss to give to the CEO for why a department is
$3 million over budget this month *knows* that there is no lack of
creativity in accounting and financial analysis.
Patricia C. Wrede
Patricia C. Wrede
> Sorry to top-post, but I just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to
> post the detailed reply. It's very useful to me. Especially the insight
> that the art needs to be managed too, just as interaction with others
> does.
Took me a minute to figure out what you were talking about here. I don't
think I "manage" my interaction with other people, at work, among friends,
or with family; I certainly don't "manage my art" in the sense you seem to
mean. But if it helps with whatever you're struggling with to think about
it in these terms, OK, fine.
The way you think about writing and creativity and "art" and so on is really
very foreign to the way I work.
> Our stories don't spring whole-formed out of nothing; they have to be
> worked into shape, and we need to acquire the skills to work them. A
> parallel but similar set of skills exist for managing social
> relationships, and, although I haven't had a substantial relationship with
> an editor, it's no doubt a social relationship like any other. Make any
> sense?
"Social relationship" is an ambiguous term; it can mean "Humans are social
animals and have relationships with each other," or it can mean "People have
relationships with friends whom they have chosen, which are social, and
other relationships with people they have to work with in some capacity,
which are business."
The relationship between writer and editor *can* be a social/friends
relationship, but at bottom it's a *business* relationship, like any other
business relationship -- dealing with plumbers, or your supervisor on the
night shift, or clerks and bank tellers and mechanics, or your immediate
boss and co-workers, or the professor from whom you are taking a
college-level class for grades.
This isn't rocket science. If you can write a term paper for a college
history class, and deal with the professor who says you have to rewrite it
if you want an A because your argument isn't convincing and you've left out
some important references, then you can deal with an editor. Probably even
better than the professor, because the profs' authority is absolute; with
the editor, you have at least *some* leverage.
Patricia C. Wrede
Mike Peat
> "Mike Peat" <mi...@unicorn-fs.com> wrote in message
> news:d4bkm8$lqt$1$830f...@news.demon.co.uk
>
>>> Also, I feel you are perhaps being unfair to school teachers and
>>> librarians,
>> who, in their quiet way, are members of the "thnk for yourselves"
>> fraternity.
>>
> Um, that was my point.
>
>
Oops... sorry! (and to Patricia, who pointed that out as well)
Brian M. Scott
<julia...@gmail.com> wrote in
<news:ha5FZpCR...@jajones.demon.co.uk> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
[...]
> I've just given a romance review website a couple of prizes for their St
> George's Day scavenger hunt. I didn't have time to set some questions,
> so they did it for me. One of the questions turns out to be "What is
> Jules' original profession?" I suspect that this may be to do with
> "materials scientist" and "romance writer" not being an entirely obvious
> connection to many people. :-)
Well, you have been known to use raw materials ...
--
Brian
It was the neap tide, when the baga venture out of their
holes to root for sandtatties. The waves whispered
rhythmically over the packed sand: haggisss, haggisss,
haggisss.
David Friedman
"Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
> Um, I think that was Niky's point -- that librarians and schoolteachers are
> just as interesting as writers-for-teenagers. I'd go further and say that
> *everybody* is interesting, if you can get them going.
And everything is interesting, if explained by an articulate enthusiast.
I learned about the interest of geology as a result of falling in love
with a geologist, but one doesn't always to take it quite that far.
Dorothy J Heydt
>who, in their quiet way, are members of the "thnk for yourselves"
>fraternity.
Well, many of them do. I can remember a few glaring exceptions.
Including an elementary-school principal who refused to advance
me into eighth grade when the seventh grade I was in was a mixed
sixth/seventh grade that spent the entire year going over
everything I had just learned the previous year in sixth.
Her reason for not letting students skip grades: "It would
encourage competition."
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
Julia Jones
<pwred...@aol.com> writes
>My standard answer is that anyone who has
>ever been the bottom-level employee responsible for coming up with an
>explanation for the boss's boss to give to the CEO for why a department is
>$3 million over budget this month *knows* that there is no lack of
>creativity in accounting and financial analysis.
Snickering gently - been there, done that...
As for me - I spent eleven years essentially being paid to think
creatively. A large fraction of my colleagues were being paid to think
creatively. So much so that when the senior management at the labs were
obliged by company politics to put in a quarterly bonus system based
around how well we were doing our work and keeping within budget, *they*
put a great deal of creative thought into preventing the more obvious
ways of messing with the system. And still failed to stop some of it.
Patricia C. Wrede
> In article <116j1te...@corp.supernews.com>,
> "Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Um, I think that was Niky's point -- that librarians and schoolteachers
>> are
>> just as interesting as writers-for-teenagers. I'd go further and say
>> that
>> *everybody* is interesting, if you can get them going.
>
> And everything is interesting, if explained by an articulate enthusiast.
> I learned about the interest of geology as a result of falling in love
> with a geologist, but one doesn't always to take it quite that far.
My mother is practically compulsive about getting people to talk about
themselves; as a result, she has all sorts of interesting conversations with
truck drivers who sit next to her on airplanes and turn out to be electrical
engineers who decided that trucking would be a good way to be paid to see
the country before they settled down somewhere, or insurance salesmen who
both sky- and scuba-dive in their spare time and who are planning a vacation
to a Carribean island where they can do both almost at once. Like that.
Patricia C. Wrede
Heather Rose Jones
> In another thread, David Dyer-Bennett said "...all authors are nuts (and I
> haven't met an exception yet)." This opens up a question that has probably
> been discussed before in this NG, probably back in 1977 and 250 times since
> then, but please indulge me.
>
> Joe Konrath, a published mystery writer, once said to me: "Publishers don't
> want to deal with artists. They want to deal with businessmen." But
> David's comment vaguely suggests that we can't help being artists first.
It suggests that those artists who, despite being nuts, can
manage to also be businessmen have a leg up in the field.
> If you're published, do you find your contacts in the publishing industry
> have a low tolerance for the aspects of an artist that make him "nuts," and
> that you have to suppress those aspects when dealing with them?
In my recent experiences with my non-fiction book, I found
my editor to be almost pathetically grateful every time I
behaved as a rational business person and not as a
tempermental artist. I _did_ have to work a little to
suppress some of my more tempermental reactions, but I'd
approached the project from the very start as business
proposition rather than a creative project. On the other
hand, between that project and various academic projects
with similar constraints, I've probably got my
temperment-suppression muscles toned up sufficiently to
carry me through a novel contract, should the occasion offer
itself.
Heather
--
Heather Rose Jones
heathe...@earthlink.net
Heather Rose Jones
I know an artist who is a perfectionist to (in my personal
opinion) a career-destroying degree. Among other things,
the perfectionism eliminated the possibility of being able
to be compensated commensurate with the effort involved. (A
problem when you're trying to do art for a living, as
opposed to as a hobby.)
Miki Kocic
>
> I am only a writer for a very small part of my life and it
> really doesn't impinge on the way I think the rest of the time.
> I hardly ever think about writing except when on this ng or
> occasionally,
> in the bath. I don't know whether this is unusual or not - it seems
> the norm for the other writers I know.
Then we *are* different. When I'm not writing, which can be for months at a
time--and once for seven years--I don't think about writing at all. But
when the stories are coming, they occupy most of my waking moments. I will
even tend to become less productive at my paying job because I'm
plot-noodling in my head or mentally revising that problematic passage I
wrote in the early hours of the morning before I headed off to the office.
(But my boss is not stupid. He knows I, like everyone else there, including
himself, is working there only for the money, and that writing is something
I actually love to do. And when he needs someone to come back to the office
at 8:00 p.m. and work overnight because the client is paying big bucks to
have a job completed by 9:00 a.m., he knows I'm the only one who will agree
to do it. It's one way of managing talent and managing relationships.)
What we seem to have established here is that people are different, which is
usually a trivial point but extremely important here. I promise not to
denigrate writers to whom writing is not important if you promise not to
denigrate those to whom it is.
Miki
Miki Kocic
"Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:116j1th...@corp.supernews.com...
>
> I got the same sort of double-take for years when I had a day job, and it
> still tends to be one of the first questions I get whenever I'm
> interviewed by someone who's actually read the bio sketch -- "How do you
> get from accounting to writing for a living?" (In fact, now that I think
> of it, that was one of the questions the attorneys asked me when I was
> being interviewed for jury duty three weeks ago...) My standard answer is
> that anyone who has ever been the bottom-level employee responsible for
> coming up with an explanation for the boss's boss to give to the CEO for
> why a department is $3 million over budget this month *knows* that there
> is no lack of creativity in accounting and financial analysis.
<g> My office has done work for local securities authority (*not* SEC)
investigators, and some of the accounting practices examined during witness
interviews were pretty humorous even to a non-accountant like me. If I
remember anything specific that doesn't give away someone's identity, I'll
let you know, but you've probably seen it all already.
Miki
Miki Kocic
"Heather Rose Jones" <heathe...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:8Zkae.14940$44.1...@newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net...
>
> It suggests that those artists who, despite being nuts, can manage to also
> be businessmen have a leg up in the field.
My worry is that, right now, I enjoy writing, and if I start having to treat
it like a business venture, it will sap all the enjoyment out of it. But I
suspect that a lot of the same skills needed for what I call managing talent
are also needed for managing the writer/editor relationship. Suppose the
editor wants you to hack out a favourite paragraph. Well, in your own
private revision, you have to learn out to hack out favourite paragraphs,
and to realize that they can always be recycled somewhere else.
Anyhow, thanks for the insight.
Miki
Miki Kocic
> "Miki Kocic" <em...@munged.com> wrote in message
> news:116imr2...@corp.supernews.com...
>
> > Sorry to top-post, but I just wanted to say thanks for taking the time
> > to
>> post the detailed reply. It's very useful to me. Especially the insight
>> that the art needs to be managed too, just as interaction with others
>> does.
>
> Took me a minute to figure out what you were talking about here. I don't
> think I "manage" my interaction with other people, at work, among friends,
> or with family; I certainly don't "manage my art" in the sense you seem to
> mean. But if it helps with whatever you're struggling with to think about
> it in these terms, OK, fine.
>
> The way you think about writing and creativity and "art" and so on is
> really very foreign to the way I work.
Suppose an editor wants you to hack a favourite paragraph out of your story.
Well, when you're doing editing on your own prior to submission, you have to
learn to hack out that favourite paragraph if it doesn't contribute. In the
earliest days, a couple of years ago, I used to be very resentful of any
suggestion that something I really loved had to go. That's a perfectly
natural way for a beginning writer to feel. But part of what I call
managing the talent is learning to kill your kids.
As another example, it's the same thing to overcome a bad mood and sit down
at the keyboard and write, as it is to overcome a bad mood and not swear at
the editor. Both are forms of self-management, and both take concrete
strategies rather than pure willpower.
Hope that makes some sense. But, remember, I haven't had an editor, so I'm
largely guessing (and, in fact, drawing an inference from something you said
earlier).
Miki
Miki Kocic
> I know an artist who is a perfectionist to (in my personal opinion) a
> career-destroying degree. Among other things, the perfectionism
> eliminated the possibility of being able to be compensated commensurate
> with the effort involved. (A problem when you're trying to do art for a
> living, as opposed to as a hobby.)
How is his talent level? I hear Leonardo was a real prick.
Miki
Neil Barnes
chalk on slate and produced:
> who
> both sky- and scuba-dive in their spare time and who are planning a vacation
> to a Carribean island where they can do both almost at once.
Sadly deceased when his aqualung failed to open...
Actually, there is/was a place near my father's on the Isle of Skye: Skye
Diving Club, which I was told did offer both activities.
Neil (buying a paraglider wing tomorrow :)
Nicola Browne
>
> What we seem to have established here is that people are different, which is
> usually a trivial point but extremely important here. I promise not to
> denigrate writers to whom writing is not important if you promise not to
> denigrate those to whom it is.
>
Oh, I'm sorry if you thought I was denigrating you as that was not my
intention, nor was I saying that writing isn't important to me - it is.
What I was saying is that not everyone is so obviously creative as to
distinguish them from the rest of the world or to make living in the
world more difficult than it is for non creative people.
I can accept that it is the case for you and maybe others.
I don't see why that personality feature should correlate to the value
either of us place on writing though. It does not dominate my life,
but it is my job and is pretty important.
Ric Locke
> "Heather Rose Jones" <heathe...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:8Zkae.14940$44.1...@newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net...
>>
>> It suggests that those artists who, despite being nuts, can manage to also
>> be businessmen have a leg up in the field.
>
> My worry is that, right now, I enjoy writing, and if I start having to treat
> it like a business venture, it will sap all the enjoyment out of it. But I
> suspect that a lot of the same skills needed for what I call managing talent
> are also needed for managing the writer/editor relationship. Suppose the
> editor wants you to hack out a favourite paragraph. Well, in your own
> private revision, you have to learn out to hack out favourite paragraphs,
> and to realize that they can always be recycled somewhere else.
Hmm. Perhaps that's one of the subtleties behind Heinlein's advice about
revising (which was basically not to do it until required by an editor,
then to follow the editor's instructions.)
If, at some point, you can declare the book/article/story *done* then you
aren't writing it any more. At that point it becomes an article in a
different sense, more or less synonymous with "object" -- something you
have that needs to be sold, and possibly modified for the new user's needs
before it passes out of your hands. It's then not something you're
*writing*, it's just something you *have*. This is also the meaning behind
the idiom "wrap it up" meaning "to finish."
Which would also be an important reason to follow the advice about starting
something else as soon as possible. If writing is an important activity,
you should be writing something when the ms comes back from being edited
and needs revisions. The attitude can then be, "I'm *writing* this one.
*That* is a story that needs changes to be acceptable, a unit that has been
produced but needs modification." A little distance from it, IOW.
Hmm. As one unpublished writer to another, maybe a variant on this attitude
will help your other problem. If you can develop the attitude that the
you-of-yesterday is a different person than the you-of-*now*, maybe you can
look at your previous chapters or scenes as units that were written by
somebody else and can be trimmed to fit but not fundamentally modified, and
that leads to the idea that the next thing has to fit with the earlier
ones. Helpful?
Regards,
Ric
Nicola Browne
>
> Um, I think that was Niky's point -- that librarians and schoolteachers are
> just as interesting as writers-for-teenagers. I'd go further and say that
> *everybody* is interesting, if you can get them going.
>
And I'd agree. I only picked on that example because that is the group
we most closely resemble - largely because many of us are or were
teachers or librarians at some stage in our lives : )
Patricia C. Wrede
>> The way you think about writing and creativity and "art" and so on is
>> really very foreign to the way I work.
>
> Suppose an editor wants you to hack a favourite paragraph out of your
> story.
Then I look at the paragraph, and I think about *why* the editor wants it to
go, and why I put it in there in the first place, and what the effect of
losing the paragraph will be. If I put it in because I love the sound of my
own voice and it doesn't really add anything to the story, it goes without
further comment. If I put it in to achieve a certain effect, then I look at
why the editor didn't get it...and sometimes I expand the paragraph to a
scene, and sometimes I cut it to a single sentence, and sometimes I leave
the paragraph alone but make major changes to the paragraph before or after
it in order to provide more clarity. And if I think the editor is full of
beans and the paragraph does exactly what I want, then I leave the paragraph
the way it is until I can have a polite, low-key discussion with the editor
about *why* she wanted it cut *really*, at which point I can usually come up
with a fix that satisfies everyone. If, after all this, the editor is
absolutely determined on cutting that paragraph, and I think it's fine but
that cutting it will not harm the book, I may go ahead and cut the paragraph
anyway, but if I think cutting it *will* harm the story, I don't.
What I *don't* do is call the editor and pitch a fit because she *dared*
suggest that I alter even one of my beautiful, golden commas. Nor do I call
or write or e-mail a passionate and lengthy explanation/argument for why the
paragraph should remain as it is. Nor do I cut the paragraph and turn the
ms. in without comment, and then bad-mouth the editor (or "all editors") to
all my writer friends as an incompetent cretin(s) who don't understand
*real* writing (i.e., mine) and who are willing to butcher someone's (my)
prose in the name of the filthy bottom line. Nor do I retreat to my bedroom
in tears and refuse to do *anything*. Nor do I call my agent in a temper
and inform her that I will never, ever work with this editor ever again as
long as I live, option clause or no option clause.
> Well, when you're doing editing on your own prior to submission, you have
> to learn to hack out that favourite paragraph if it doesn't contribute.
> In the earliest days, a couple of years ago, I used to be very resentful
> of any suggestion that something I really loved had to go. That's a
> perfectly natural way for a beginning writer to feel. But part of what I
> call managing the talent is learning to kill your kids.
Resentment is normal for *any* writer, not just beginning ones. That's why
I always wait a couple of days, if I have any choice at all, after I read an
editor's comments and before I sit down to make the changes -- so I can be
objective and figure out what is best *for the story*. You and the editor
are really on the same side -- you both want this book to be the best it can
possibly be, and to sell as many copies as it can possibly sell. It's not
really an adversarial relationship, or shouldn't be.
> As another example, it's the same thing to overcome a bad mood and sit
> down at the keyboard and write, as it is to overcome a bad mood and not
> swear at the editor. Both are forms of self-management, and both take
> concrete strategies rather than pure willpower.
OK, I understand that; I just wouldn't have thought of phrasing it quite
that way. It's still a bit alien, but I think I at least see where you're
coming from.
> Hope that makes some sense. But, remember, I haven't had an editor, so
> I'm largely guessing (and, in fact, drawing an inference from something
> you said earlier).
But that's my point -- having an editor isn't some strange relationship that
has no parallel anywhere in the known universe and that you can only
understand once you've had one. It's like any other business relationship
where you have two people working toward the same end, who may have
different visions of how to get the job done (and, very occasionally, of
what the job *is*) but who have to work together.
Patricia C. Wrede
Patricia C. Wrede
> "Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:116j1te...@corp.supernews.com
>
>>
>> Um, I think that was Niky's point -- that librarians and schoolteachers
>> are
>> just as interesting as writers-for-teenagers. I'd go further and say
>> that
>> *everybody* is interesting, if you can get them going.
>>
> And I'd agree. I only picked on that example because that is the group
> we most closely resemble - largely because many of us are or were
> teachers or librarians at some stage in our lives : )
Well, I'd sort of figured that, but enough people seemed to be
misunderstanding your version that I thought I'd make the more general
conclusion explicit.
Patricia C. Wrede
John F. Eldredge
<nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
>"Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote in message
>news:116j1te...@corp.supernews.com
>
>>
>> Um, I think that was Niky's point -- that librarians and schoolteachers are
>> just as interesting as writers-for-teenagers. I'd go further and say that
>> *everybody* is interesting, if you can get them going.
>>
>And I'd agree. I only picked on that example because that is the group
>we most closely resemble - largely because many of us are or were
>teachers or librarians at some stage in our lives : )
>
I worked as a library assistant for two years while I was an
undergraduate, have done some tutoring (but no classroom teaching),
and both of my parents were teachers. My mother was an elementary
school teacher, and my father was a college foreign-languages
professor.
--
John F. Eldredge -- jo...@jfeldredge.com
PGP key available from http://pgp.mit.edu
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better
than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria
David Friedman
"Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
> Um, I think that was Niky's point -- that librarians and schoolteachers are
> just as interesting as writers-for-teenagers. I'd go further and say that
> *everybody* is interesting, if you can get them going.
Perhaps we could adapt the proof that there are no uninteresting
numbers? All we need is some way of ordering people. For the U.S., we
could use social security numbers. Perhaps more generally, a
lexicographic ordering by height, then weight, then ... .
David Dyer-Bennet
> "Miki Kocic" <em...@munged.com> wrote in message
> news:116h2uf...@corp.supernews.com...
>
>> Joe Konrath, a published mystery writer, once said to me: "Publishers
>> don't want to deal with artists. They want to deal with businessmen."
>> But David's comment vaguely suggests that we can't help being artists
>> first.
>
> I would say that David's comment vaguely suggests that we can't help being
> "nuts." It's perfectly possibly to be a nutty businessperson, as well as a
> nutty artist.
>
> And frankly, knowing David, I think that by his definition, "all writers are
> nuts" is too weak a statement. I think if he wants to be accurate he needs
> to say "everybody is nuts" by his definition. Which lets out "nuts" as a
> particularly unique or relevant factor in being artistic.
The normal formulation actually is "all writers are fruitbats"; which
is slightly more specific than "nuts", but then again not so standard
a definition. And no, the point is that authors are nuts in ways
fairly specific to the business.
Actually, none of the ones I know at all well are the "tortured
artiste" type. I suspect that of being a pose adopted by a very few,
and a rather destructive one.
None of this goes, for me, towards artists being "special", or
deserving or needing more slack, or any of those things.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd...@dd-b.net>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/>
RKBA: <http://noguns-nomoney.com/> <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/>
Pics: <http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/> <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/>
Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
David Dyer-Bennet
> "Miki Kocic" <em...@munged.com> wrote in message
> news:116hnd1...@corp.supernews.com...
>>
>> "Nicola Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
>> news:92d0af1f11391d328d...@mygate.mailgate.org...
>>
> ...
>>> You don't have to be 'nuts' to be creative and people who are 'nuts'
>>> are not necessarily creative. It irritates me when people
>>> tell me how artistic and creative they are, as its almost always
>>> being used as an excuse for bad behaviour and self indulgence.
>>> Writing is a job like any other. You deal with your editor
>>> professionally, you deliver on time, you make editorial changes
>>> when requested etc etc. I don't have much time for 'artistic'
>>> behaviour.
>>
>> Is there room in your world for people who are both nuts *and* creative,
>> or should they give up writing and become crane operators?
>>
>
> IMO it is not about being nuts, it is about thinking for yourself.
> You are pretty unlikely to be creative if you don't do this at all,
> and I'd guess that the greater the extent to which you do, the more
> creative you are _likely_ to be. Of course this may be
> compartmentalised: a very creative sculptor might just go with the
> consensus view (i.e. _not_ think for themselves in that area) in
> politics, science, literature... whatever, but I'd guess that the SF
> community are prone to think for themselves in more areas than most.
I *think* it's the fact that one of the major underpinnings of your
life, writing, is a mysterious process that nobody actually
understands, and that has been empirically observed to abandon people
temporarily or permanently quite often.
The actual phrase I use is "all writers are fruitbats". "Fruitbat" is
somewhat clear to the household, but I thought it wouldn't be more
widely, so I substituted the less specific "nuts". That may have been
an error.
David Dyer-Bennet
> "Miki Kocic" <em...@munged.com> wrote in message
> news:116hnd1...@corp.supernews.com
>
>>
>> So I gather you disagree with David's original statement?
> Yes unless you define 'nuts' as capable of creative thought which
> I wouldn't.
>
>> We have a part-time orchestra musician at the office who not only fits the
>> description of the temperamental artist, but has described to me meeting
>> dozens upon dozens of others just like her in the music business.
>
> I know a lot of writers the only ones who come over all artistic on me
> are the ones who produced a slim vilume of verse in 1973 and haven't
> stopped
> dining out on it ever since.
> ( My father was a painter and so is my sister)
That's not at all the kind of behavior I'm referring to.
Marilee J. Layman
<pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
>"David Friedman" <dd...@daviddfriedman.nospam.com> wrote in message
>news:ddfr-C3C792.1...@newsread1.mlpsca01.us.to.verio.net...
>> In article <116j1te...@corp.supernews.com>,
>> "Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Um, I think that was Niky's point -- that librarians and schoolteachers
>>> are
>>> just as interesting as writers-for-teenagers. I'd go further and say
>>> that
>>> *everybody* is interesting, if you can get them going.
>>
>> And everything is interesting, if explained by an articulate enthusiast.
>> I learned about the interest of geology as a result of falling in love
>> with a geologist, but one doesn't always to take it quite that far.
>
>My mother is practically compulsive about getting people to talk about
>themselves; as a result, she has all sorts of interesting conversations with
>truck drivers who sit next to her on airplanes and turn out to be electrical
>engineers who decided that trucking would be a good way to be paid to see
>the country before they settled down somewhere, or insurance salesmen who
>both sky- and scuba-dive in their spare time and who are planning a vacation
>to a Carribean island where they can do both almost at once. Like that.
People talk to me without me trying. I'll be sitting in the pharmacy
waiting for a refill and someone will tell me all about their poor
daughter. When I'm in stores, which isn't that often, people
frequently think I work there.
--
Marilee J. Layman
Marilee J. Layman
<pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
>"Julia Jones" <julia...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>news:ha5FZpCR...@jajones.demon.co.uk...
>> In message <o1qi611c792pk03a7...@4ax.com>, Marilee J. Layman
>> <mjla...@erols.com> writes
>>>(I do beadweaving, have been published in jewelry magazines and won
>>>awards, etc., and people are always surprised at my "artist's
>>>statement:" "Marilee J. Layman is a retired engineer." I believe I'm
>>>creative and to some extent artistic, but I'm still a scientist at
>>>heart.)
>>
>> I've just given a romance review website a couple of prizes for their St
>> George's Day scavenger hunt. I didn't have time to set some questions, so
>> they did it for me. One of the questions turns out to be "What is Jules'
>> original profession?" I suspect that this may be to do with "materials
>> scientist" and "romance writer" not being an entirely obvious connection
>> to many people. :-)
>
>I got the same sort of double-take for years when I had a day job, and it
>still tends to be one of the first questions I get whenever I'm interviewed
>by someone who's actually read the bio sketch -- "How do you get from
>accounting to writing for a living?" (In fact, now that I think of it, that
>was one of the questions the attorneys asked me when I was being interviewed
>for jury duty three weeks ago...) My standard answer is that anyone who has
>ever been the bottom-level employee responsible for coming up with an
>explanation for the boss's boss to give to the CEO for why a department is
>$3 million over budget this month *knows* that there is no lack of
>creativity in accounting and financial analysis.
When the former OMNI editors started Event Horizon, Ellen Datlow had a
whole series of interviews with people who had scientific backgrounds
and had changed to some kind of art. I usually got to type for them
so I was able to hold a separate conversation about it (Ellen types
slowly, or at least she did back then).
--
Marilee J. Layman
Heather Rose Jones
> "Heather Rose Jones" <heathe...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:8Zkae.14940$44.1...@newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net...
>
>>It suggests that those artists who, despite being nuts, can manage to also
>>be businessmen have a leg up in the field.
>
>
> My worry is that, right now, I enjoy writing, and if I start having to treat
> it like a business venture, it will sap all the enjoyment out of it. But I
> suspect that a lot of the same skills needed for what I call managing talent
> are also needed for managing the writer/editor relationship. Suppose the
> editor wants you to hack out a favourite paragraph. Well, in your own
> private revision, you have to learn out to hack out favourite paragraphs,
> and to realize that they can always be recycled somewhere else.
I write research reports for a living. I enjoy it
enormously. I bewilder my co-workers with how much I enjoy
writing reearch reports simply for the sheer joy of logical
stucture and the beauty of language. But it is very much a
business venture -- I always have anywhere between two to
four people who review, comment on, and request changes to
my reports. (And that's not counting the potential for
having an FDA auditor decide to go over them with a
fine-tooth comb at some point in the future -- which
happened last week to four of them.) They all have the
right to get their way. And sometimes their requirements
are mutually contradictory.
I get the reviews and I make the changes in ways that also
won't compromise my own writing goals. I look at it as one
of the challenges of the genre that lets me show my skill --
sort of like how poetry is so much more fun when it's got a
complex meter and rhyme scheme.
And I stll really really enjoy writing research reports.
Heather Rose Jones
Alas, not quite talented enough to get away with it, but
talented enough to be able to get really fixed in habit
before the ground crumbled.
Irina Rempt
> Well, many of them do. I can remember a few glaring exceptions.
> Including an elementary-school principal who refused to advance
> me into eighth grade when the seventh grade I was in was a mixed
> sixth/seventh grade that spent the entire year going over
> everything I had just learned the previous year in sixth.
Ooh, my daughters (now in fourth grade of a mixed fourth/fifth) will get
that problem next year, but their teacher's reason will probably be
"they're only just ten, they'd feel lost in sixth grade"-- likely to be
true.
Irina
--
Vesta veran, terna puran, farenin. http://www.valdyas.org/irina/
Beghinnen can ick, volherden will' ick, volbringhen sal ick.
http://www.valdyas.org/foundobjects/index.cgi Latest: 19-Apr-2005
Miki Kocic
> intention, nor was I saying that writing isn't important to me - it is.
No worries; I didn't think you were denigrating me. But I did honestly
think you were saying writing wasn't important to you. Below, you say
writing is your job and doesn't dominate your life. So I guess it's
important to you in the way a job is. My writing is more wrapped up in my
identity. I don't get upset when people dislike something I've written, and
I don't agonize when I'm "blocked," but I still see myself as primarily a
writer who has a day job and maintains personal relationships. My real life
is sitting in front of the keyboard cranking out a story. Everything else
either contributes to it or makes it feasible.
Vive la difference. I respect your reality, and expect you to respect mine.
In terms of the diva phenomenon, I don't believe that people are entitled to
behave badly just because they're talented, but it's a fact that most
*highly* talented people have historically been difficult to get along with.
This also applies to fields such as business, where the people who are truly
gifted at the art of enlightened self-interest and seeking personal
advantage tend to be real pricks.
Miki
Miki Kocic
"Ric Locke" <warl...@mesh.net> wrote in message
news:vwkpw9inbm25.l...@40tude.net...
Both are extremely helpful. Thank you.
Miki
Miki Kocic
Your detailed description of what you do when the editor wants to hack out
that favourite paragraph is exactly what I call managing the relationship.
The term might not be optimal because it suggests being in control of
another person, so I'll try to think of a different one. Basically, when
something emotionally disturbing happens, it's very difficult for most
people to just will themselves into a calm frame of mind, so real, concrete
coping strategies are necessary, and you've listed about a dozen. (If
that's not clear, remember that I'm talking about a *favourite* paragraph to
which a writer has some emotional attachment, if that ever happens to you at
all.)
Thanks again. I have thinking to do right now, but I'll be back.
Miki
"Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:116kqop...@corp.supernews.com...
Miki Kocic
"Irina Rempt" <ir...@valdyas.org> wrote in message
news:426abcbf$0$97029$e4fe...@news.xs4all.nl...
>
> Ooh, my daughters (now in fourth grade of a mixed fourth/fifth) will get
> that problem next year, but their teacher's reason will probably be
> "they're only just ten, they'd feel lost in sixth grade"-- likely to be
> true.
I was in the bright and gifted stream in high school back in 1979 to 1983.
Biggest mistake I ever made. The teachers assumed we already knew
everything and therefore taught us nothing. Also, being around kids who,
because of their far better educated parents, were far more sophisticated,
and just as raw-smart as me, did huge damage to my self-esteem. I hung out
with the one Pakistani kid in the stream, who was also an outsider, but
because of his race.
There are stories of people who go to college at age 16 and get completely
lost because they have the mind but not the maturity. Going through the
grades one at a time is a good idea, because school is much more a venue of
socialization than a venue of learning.
Miki
Dorothy J Heydt
Irina Rempt <ir...@valdyas.org> wrote:
>Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>
>> Well, many of them do. I can remember a few glaring exceptions.
>> Including an elementary-school principal who refused to advance
>> me into eighth grade when the seventh grade I was in was a mixed
>> sixth/seventh grade that spent the entire year going over
>> everything I had just learned the previous year in sixth.
>
>Ooh, my daughters (now in fourth grade of a mixed fourth/fifth) will get
>that problem next year, but their teacher's reason will probably be
>"they're only just ten, they'd feel lost in sixth grade"-- likely to be
>true.
Well, fight it tooth and nail. It is better to feel a little
lost in a higher grade than bored out of your gourd in a lower
one. Expertae crede.
I *think* (and mind you, this was 50+ years ago) that the reason
that school had a sixth/seventh grade (it also had a separate
sixth grade) was to try to cram into the heads of the officially
seventh graders all the stuff they hadn't learned last year in
sixth.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
David Friedman
"Miki Kocic" <em...@munged.com> wrote:
> There are stories of people who go to college at age 16 and get completely
> lost because they have the mind but not the maturity. Going through the
> grades one at a time is a good idea, because school is much more a venue of
> socialization than a venue of learning.
I'm not sure I would have gotten any less lost at eighteen--or that
another two years of high school would have been more socially
educational than two years of college.
Dorothy J Heydt
OK, that was your experience.
Mine was that being in a class full of people who didn't know a
given set of material, which I did (because I'd learned it
already and they, although exposed to it, hadn't) was
excruciatingly boring. I attended schools in various parts of
California, as follows.
First grade, in Santa Maria, where the teacher I had for the
first half of the year would not believe that I could read
already and tried to restrict me to going through "Dick and
Jane" word by word. Hellish boredom. The teacher I had for
the second half of the year figured out what my reading level
was, gave me books at that level, and taught me the other things
I still needed to learn: arithmetic, e.g.
Second through sixth grades, on the San Francisco Peninsula,
quite near Stanford University. Lots of educated parents. About
two weeks into second grade they skipped me into third. I did
just dandy, thanks; I was still ahead of practically everyone in
reading; about even in other subjects.
Seventh grade through freshman in high school, we were out in the
San Joaquin Valley. No educated parents. I won't say "no
intelligent people whatever" even though it seemed like it: I
merely never met any. That was the year I was in the sixth/seventh
grade with everyone else in the class doing sixth grade over.
The high school wasn't much better; it was one of those places
where "school spirit" was prized, meaning giving a damn about who
won the football game.
Sophomore year onward, we were in Newport Beach. Some educated
parents, some intelligent people, and a school that had a "bright
and gifted stream." I'm sorry you didn't enjoy yours, Miki; mine
kept me from going completely nuts. I had fellow-students who
were my intellectual equals and sometimes even my superiors; that
was damn good for me. Most of the faculty were pretty good, with
the exception of the dimbulb we had for senior English. We ran
rings around her and she never realized.
What all this probably boils down to is that you need to give
each student what he needs, only it usually isn't possible.
Zeborah
> There are stories of people who go to college at age 16 and get completely
> lost because they have the mind but not the maturity. Going through the
> grades one at a time is a good idea, because school is much more a venue of
> socialization than a venue of learning.
You and Dorothy are both wrong. :-) Both absolutely right, of course,
in describing your own experiences, just not in generalising them to all
other kids, even all other bright kids.
Some bright kids, as Dorothy says, will be bored out of their gourds --
a subset of these will start acting up, getting in trouble, just so as
not to be bored, while some will sit quietly being obedient but not
learning anything, and others will be cooperative while still finding
ways to learn (I was a combination of these latter two).
Some will do okay in their 'native' year, but could do much better if
challenged -- me again. When I was given the chance to go to some
university classes while still at high school (and to skip the first
year class while I was at it!) I absolutely bloomed.
While some kids, as you say, have major problems adjusting to a
different year-level; they need to progress through the grades a year at
a time, perhaps to stay with the friends they know, perhaps simply
because they need the extra time to develop emotional maturity.
One girl joined our class, about five years older than hers, for maths
-- at which she did just fine, but she didn't have the ability to be
quiet for thirty seconds at a time. In subsequent years she went to
university and to medical school. Again, no major problems
academically, but the last I heard of her she was having trouble trying
to keep her age a secret from her friends. I don't know how she did,
but I think in her case it could have gone either way.
In my case, I would have done better to have been challenged better and
more and earlier in my life -- to learn that sometimes you actually have
to *work* to complete assignments, and sometimes you're not going to get
an A+, or even an A- -- sometimes, horror of horrors, you're going to
have to be content with a B. It might even have helped me socially to
have skipped a grade in primary school, since I was not exactly popular
in my age group; though I don't know if I'd have been popular in the
group above either. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, perhaps.
Zeborah
--
Gravity is no joke.
http://www.geocities.com/zeborahnz/
Zeborah
> And I'd agree. I only picked on that example because that is the group
> we most closely resemble - largely because many of us are or were
> teachers or librarians at some stage in our lives : )
Or both.
Patricia C. Wrede
> In article <116j1te...@corp.supernews.com>,
> "Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Um, I think that was Niky's point -- that librarians and schoolteachers
>> are
>> just as interesting as writers-for-teenagers. I'd go further and say
>> that
>> *everybody* is interesting, if you can get them going.
>
> Perhaps we could adapt the proof that there are no uninteresting
> numbers? All we need is some way of ordering people.
That's easy. "Go home and WRITE!"
For the U.S., we
> could use social security numbers. Perhaps more generally, a
> lexicographic ordering by height, then weight, then ...
Oh, you meant *that* sort of ordering. Oh, well...
Patricia C. Wrede
Neil Barnes
slate and produced:
> On Sat, 23 Apr 2005 09:19:30 +0100, Neil Barnes
> <nailed_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>and lo, on Fri, 22 Apr 2005 21:02:37 -0500, Patricia C. Wrede scraped
>>chalk on slate and produced:
>>
>>> who
>>> both sky- and scuba-dive in their spare time and who are planning a
>>> vacation to a Carribean island where they can do both almost at once.
>>
>>Sadly deceased when his aqualung failed to open...
>>
>>Actually, there is/was a place near my father's on the Isle of Skye:
>>Skye Diving Club, which I was told did offer both activities.
>
> Although I don't remember the name of it, there is an activity where you
> skydive into the ocean while wearing scuba gear. The tricky part, I'm
> told, is releasing your parachute at the right altitude -- ditch it too
> soon and you hit the water too hard, too late and you can get tangled in
> it.
Yes...
Part of the most advanced training you can get for a paraglider - you're
not even allowed to do the training without several hundred hours flying
time - is the SIV course.
The cardinal rule is: water landings, even under control, are not
considered survivable, for the reasons you point out. Yet the SIV - in
which you do basically engage in folding, spindling, and mutilating your
wing while in flight - has such a high risk of failure to recover that it
may *only* be practiced over water.
With the pilot wearing a floatation device, an instructor/observer at all
times, and a standby rescue boat...
Neil (not ready for that yet!)
(see my beginners experiences in Brasil: <www.nailed-barnacle.co.uk> and
follow the links.)
Brian M. Scott
<em...@munged.com> wrote in
<news:116lkfc...@corp.supernews.com> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
[...]
> There are stories of people who go to college at age 16
> and get completely lost because they have the mind but
> not the maturity.
But you can't generalize from them. I went off to college
at 17, having gone through a four-year high school in three
years, and 17 was at least a year and probably two years
later than it should have been, since my final year was
almost entirely independent study. At barely 15 I went off
on my own to a summer institute in mathematics at Notre Dame
and was perfectly comfortable despite being one of the two
youngest students there. During high school I took all of
my mathematics at the college where my father taught
(chemistry, not mathematics) and had no problems, either
with the material or with the other students. Most of high
school was a complete waste of time (and much of junior high
was worse).
> Going through the grades one at a time is a good idea,
> because school is much more a venue of socialization
> than a venue of learning.
Depends entirely on the person.
Brian
Dorothy J Heydt
Brian M. Scott <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
>On Sat, 23 Apr 2005 18:53:25 -0400, Miki Kocic
><em...@munged.com> wrote in
>
>> because school is much more a venue of socialization
>> than a venue of learning.
>
>Depends entirely on the person.
Amen, amen, hallelujah. I wish to goodness I had skipped more
grades and been put into situations where I had to *work*, not
just coast. I might have gotten more done with my life.
David Friedman
"Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
> Most of high
> school was a complete waste of time (and much of junior high
> was worse).
One reason our children are home schooled. Reading and rereading
Pratchett and Turtledove (Bill) and writing lots and lots of stuff
(Becca) is more educational than what I or Betty were doing at that age.
At least, what we were doing in school.
Miki Kocic
"Dorothy J Heydt" <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote in message
news:IFFA7...@kithrup.com...
>
> What all this probably boils down to is that you need to give
> each student what he needs, only it usually isn't possible.
I agree completely.
Miki
Miki Kocic
"Zeborah" <zeb...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1gvivbj.1vxcqun3dtourN%zeb...@gmail.com...
> Miki Kocic <em...@munged.com> wrote:
>
> In my case, I would have done better to have been challenged better and
> more and earlier in my life -- to learn that sometimes you actually have
> to *work* to complete assignments, and sometimes you're not going to get
> an A+, or even an A- -- sometimes, horror of horrors, you're going to
> have to be content with a B. It might even have helped me socially to
> have skipped a grade in primary school, since I was not exactly popular
> in my age group; though I don't know if I'd have been popular in the
> group above either. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, perhaps.
I agree that every person is different, but it's possible to generalize on a
minimal level, if one makes some factual assumptions. Otherwise, the
syllogism would be useless.
A kid who is way ahead of the other Kindergarten and first-grade kids may
complete those two years easily, gaining status with adults and acquiring
terrible work habits. The status with adults may alienate him from his own
age group, causing later social problems, and the rotten work habits may
later make it difficult for him to rise to challenges. Then place him with
a group of kids who are every bit as advanced as he is, but don't have
barely-literate subsistence-farmer parents, but parents who are
psychologists and other Ph.D.s, and throw work at him that suddenly requires
him to make the maximum effort he can. I say that's a recipe for disaster.
Which is not to gripe and moan about my fate. I've learned to like myself.
But in order to learn that, I had to figure out what went wrong and where.
Miki
Miki Kocic
>
> At least, what we were doing in school.
Heh. I know *that's* not what you intended.
Seriously: I got all of my currently needed job skills outside school.
Miki
Eric Jarvis
>
> In terms of the diva phenomenon, I don't believe that people are entitled to
> behave badly just because they're talented, but it's a fact that most
> *highly* talented people have historically been difficult to get along with.
> This also applies to fields such as business, where the people who are truly
> gifted at the art of enlightened self-interest and seeking personal
> advantage tend to be real pricks.
>
I'm not sure that's so. I've worked for a couple of highly successful
entrepreneurs and both were admirable people and wonderful to work for.
The real pains are the people who have learned how to succeed personally
in business without necessarily being any good at it.
--
eric
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
all these years I've waited for the revolution
and all we end up getting is spin
Eric Jarvis
ED5058.161...@newsread1.mlpsca01.us.to.verio.net>:
> In article <116lkfc...@corp.supernews.com>,
> "Miki Kocic" <em...@munged.com> wrote:
>
> > There are stories of people who go to college at age 16 and get completely
> > lost because they have the mind but not the maturity. Going through the
> > grades one at a time is a good idea, because school is much more a venue of
> > socialization than a venue of learning.
>
> I'm not sure I would have gotten any less lost at eighteen--or that
> another two years of high school would have been more socially
> educational than two years of college.
>
I waited a year to start university aged 19 rather than 18. Partly that
was in order to do the Cambridge entrance exam separately from A levels,
though it really had a LOT more to do with getting to spend another year
seeing a certain young lady before we headed off our separate ways (she
was a year younger than me).
I spent much of the year working in a steel mill, and that's what made all
the difference when I went to Imperial College.
It isn't chronological age that brings maturity, it's what you've managed
to pack into the time.
Patricia C. Wrede
news:MPG.1cd5852ca...@news.dircon.co.uk...
> Miki Kocic em...@munged.com wrote in <116ljdm...@corp.supernews.com>:
>>
>> In terms of the diva phenomenon, I don't believe that people are entitled
>> to
>> behave badly just because they're talented, but it's a fact that most
>> *highly* talented people have historically been difficult to get along
>> with.
>> This also applies to fields such as business, where the people who are
>> truly
>> gifted at the art of enlightened self-interest and seeking personal
>> advantage tend to be real pricks.
> I'm not sure that's so. I've worked for a couple of highly successful
> entrepreneurs and both were admirable people and wonderful to work for.
> The real pains are the people who have learned how to succeed personally
> in business without necessarily being any good at it.
I don't think that highly talented people are particularly difficult to get
along with. (I also don't think they're necessarily successful, but for
purposes of this discussion I'm willing to talk about the subset of highly
talented people who are successful and recognized as such.)
I *do* think that when a successful artist behaves badly, especially when
the art involves entertainment so that the artist is already in the public
eye, the bad behavior is widely reported and commented upon, while the 99%
of actors, singers, dancers, painters, writers, potters, etc. who behave
perfectly well don't get mentioned. This results in a public *perception*
that associates difficult behavior with "high talent," which *further*
results in the occasional marketing genius deliberately creating a "bad
boy/girl" public persona in order to enhance the public perception of him as
highly talented (since difficult behavior is associated in the public mind
with high talent), which confirms and increases the association between
difficult behavior and talent among the vast admiring hordes, and around we
go. The public association of difficult behavior with talent *also* means
that if someone is a flamboyant personality, but not actually badly behaved,
they're likely to be sort of swept along and lumped together with the actual
badly-behaved bunch and misinterpreted as behaving badly, because that's
what people *expect.* And perfectly normal
I-hate-my-job-and-my-boss-is-a-jerk complaints, which *everybody* does at
one time or another, get turned into more evidence of "artistic
temperament," and so on.
There are difficult people in *every* field. Otherwise, books like "Coping
with Difficult People," which was *NOT* aimed at writers and artists,
wouldn't be bestsellers.
Patricia C. Wrede
Patricia C. Wrede
news:116mpv7...@corp.supernews.com...
>
> A kid who is way ahead of the other Kindergarten and first-grade kids may
> complete those two years easily, gaining status with adults and acquiring
> terrible work habits. The status with adults may alienate him from his
> own age group, causing later social problems, and the rotten work habits
> may later make it difficult for him to rise to challenges. Then place him
> with a group of kids who are every bit as advanced as he is, but don't
> have barely-literate subsistence-farmer parents, but parents who are
> psychologists and other Ph.D.s, and throw work at him that suddenly
> requires him to make the maximum effort he can. I say that's a recipe for
> disaster.
Which is, actually, why the "posse" concept was developed -- my college just
had an article on the first group there, that'll be graduating next month.
If you're not familiar with it, it's an approach to improving the graduation
rates of really bright kids from (largely urban) disadvantaged backgrounds
by collecting a *group* of them from the same area, giving them a summer of
meetings and get-togethers so they get to know each other, and then sending
them all to the same school. The idea is that there will be other people
there that they already know who have the same kind of background and, very
likely, the same kinds of difficulties, providing both a support group and
other folks whose solutions to similar problems can be borrowed and expanded
on and traded around and so on.
Graduation rates for students in the program are apparently running around
90% thus far (this is the first group graduating from *my* college, but the
program has been around for considerably longer than four years and involves
a lot of students and a lot of different colleges), which is well above the
norm for most of the schools in the program.
Patricia C. Wrede
Dorothy J Heydt
Miki Kocic <em...@munged.com> wrote:
>
>A kid who is way ahead of the other Kindergarten and first-grade kids may
>complete those two years easily, gaining status with adults and acquiring
>terrible work habits. The status with adults may alienate him from his own
>age group, causing later social problems, and the rotten work habits may
>later make it difficult for him to rise to challenges. Then place him with
>a group of kids who are every bit as advanced as he is, but don't have
>barely-literate subsistence-farmer parents, but parents who are
>psychologists and other Ph.D.s, and throw work at him that suddenly requires
>him to make the maximum effort he can. I say that's a recipe for disaster.
What would have happened, do you think, if you'd been thrown in
with the other advanced kids from kindergarten onwards?
<shrug>
I'm not sure what would have improved things for me--some form of
really aggressive teacher who would have kept challenging me, and
every time he found out I could do something easily, giving me
something harder.
Oh, yes, and as to socialization--his really difficult task would
be to pound it into me not to shoot of my mouth all the time.
(Think of a slightly less obnoxious version of the young Asimov.
I have really not learned to keep my mouth shut YET.)
But I was one of the ones with literate parents. One of the
really fun things I did at the age of about seven or eight, was
to go through every form of IQ, comprehension, and aptitude test
known to man, because the guy living next door to us was a
graduate student in psychology and wanted practice in
administering them....
Joann Zimmerman
@newsread1.mlpsca01.us.to.verio.net>, dd...@daviddfriedman.nospam.com
says...
> In article <1tei33sgpd8mm$.20rzgh9kudg1$.d...@40tude.net>,
> "Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
>
> > Most of high
> > school was a complete waste of time (and much of junior high
> > was worse).
>
> One reason our children are home schooled. Reading and rereading
> Pratchett and Turtledove (Bill) and writing lots and lots of stuff
> (Becca) is more educational than what I or Betty were doing at that age.
>
> At least, what we were doing in school.
Ah, but in school I was rereading and rereading Heinlein and Ian Fleming
under the desk while doing incredibly boring and stupid things on top of
the desk.
What really got to me finally was the randomness and lack of continuity.
Now why someone who had as a 4th grader been doing reading with the 6th
graders, and as a 5th-grader did math with the 6th-graders, should, on
entering 6th grade, find that the intellectual highlight of the year was
making mosaics of the Three Wise Men out of rice, beans and yarn, I
never could figure out.
--
"I never understood people who don't have bookshelves."
--George Plimpton
Joann Zimmerman jz...@bellereti.com
David Friedman
Eric Jarvis <w...@ericjarvis.co.uk> wrote:
> Miki Kocic em...@munged.com wrote in <116ljdm...@corp.supernews.com>:
> >
> > In terms of the diva phenomenon, I don't believe that people are entitled
> > to
> > behave badly just because they're talented, but it's a fact that most
> > *highly* talented people have historically been difficult to get along
> > with.
> > This also applies to fields such as business, where the people who are
> > truly
> > gifted at the art of enlightened self-interest and seeking personal
> > advantage tend to be real pricks.
> >
>
> I'm not sure that's so. I've worked for a couple of highly successful
> entrepreneurs and both were admirable people and wonderful to work for.
> The real pains are the people who have learned how to succeed personally
> in business without necessarily being any good at it.
I also would disagree. I've known five Nobel prize winners in my field
reasonably well, and while they vary a good deal, I would say that at
most one would classify as unusually difficult to get along with.
Going back a bit, there is a quote somewhere from someone who said that
he had known Smith, Ricardo and Malthus, that they were three of the
nicest (probably not his word--but some term of strong approval of their
personalities) people he had ever met, and that it was a great credit to
a field to have been founded by such men.
Or consider Von Neumann, who seems--I'm going mostly by the description
in Teller's memoirs--to have been a very nice person.
I can only think of one very successful businessman whom I know, and
that only to the extent of an hour or two of conversation. He seemed
like a nice man. I was struck by his willingness both to explain things
he did know--he is a Silicon Valley type--and to admit to things he
didn't know.
David Friedman
"Miki Kocic" <em...@munged.com> wrote:
> "David Friedman" <dd...@daviddfriedman.nospam.com> wrote in message
> news:ddfr-34DA55.0...@newsread1.mlpsca01.us.to.verio.net...
> >
> > At least, what we were doing in school.
>
> Heh. I know *that's* not what you intended.
I, alas, did not get to know my current wife until many years later.
Brian M. Scott
<pwred...@aol.com> wrote in
<news:116nc6d...@corp.supernews.com> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
[...]
> Which is, actually, why the "posse" concept was developed
> -- my college just had an article on the first group
> there, that'll be graduating next month.
> If you're not familiar with it, it's an approach to
> improving the graduation rates of really bright kids
> from (largely urban) disadvantaged backgrounds by
> collecting a *group* of them from the same area, giving
> them a summer of meetings and get-togethers so they get
> to know each other, and then sending them all to the
> same school. The idea is that there will be other people
> there that they already know who have the same kind of
> background and, very likely, the same kinds of
> difficulties, providing both a support group and other
> folks whose solutions to similar problems can be borrowed
> and expanded on and traded around and so on.
I hadn't run into it, but I can well believe that it works.
My department (mathematics) had a fair bit of success with a
program that brought together disadvantaged minority
students who were already enrolled at CSU and got them
working as a mutual support group. And of course our East
Asian students have been doing something like this for
years. Sadly, the math program died when the money ran out.
[...]
Brian
Irina Rempt
> In article <426abcbf$0$97029$e4fe...@news.xs4all.nl>,
> Irina Rempt <ir...@valdyas.org> wrote:
>>Ooh, my daughters (now in fourth grade of a mixed fourth/fifth) will get
>>that problem next year, but their teacher's reason will probably be
>>"they're only just ten, they'd feel lost in sixth grade"-- likely to be
>>true.
>
> Well, fight it tooth and nail. It is better to feel a little
> lost in a higher grade than bored out of your gourd in a lower
> one. Expertae crede.
We've got another kid in sixth grade who is a year too young for it, and
that's her *only* problem: she probably won't be mature enough (though
intellectually ready) for high school in September. If the school had a
real G&T program, with an enriched curriculum, she could have been in
fifth grade now and still be intellectually challenged instead of
skipping half a grade twice because she was simply too advanced for her
grade level, and she'd be able to have much more balanced schooling.
> I *think* (and mind you, this was 50+ years ago) that the reason
> that school had a sixth/seventh grade (it also had a separate
> sixth grade) was to try to cram into the heads of the officially
> seventh graders all the stuff they hadn't learned last year in
> sixth.
Oh, the reason this school has a fourth/fifth is that they have a teacher
shortage, fifth grade is very small (only about 10 pupils), and fourth
grade is very diverse in level, so they've put all the high-level
fourth-graders in with fifth and the rest (many of whom are likely to
repeat) in with third.
Irina
--
Vesta veran, terna puran, farenin. http://www.valdyas.org/irina/
Beghinnen can ick, volherden will' ick, volbringhen sal ick.
http://www.valdyas.org/foundobjects/index.cgi Latest: 19-Apr-2005
Irina Rempt
> Going through the
> grades one at a time is a good idea, because school is much more a venue
> of socialization than a venue of learning.
That's a good argument against letting our kids go through all the grades;
the kids at their school mostly aren't the kind we want them to socialize
with, or be socialized to.
Marilee J. Layman
>Nicola Browne <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
>
>> And I'd agree. I only picked on that example because that is the group
>> we most closely resemble - largely because many of us are or were
>> teachers or librarians at some stage in our lives : )
>
>Or both.
In yesterday's WashPost Letters to the Editor, a male librarian
complains about a reporter referring to someone as "dressed like a
librarian."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/22/AR2005042201257.html
(Apparently the method of making it non-registered no longer works.)
--
Marilee J. Layman
Marilee J. Layman
>
>"Irina Rempt" <ir...@valdyas.org> wrote in message
>news:426abcbf$0$97029$e4fe...@news.xs4all.nl...
>>
>> Ooh, my daughters (now in fourth grade of a mixed fourth/fifth) will get
>> that problem next year, but their teacher's reason will probably be
>> "they're only just ten, they'd feel lost in sixth grade"-- likely to be
>> true.
>
>I was in the bright and gifted stream in high school back in 1979 to 1983.
>Biggest mistake I ever made. The teachers assumed we already knew
>everything and therefore taught us nothing. Also, being around kids who,
>because of their far better educated parents, were far more sophisticated,
>and just as raw-smart as me, did huge damage to my self-esteem. I hung out
>with the one Pakistani kid in the stream, who was also an outsider, but
>because of his race.
I didn't actually go to school very often because the principals
wouldn't accept me in the grade for my age and my mother wouldn't let
me skip grades. But when we got stationed at the Pentagon, I went to
a high school where there were AP classes and that was one of the best
times of my life -- for me there was a synergy in learning/working
with people as smart as I am.
>There are stories of people who go to college at age 16 and get completely
>lost because they have the mind but not the maturity. Going through the
>grades one at a time is a good idea, because school is much more a venue of
>socialization than a venue of learning.
I've always thought I would be better socialized if Mother had let me
skip grades, instead of learning by myself at home.
--
Marilee J. Layman
Nicola Browne
news:2atn619rmuardmkv1...@4ax.com
>> In yesterday's WashPost Letters to the Editor, a male librarian
> complains about a reporter referring to someone as "dressed like a
> librarian."
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/22/AR2005042201257.html
>
> (Apparently the method of making it non-registered no longer works.)
OK I'll rephrase - most of the group are female, in early to late
middle age, most are smartly but conservatively dressed with maybe
the odd dramatic accessory and some of us are frumps.
Nicky
--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Zeborah
> In yesterday's WashPost Letters to the Editor, a male librarian
> complains about a reporter referring to someone as "dressed like a
> librarian."
There was a kerfuffle on one of the NZ librarian mailing lists recently
about a newsreader's faux pas in asking a mountain climber who'd injured
himself (IIRC, very approximately) whether he'd worried he might have to
give up and become a librarian or something.
Many calls for the newsreader to make a retraction; almost as many calls
for people to get a life. One gets the feeling many librarians are
touchy about their image.
Zeborah (wears a bun but no glasses)
Zeborah
> I agree that every person is different, but it's possible to generalize on a
> minimal level, if one makes some factual assumptions. Otherwise, the
> syllogism would be useless.
So maybe the syllogism is useless.
> A kid who is way ahead of the other Kindergarten and first-grade kids may
> complete those two years easily, gaining status with adults and acquiring
> terrible work habits. The status with adults may alienate him from his own
> age group, causing later social problems, and the rotten work habits may
> later make it difficult for him to rise to challenges. Then place him with
> a group of kids who are every bit as advanced as he is, but don't have
> barely-literate subsistence-farmer parents, but parents who are
> psychologists and other Ph.D.s, and throw work at him that suddenly requires
> him to make the maximum effort he can. I say that's a recipe for disaster.
If *all* those conditions are met, then yes. (Though the initial set-up
you describe, without anything being done about it, is also a recipe
for, at least, great stress and strife: BTDT.) But a great many
advanced placement programmes don't do that: at my school they not only
put individual kids into more advanced classes, but also had extension
programmes for brighter kids, of a range of ages, to get together and do
workshops on philosophy, problem solving, writing (among others that
didn't interest me so I didn't attend. Two of us convinced the school,
"We're already doing university papers, so why should we go to the
'Prepare yourself for uni' classes? Let's get back our old French
teacher and learn Latin instead."
"Throw work at him that suddenly requires him to make the maximum
effort" -- well, of course. What you're really saying is "Crappy
teachers who make bad assumptions and don't support a kid's learning are
a recipe for disaster." But you can have crappy teachers at any level.
Kai Henningsen
> To be honest I don't even think that is true. I don't think people who
> paint
> or write are necesarily independent or original thinkers. Some are,
> but then so are a number of non creative people.
I don't understand the concept of "non creative people" who are "original
thinkers". To me, that's a contradiction - you just said they created new
thoughts, after all!
Kai
--
http://www.westfalen.de/private/khms/
"... by God I *KNOW* what this network is for, and you can't have it."
- Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu)
Catja Pafort
> It might even have helped me socially to
> have skipped a grade in primary school, since I was not exactly popular
> in my age group; though I don't know if I'd have been popular in the
> group above either.
For me, it helped tremendously. It was the most gratifying experience of
my life [1] to find out that while I'll never be Miss Popularity, I did
ok, but my former class in turn was Not Popular with anyone else in the
school for most of the reasons why I didn't like them much. (A set of
very bad social dynamics gone completely off the tracks)
I think one of the reasons why it worked was that my old form was,
mostly a close-minded, disinterested lot; while my new form had
*everything* - from the Young Conservative to the Young Communist; the
chess wonder and physics genius, the guy who celebrated his sixteenth
birthday with a crate of beer on a park bench (would-be skinhead who was
shy and kind to animals), disco chicks, hippies, a guy who learnt half
of Beethoven's piano parts by ear just because he could, the dedicated
girl scout wearing 3/4 length leather trousers: in short, the most
varied bunch of humanity you could hope to find in any one place.
If, by chance, the years had been swapped, I'd not have done a quarter
as well. Also, my 'new' form in the past had bullied another girl who'd
changed schools; so I might not have done well if moved up much earlier.
(The other girl went to the neighbouring school which then provided half
of my form; but the bullying had stopped.)
Catja
[1] It took me a long time to gain full acceptance in my new form. The
day when I spent half an hour discussing the final examn with our
resident Young Conservative (never without shirt and tie; even most
teachers turned up dressed more casually) I realised that I had now had
meaningful, respect-filled conversations with *every single member of my
form*.
Catja Pafort
> I wish to goodness I had skipped more
> grades and been put into situations where I had to *work*, not
> just coast.
I wish I'd been taught how to work most efficiently; which is not the
same.
I crashed at Uni in the first year, because I had always been able to
get by mostly on memory and an ability to make connections.
Catja
Catja Pafort
> There are stories of people who go to college at age 16 and get completely
> lost because they have the mind but not the maturity. Going through the
> grades one at a time is a good idea, because school is much more a venue of
> socialization than a venue of learning.
I'd agree. For me, skipping a grade [1] was a good opportunity to get
_away from_ the class I was in, but, my, was I immature, and whilst I
could probably have done ok-ish at university it would have been a
*very* bad idea; I was rather young for my age anyway.
My teachers were great - supportive; and mostly getting the class
balance right. (I read most of the school library under my desk *and*
got good marks <EG>) Some of the others might have done better without
little Miss Know-It-All (or little Miss 'make everything up on the spot'
as was).
I don't have a solution for kids such as myself - but then, I was lucky,
I was being encouraged at home and provided with as much mental
stimulation and books and discussion topics as I needed.
Catja
[1] 9th of 13; age 15. Best time to do it because my new form consisted
of two schools coming together; so we had the remnants of five forms
mixed into one, and there was a lot of repetition in that year for
everyone to sing from the same hymn sheet. I got most of it first time
around; although I needed a little boost in maths and physics.
Alma Hromic Deckert
(Catja Pafort) wrote:
>I crashed at Uni in the first year, because I had always been able to
>get by mostly on memory and an ability to make connections.
>
Sister!!! <G>
I had a HELL of a first year at university. I had no work habit
whatsoever. I coasted throughout school simply by paying attention.
you can't DO that when you're doing four subjects in your first year
and in every subject you go through the equivalent of a year's
high-school work in the first semester. It's pure overload, and it ran
me over like a mack truck...
A. (I learned - oh yes, I learned...)
Pat Bowne
"Miki Kocic" <em...@munged.com> wrote
>
> There are stories of people who go to college at age 16 and get completely
> lost because they have the mind but not the maturity. Going through the
> grades one at a time is a good idea, because school is much more a venue
> of socialization than a venue of learning.
>
When my parents let me go from 10th grade directly to college, it was about
half for the course content and half to *avoid* the miseries of highschool
socialization.
Pat