Re: Stirling's _The Sunrise Lands_ and misc thoughts

On Oct 6, 1:57 pm, Steve <joatsim...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On Oct 5, 12:19?pm, Mark_Reich...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Moral: you can't please everyone and there's no point in trying. Just
write what _you_ like. Some people will like it; some won't. That's
a matter of taste.

My tastes must have changed because writers whose work I've liked a
lot no longer produce work I like. Or maybe I've stayed the same, and
they've changed.

-- since the print runs have been going up by about fifty to a hundred
percent with each successive "Emberverse" book and the latest two have
hit the NYT bestseller list (#34, one week, for AMaC, #25 and #27, two
weeks, for TSL) building a larger audience seems to be taking care of
itself... 8-).

*Wider* audience, more varied audience, is what I meant, but I know
full well that size is what matters.<g>

Look, no offense, but you're laboring under a fundamental
misapprehension as to how the creative process works.

I am? Since I already knew about the separateness of 'fitting and
polishing' and the creative genesis, I don't think so.

The 'fitting and polishing' stage requires conscious craft, deliberate
choice, and that can be learned -- it's a matter of technique. You
can 'put something in' at that point, or take something out, or adjust
it, or do a bridging section.

That's where you say to yourself "no, already used that adjective
twice -- watch out, Steve, your liking for the word 'golden' is active
again", or "wait a minute, don't they already know that?" or "too many
sunsets, Herr Stirling" or "can a bow really do that?" Minor in-jokes
come into that category too.

Like the purveyor of Fine Arms and Armor in Bend and his motto?<g>

But the fundamentals of the story, the characters and the setting and
what happens, are more like lucid dreaming, or experiencing and then
trying to write down extremely vivid waking dreams. This is
something you either have, or you don't, and it's not really under
detailed conscious control. In fact, if you try to look at it or
guide it too closely, it just stops.

At least, it's that way for me, and for most of the writers I've
talked to about it.

So which is thinking about the implications of allowed physics on
allowable technology in the story, 'fitting and polishing' or 'lucid
dreaming'? Seemed like 'fitting and polishing' research to me, but
your methods may vary.

.

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