Gabe Chouinard, prompted by this article on SF Diplomat, has started a bit of a wildfire in the blogosphere. This time the subject at hand is whether or not folk like me should get paid for what we do.

Aside from Gabe and SF Diplomat a few other bloggers have felt obliged to comment:

Galley Cat
Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist
OF Blog of the Fallen
Westeros Forums

My own take?

An anonymous commentor on Gabe’s blog made a comment that summed things up pretty well,

Essentially a lot of what we do, with regards to publishers and authors, is publicity. Free publicity. To that end, the publishers, in a sense, owe us more than we owe them, regardless of how many free books they might send us. As soon as someone starts to pay you, they

I work for myself, and only myself. Unless a publisher wants to officially hire me to run their blog, I certainly don’t want to be receiving money for them and having to deal with the fallout associated with that. I’m happy as a pig-in-shit about being my own boss, and wouldn’t want it any other way.

Thoughts? Should I be swimming through piles of coin, Scrooge McDuck-style? or does the poverty driven struggle of blogging make us better at the job?

Being a writer’s a rewarding thing. It’s always thrilling to finally put the ideas and stories floating around in your mind down to paper. There are lots of rewards, but there are also a lot of negatives to go along with those rewards.

One of those is the effect being a writer has on reading and the way I approach a novel. I remember, back in highschool (that’s my disclaimer so I don’t get mocked…) I was watching an episode of Dawson’s Creek and Dawson, a film nut, was whining becuase he was getting so involved in cinema, and the way it’s crafted, that he was no longer able to enjoy movies as a viewer. He spent more time picking them apart, marvelling or critiquing the technique of the filmmaker, and less time being a fan of the medium and getting lost in the movie.

In a lot of ways I know how Dawson felt. As a writer I often find myself watching the the way the author crafts the story, rather than getting involved with the characters/plot. Of course, there is no better way to learn the craft (besides practice, I suppose) than watching and interpreting the masters at work. I learn a lot about the craft by taking in what my favourite authors do – what works in certain situation, how they handle paticularily hard parts of a novel, etc… – but also what they don’t do.
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Everyone’s got one.

That secret pile of novels, so very well regarded by the literary world, sitting in a dark corner of their house, sadly neglected despite assurances by so many others that “you’ve got to read them!” It’s a secret Pile ‘o Shame that haunts readers, always calling out longingly to be conquered but always growing bigger.

There’re simply too many novels out there (even if you only count the ones worth reading) for anyone to tackle all of them, and so the pile grows bigger. It’s so shameful that many readers hide it, boastfully playing on Internet message boards and blogs, pretending they’ve read them, or at the very least have given them a meaningful glance – catch them in their lie and they’re quick to exit the conversation.

I thought it would be fun to come out of the closet with my Pile o’ Shame every once in a while, crucifying myself before the masses by laying bare the gaps in my knowledge of the genre. I’ll explain a little of why I haven’t read them before – whether it’s ignorance, taste, fear or otherwise – all in hopes that someone will come along and convince me exactly why a particular novel or series deserves to be the next wiped off my Pile o’ Shame.

So, let’s get this started.
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As a writer, something I’ve always put a lot of thought into, and struggled with, to be honest, the use of 3rd-person narrative versus 1st-person narrative. I really feel that both are incredibly valid ways to tell a story, and each comes with its own pros and cons. As a reader, I enjoy both for different reasons as well and often get in moods where only one type of storytelling and narrative will satisfy me. I don’t seem to be the only one who feels this way, either.

In preparation for this article I decided to go out and get an objective look at the subject, so I looked towards two of my favourite forums (Westeros and the Official Terry Brooks Forum) for some opinions. The subject prompted a lot of good, intelligent debate on the forums and I was pleasently surprised by what I found.
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   About a week ago, John (from Grasping for the Wind) posted a well thought out and articulated article on his stance regarding the presence of swearing in Fantasy novels. This is a topic I’m constantly thinking about and I planned on writing a response… but, well, time got away from me and I never really got around to it. Then Joe Abercrombie, (author of The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged and the forthcoming Last Argument of Kings, brought his own thoughts to the table and I figured this would be a perfect time to finally add my own ideas and opinions to the mix.
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