| Author | Message | ||
     Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.75.24 |
http://www.thebookseller.com/news/67813-harpercollins-guillermo-del-toro-trilogy .html | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 79.187.206.46 |
Great stuff. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
I'll be interested to read this. If it's a success, it could also be good for genre fiction. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
There's a distinct possibility it could be very good indeed. We always knew the lad was one of us, but now he's REALLY one of us.  | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.157.114.136 |
 Not good news when you're still struggling to write; it's like trying to fight back a tide with a spoon. Have been seriously thinking of chucking in my towel this week. I suck, but can't do anything else, and don't really want to. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.157.114.136 |
When I hear of good new writers my instinct tells me to run away; evidence of goodness and brains just... oh, I give in. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Would you want to belong to a genre populated only by the likes of James Herbert? Rejoice in the existence of genius! It gives us something to aspire to. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
When I hear of good new writers, Tony, it makes me feel great. Especially if they're writing in my genre. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.254.118 |
Tony, I read so many scripts every year, and I can honestly say - no exaggeration - 1 out of 50 are really "good." If that, so maybe I am exaggerating. I'm sure the same stands for fiction. I'm struggling myself to write and advance, and yet I CRAVE reading great scripts: reading nothing but shit brings your mood down to foul levels. I love finding great stuff, trumpeting it, sending it around, praising it... advancing someone else, if I at all can in my mostly powerless way... with no benefit to myself except that I was able to even read, something wonderful.... | ||
| Alansjf (Alansjf) Username: Alansjf Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 93.97.93.216 |
Vampires ... no. Guillermo del Toro vampires ... hell yes. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
Is this unprecedented? A great director also writing prose fiction? I don't know enough about directors. Should be interesting, to say the least. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.157.114.136 |
It sounds like I am Legend. I've no competetive spirit, unless it's for stupid pathword-like games. I just feel 'bad' | ||
| Simon Strantzas (Nomis) Username: Nomis Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 38.113.181.169 |
Cronenberg started out as a prose writer, and is writing a novel right now. Ethan Coen has a short-story collection and poetry collection to his name. That's two there. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.157.114.136 |
Neil Jordan. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.75.24 |
Behind me in the queue you lot. Indeed Del Toro`is great! | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.201.147 |
Tony, don't feel threatened. Only you can ever write like you. In his book, David Lynch talks about taking 7 years to make ERASERHEAD, feeling all the time that the world was passing him by, that he was crazy and would be ignored. The world won't pass you by. Only he could make ERASERHEAD. Only you could write your work. | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 79.187.206.46 |
Tony - you remind me of my flatmate. He's a writer/poet, really talented guy, but he rarely submits anything because he feels as if nobody understands his work. Sometimes he doesn't write because of this. I tell him nobody will ever understand his work if he doesn't submit. It's the same thing with writing. How will you ever know how good you are if you don't write. Vonnegut said write a story, paint a picture, write a poem. It doesn't matter if it's crap. You created something. I'm in Zed's camp too...without it I would have gone even crazier than I already am. BTW, I've read some of your work and I loved it. | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 79.187.206.46 |
Also...take inspiration, as Joel said. But take it from everywhere. Look at Prof and Zed, submitting a handful of stories one moment, the next giving readings of their work to gathering of contemporaries. That stuff makes me smile from ear to ear. Those guys literally worked their fucking socks off writing. Look at how much they've achieved. Look at the writers they've become. That's inspiring, even more so than reading Ramsey's work, because I wasn't around when Ramsey started out. I'd love to be where they are, but I'm not, never will be. Does it make me sad or envious. Hell no! It makes me realise many things, but it most of all makes me, as I said, smile. BUT most of all take delight in the knowledge that you create something from nothing, that you are part of this. I once received a letter from an editor of a small magazine, nothing more than a spruced up fanzine really, who told me he'd received three letters with regards to my story. Three letters, I thought, holy fucking shit I must be a fucking genius. But seriously, that was so inspiring to me that I sat right down there and then and wrote a six thousand word story, such was the sheer joy of those three letters. The story was shit on toast, but something so small and minor to everybody else, yet so inspiring. Of course these days magazines are flooded with letters asking them NOT to publish my work. And to finally conclude with my 'Twelve Angry Men' speech, the time Ramsey introduced me at his Xmas bash some years back as a genre writer, man, oh boy, that's inspiring. Christ, that was a touch sentimental,wasn't it. I felt as if I were Micky giving Rocky the inspirational speech stuff. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
Tony, if you're capable of a tale as effective as "Figures", you shouldn't put yourself down. But it's my belief that the good writers are the ones who are never satisafied with their work. Jean Renoir was a great director who wrote a novel (I suspect because he couldn't have filmed the material as written). | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
Is any writer ever satisfied with his work? I know I never am and never will be - I think the trick is to know when you've done as much as you possibly can with a piece. At that point, you send it out to either fly or fall on its own merits, knowing deep down that you've failed again but this time you might've got just a wee bit closer... It took me years to get to that stage. Then at least I felt ready to start submitting my stories to markets. | ||
| Simon Strantzas (Nomis) Username: Nomis Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 99.225.111.224 |
You're right, Zed. I'm never satisfied with your work, either. Ho ho! But it's true. I read my own work and think, "Really? They published this?" But by the same token I think an author has to have a bit of superiority complex as well. One has to believe, even if its only occasionally, that one's work is special, otherwise why submit it? Apropos of nothing, an interesting writer quote I recently heard and then promptly forgot who said goes something like "Talent is a dime-a-dozen. What you get paid for is discipline." The longer I'm in this game and see talented writers give up the more I realize how true that saying is. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
"...satisafied..."? Apologies - I've only one functioning eye at the computer just now. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
>>>I've only one functioning eye at the computer just now. Men and the Internet, eh? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
At least it's still functioning... | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
Simon, King says something similar: "Talent is common as table-salt. What separates success from failure is a good deal of hard work." | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.236.227 |
He's right, of course. Lots of transpiration, not inspiration. | ||
| Grant (Grant) Username: Grant Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 67.176.207.225 |
This news really made my day or night. I love Guillermo del Toro. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.190.64 |
I don't agree that talent is "common as table salt." If it were, we wouldn't see so much unimaginative, badly written crap being published/self-published. I think the trick is combining whatever talent one has with craftsmanship... and a lot of hard work, obviously. It holds true for all the arts. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
I think King was using that comment as a rhetorical device to a large degree. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.183.174 |
Yeah, I see what you mean. I think I've read it in context before, a long time ago. Was it in his book On Writing? | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.236.227 |
I think it was in DANCE MACABRE or the Foreword to NGHT SHIFT. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
I suspect that what King meant was that many people show potential but are largely unwilling to put in the years of practice before submission and publication. They want it all too soon. Symptoms of our times, of course. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.157.114.136 |
My Lord. My Lord. I feel like I've been zapped by God. Thank you, everyone, from a very deep place. Now to write - when my hands stop shaking. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 88.110.221.72 |
Haruki Murakami has what looks like a very good book out at the moment about marathon running and writing. He says a lot of the above (though he didn't write about how good Tony's "Figures" was) and more, from the dips in that I made. He's a big one ofr physical fitness playing its part too, you know, which I think is probably a good point. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 88.110.221.72 |
A horror director whose name passes me by did produce a horror novel not too far inthe distant past, but I can't remember who it was. Was supposed to be a big deal but was rubbish, apparently. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
Mick Garris? I did say great director. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 88.110.221.72 |
Ha. Remembered: Wes Craven. ... I think. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
He used to be good. He coulda been a contender. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
Garris did write a novel, tho. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 88.110.221.72 |
Hey, with my birthday money out on Guernsey I bought a signed copy of the new John le Carre book. Looks lovely. great signature, too. Alas, the island was well short of horror or fantasy or much else outside of crime and the mainstream on the shelves. Well, unless you ocunt "paranormal romance" or whatever it's being called. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 88.110.221.72 |
ocunt Interesting typo. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.226.216 |
Is this unprecedented? A great director also writing prose fiction? Pier Pasolini (poetry too). |