Whoa... what? How does that happen? How can you and yourself be in two different places at once? My mind is blown...
It does look a bit like thread-hijack. I think it is linked though, because it's good advice to read good writing. Good writing, in a way, is the expert itself. The proof is in the eating, so to speak, or in this case the reading. The problem is: who do you trust to read? And that's why you should be wary of bestsellers (in my humble opinion). So who do you actually like to read?
I've learned a lot from bad books, oddly enough. Most of them I just forget about, but there are some things I don't like that stick in my mind like a bit of peanut in between teeth--I keep thinking about them, and why it didn't work. Maybe it's that the author had some good ideas, but executed them badly, or they seemed to be focusing on the least interesting bit of a fascinating setting, or it was going well up until that ill-considered plot twist. But thinking about those things has been useful for me.
That's a good point. Reading bad stuff as well as good stuff, but only if you know which is which. It helps to understand why something is bad if you can compare it to something good. It still comes down to: how do you tell? and Who do you trust?
Well, here's the thing. When I was much younger, let's say 10, I loved watching cartoons, and then when I was 22, I thought the movie Independence Day was the most exciting thing I'd ever seen. Then I grew up and saw many more movies and understood how silly cartoons are and how poorly made Independence Day is. It comes with experience.
Your opinions and preferences changed over your lifetime. Color me unsurprised. But whatever stories you enjoyed when you were ten were perfectly suitable/worthy influences at that stage in your life. Similar to how the books that you currently greatly admire are worthy influences.
You know something can be considered critically 'bad' and still be popular. Michael Bay's Transformers movies are in no way critical darlings but I'm pretty sure they each made millions at the box office. Really to me, it comes down less to "good" and "bad" as "enjoyable" and "not enjoyable." And that is something that comes down to opinion. Citizen Kane is one of if not the most highly rated movies of all time. I didn't like it, I felt like it was boring. A lot of flashbacks to some guys life and not a lot of action. Pleasing everybody is an impossible goal. If something doesn't have a tinge of fantasy/scifi it's gonna have to work a lot harder to maintain my interest. My mom is put off by fantasy/scifi. She likes chick-flicks. I hate them. What it comes down to is what kind of stories do you like to read? Write those kinds of stories, and use your own best judgement on what will help you and your story vs what will not.
Maybe you’re in a middle stage and the time will come when you can see why you loved what you loved, while still appreciating the more sophisticated material that you prefer now.
When things are well marketed, they often do well at the box office. That doesn't mean it was critically good or popular. Sometimes many people will go to the cinema and decide it was a poor movie.
I don't think that. I couldn't tell, because I've never seen the movie and have no idea how good it is. How many times have you seen it?
Yes, opinions and preferences. Certain stories worked for you at earlier stages in your life and now they don't. That's not uncommon. You're no longer their target audience. If you enjoyed playing the board game Candyland when you were a young child but now it bores you to tears, that doesn't make Candyland "bad." It's a fine game that continues to delight children.
Among experts, I trust John Gardner's books The Art of Fiction and On Becoming a Novelist. I trust Gardner because he and I have the same goal: to create art in the form of prose. He wasn't much concerned about making the bestseller list; rather, he was interested in work that would still be in print fifty or a hundred years (or more) from the time it's written. He wanted to create something of value - permanent value - and expected his audience and students to want the same thing. To this end, he drew his examples from the finest literature he could find: Tolstoy, Isak Dinesen, the best work of Hemingway, Fowles, Joyce, Woolf, and so on. I contrast him with Dwight Swain and his Techniques of the Selling Writer. Swain didn't seem to care about art. He was an unrepentant hack and championed pulp writers. He drew his examples from a motley bunch of hacks nobody has ever heard of, but managed to slip into print in pulp magazines. It kind of pisses me off that so many people swear by Swain's book. To me, it teaches cliches and lazy methods. Of course, the best way to learn is by reading the best stuff you can get your hands on. Classics are classics for a reason.
I most trust those who are successful in the areas I want to be successful in and take anybody who is acting in theory or is not successful with a bag of salt.
What does that mean? Practically speaking, I don't know how deception could make me a successful author or familial. If anything it would be a dark seed that would inevitably destroy it. Much like how gangsters never prosper; the Sopranos being a good example.
Gangsters might not, but dishonest US politicians have been very very successful indeed. Same goes for bad movies and bad music. Why not writing?
Because I cannot conceive of dishonest writing beyond flagrantly lying (like yellow journalism)? Please give me an example of how I could prosper as a "fake writer" or "lying writer"--the most I can think of is falsely marketing myself as something other than what I am selling. Like selling a fantasy novel to historical romance enthusiasts. And if I did that, I would lose my reputation greatly. Plus it would be depressingly boring. Outside journalism and marketing, I cannot conceive of honesty or dishonesty in writing. Even if I'm depicting a completely out-there and strange world with little to do with reality, it's neither a lie nor truth but a window into a mental creation.
But this is your definition of "bad". You seem dedicated to the idea that the buying public will obediently consume what they are commanded, by marketing, to consume. But there have been plenty of big marketing efforts that have failed. People consume what pleases them. Pleasing them takes skill, effort, and talent. The fact that you disapprove of many of the things that please them doesn't change that fact. Making something that's just bad requires no skill. Making something that's "bad" by your standards, but that persuades ten million people to pay, requires, again, skill, effort, and talent. You're not distinguishing between kinds of "bad", and that failure to distinguish is leading you to come to invalid conclusions.
