Links for 2011-04-18

  • “Here is what it means to be a TV writer: You are paid to work in conditions that vastly accelerate the degradation of your body while brainstorming fantasy lives for the select group of your co-workers who work in conditions designed to make their already-exceptional bodies look better than yours ever did or will.

    It’s a psychologically fraught occupation for this and other reasons. But mostly this one.”

  • “The main characters in these Christian movies are in the business of being saved. 

    They don’t do things for others.  The main action of the movie is in their having things done to them.  Which means that if a movie is to be “Christian,” it has to have at its center characters who are passive and to a great degree helpless.

    “Christian” movies are targeted at a conservative Christian audience and so they reflect conservative Christian beliefs and the main one of these is that the individual is essentially helpless in the face of temptation.  Helplessness on the part of the hero or heroine is not traditionally the stuff that makes for exciting storytelling.”

  • “Ask yourself this question: How long does it take you to consume an average novel? Six or seven hours? A day? A week? A month? With that answer in mind, consider this: It will take me roughly one hour of work per thousand words of that novel. So, the average novel will take me a minimum of two and a half weeks to write. Let’s bump that out to three to include edits and proofing. So, that’s 21 Days for a Novel; and you’ll devour it in a day? I daresay, if you’re reading this and you can go at the book without too much interruption, you are guaranteed to finish that book is less time than it took me to write it.

    What this means, then, is that the capacity of the audience to consume a writer’s work will always exceed his capacity to generate work. “

1 comment

  1. I have to be frank. The link on the difference between conservative and liberal Christianity explained more about issues I’ve been having about spirituality than anything I’ve seen in years. I’d point out by the way that a preacher by the name of Rob Bell essentially created this weeks cover story in Time magazine. As is I happen to like Bell. To take the point further, personal salvation shouldn’t be an issue if you are taking actions or trying to take actions to make the world a better place. In short, if I’m a Christian who beleives everybody gets into heaven and am not self aggrandizing…what difference does it make? On the otherhand if my idea of helping others is to sell them trinkets so that they can “get saved” and name a college after myself, while meeting with prostitutes…I might have a problem. Being weak or committing a sin doesn’t make you less of a Christian(unless you don’t learn from it, or fail to see it as a problem)….but it does make you human. As such we should try to continuously get better and continuously help others. That’s my sermon…great link, thanx it cleared some things up for me!

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