Finally got round to reading the greygirlbeast posts. Not really worth it. However, one ray of light was that matt_ruff (as in Matt Ruff, author and rasfw voice of reason) turned up to talk some senseOne last thing: several people have claimed that all writing is self-indulgent as if this solves everything. Well, yeah, to an extent it is. This should tip you off to the ( Read more... )

A sort of companion piece to the last post. Often hand in hand with the accusation of self-indulgence is the thought that the editor has not cracked the whip hard enough. It is a common complaint of reviews and general online chitchat that "X needs a better editor" and the fact that editors no longer have time to edit is regularly bemoaned. Blake ( Read more... )

coalescent took advantage of my absence at the end of last week to post all sorts of interesting things I couldn't reply to. One of these was on the topic of the phrase "self-indulgent" as used by critics. (There are many more blogosphere posts on this that are linked within.) Personally I was surprised so many people were against the term. I was even more ( Read more... )