The sword of the naive knight gets stuck in the pudding of life.

Wednesday 19 November 2008

Stop writing now

There is so much writing out there. A recent important survey showed that a certain percentage of people were writing a lot. It was a true. The idea is that society will reward you with money for what you write. Money buys things like food, kitchen implements and non essential operations.

How about if we were rewarded for how little we wrote? Writing grants seem to suffer from a fundamental problem. You can fund a writer to write his weird book about llamas wearing hats but it doesn't mean anyone will read it. It's not like funding art that people will see. What use are books unread? The solution is not to encourage writers but to discourage bad writers. The next time some dullard celebrity inflicts his memoirs the funding bodies should pay off the publishers and have them burn the manuscripts or make sure that each one has at least 10 pages of proper writing.

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