Doesn't anyone comment anymore.

[NOIRTRASH]

CHLOE is daft.

From PORTRAIT OFR THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN.

white down. Her slate-blue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist and dovetailed behind her. Her bosom was as a bird's, soft and slight, slight and soft as the breast of some dark-plumaged dove. But her long fair hair was girlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her face. She was alone and still, gazing out to sea; and when she felt his presence and the worship of his eyes her eyes turned to him in quiet sufferance of his gaze, without shame or wantonness. Long,

Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (p. 158). . Kindle Edition.

 

[ChloeTzang]

BTW want to read something that can really make your head hurt, fighting through things like Milton's Paradise Lost of Inferno is a damn chore.

It's quite fascinating how hard some of this stuff is to read and yet other writers from the same era or close are actually far easier to get through. Chaucer for example is quite entertaining and still very readable. Beowulf as well, I mean that's such a classic story. And even some of the old Roman stuff like "The Aeneid" - I actually enjoyed that. I have an old copy of "Bullfinch's Mythology" that was my Granddad's that I read to death when I was younger and I loved all those stories.

I read "The Tain" a while ago as well, and that dates from the 8th century but it's still capable of grabbing you and holding you, altho a good translation also helps. But then I tried reading "The House of Spirits" by Isabel Allende and I was back to yawning. Couldn't finish it, which is more just my taste in books than anything else I guess.

CHLOE is daft.

From PORTRAIT OFR THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN.

white down. Her slate-blue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist and dovetailed behind her. Her bosom was as a bird's, soft and slight, slight and soft as the breast of some dark-plumaged dove. But her long fair hair was girlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her face. She was alone and still, gazing out to sea; and when she felt his presence and the worship of his eyes her eyes turned to him in quiet sufferance of his gaze, without shame or wantonness. Long,

Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (p. 158). . Kindle Edition.

I'm sleepy already.

I guess it's down to personal tastes in the end. I really couldn't get into page after page of that stuff.

 

[LeandraNyx]

I bet there are more authors commenting than you think because some do it as anonymous. Why? Forum reputation or perhaps an author writes a lot of LW stories and has a legion of trolls.

Oh my god, I didn't even think about the troll issue.

What readers know about writing is small. Readers eat McDonalds and Little Ceasars and sgop at WALMART.

I've always found this attitude to be overly pretentious. You don't need to be a garbage man to know trash when you see it; you don't need to be a writer to distinguish between a good story and a bad one. People know what they like and what they don't and they can tell you; that, to me, is valuable. Maybe they don't know all the technical terms like "story arc" or "allusion," but they can say stuff like, "Your characters felt kinda flat." That's helpful.

And, BTW, just because someone likes McDonald's doesn't mean they don't also enjoy fining dining, too. We all have our guilty pleasures. A lot of well-regarded authors have written "trashy novels" to make a quick buck so they can get by and pay their rent, it doesn't mean they're fundamentally bad writers. That kind of "holier-than-thou" thinking blinds you to nuance and limits your own self-improvement, because, "They don't know what they're talking about anyway!" Ignoring criticism on the basis of being above it is, IMHO, the epitome of the snowflake mentality.

BTW, crazy bread is amazing, you blasphemous heathen!

Or there is no story at all, to show that a good writer doesn't need a story to begin with.

Ugh, I hate that, lol.

 

[THROBBS]

Doesn't anyone comment anymore.

I couldn't say.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

I'm sleepy already.

I guess it's down to personal tastes in the end. I really couldn't get into page after page of that stuff.

That's not a representative sample of joyce's work; he's rarely so poetic. But it does a good job of capturing a young male's reaction to seeing a really beautiful (as opposed to sexy) woman. And her reaction - "the quiet sufferance of his gaze" - says so much about her in so few words. You (well, I, being male) instantly love her.

I don't even try to write like that; get one word wrong and it's a train wreck.

 

[My I]

I'll be honest here.... I really don't read a lot here. Frankly I don't read much at all anywhere, including books. Very few authors can really keep my attention very long. Most of the big name Authors that I really enjoyed are all gone. Occasionally I read a piece by someone to see what their style is like. But again I tend to lose interest in it quickly.

It's not an ego thing. It's not because I think I'm better than others. I've written some garbage. I've written some good stuff. Believe it or not I can't even read my own stories all the way through.

So.... Commenting? No. I don't do it a lot. Once in a while I find a story that really impresses me and, yes, I will leave a comment. I try to refrain from talking about technical aspects of their writing and focus on what I liked about the story and the overall feel.

If I didn't really like it, I prob'ly didn't finish it. And therefore didn't leave a comment or a vote. I didn't care for it but that doesn't mean it's not good. Just my cup.