We don’t know whether we hope this is right…or pray that it’s dead wrong. Talk about out of frying pan and into the sizzler:
Is Talent Overrated?
by Anne R. Allen
I often run into new writers who want to be reassured they have talent. They sometimes ask me to read some fledgling work in hopes I’ll pronounce them “talented.”
I always decline. (A wise author never goes there.) It’s not simply that I can’t fit one more thing into my already jam-packed schedule—it’s also that I have no way of telling if people have talent.
Strength of Character
Hollywood may close up shop and go into vacation mode around Thanksgiving time every year, but in other parts of the world (in this case India) TV execs eyes remained riveted to the ball:
by Divya Kaushik
Purnendu Shekhar feels that to be a successful writer for television one needs to understand relationships and their complexities, the working and business of channels and the art of interweaving several stories smartly. He tells Divya Kaushik that the audience should also be blamed for the success of low grade content on the small screen
Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works. Virginia Woolf must have been speaking on behalf of every writer when she wrote this famous line. Purnendu Shekhar can’t agree more on this. The script writer strongly feels that to weave a beautiful story it is important for a writer to connect with it personally. Each of his stories is born out of his experience and observations. He gives an example and says that the story of famous show Balika Vadhu that made him a household name was partly based on the experiences of his mother, who herself was married at the age of 15 in Rajasthan. “In fact, in the second episode of Balika Vadhu the lead (Anandi), who is a child bride, says a few lines and those lines were actually my mother’s lines which she told us in our childhood. In India, most cases of child marriages are from Rajasthan and since I spent a major part of my life there I can easily understand that. I started writing the story in 1992 and it was always close to my heart. Its success is an example of the fact that the audience connects with stories that are born out of writer’s heart,” says Shekhar.
JOHN OSTRANDER: READING MYSELF
by John Ostrander
I recently received my comp copies of the second trade paperback (TPB) collection of The Spectre, dubbed Wrath of God, and took advantage of it to re-read the stories Tom Mandrake and I created back in the Nineties.
The character was originally created back in the 30s by Jerry Siegel who also co-created Superman. Jim Steranko described the Spectre as having the toughest origin in comics. Plainclothes cop, Detective Jim Corrigan, is killed by gangsters but, unable to rest, is sent back as an Avenging Ghost by a mysterious Voice who can be taken as God. He’s also given lots of powers. He may in fact be the most powerful character in comics. Some think he’s too powerful; how can you create a significant threat to a character who’s only slightly less powerful than God? In the decades since his creation, those powers got damped down. Corrigan himself was supposedly brought back to life with the Spectre as a separate entity who took shelter within Corrigan.
When Tom and I got a hold of the character, we decided that having a powerful Spectre would result in better visuals and that Corrigan was dead and had been since the character began. The result has been what many readers declared a definitive version of the Spectre and some of the best work Tom and I have done separately or together.
John Cleese and Eric Idle are so funny people pay just to hear them talk
…To each other yet! This was wonderful to see live last week, but the recording ain’t bad either:
YOUR AUTHOR PLATFORM
by Rita Karnopp
There has always been talk about how to promote your work once you finally get published. If you’re like me, I’d rather write stories – promoting takes effort and time. But a writer must make time and take efforts to create a writing platform.
Oh, I’ve heard it, “Do I really need to have a platform?” No, not really, but then that depends on your goals and aspirations of selling your books.
If you desire – need – want – commercial success and great sales, then I would say, “Yes, having a platform will make all the difference in the world.” It’s irrelevant whether you’re an indie (self-published) or traditional published author. You must decide how you can grab those readers and get exciting exposure for your books if you want to be competitive in the marketplace.