Blithering is not writting (was: Regarding David Bowman)

Pvthur@aol.com
Sun, 14 Nov 1999 14:20:16 EST

From: http://www.conrado.net/arthur_c_clarke.html

"Well, we have all heard of Arthur C. Clarke. Only a monolith that may have been left abandoned by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization on the moon for the past four million years awaiting the first physical contact with a human astronaut to send away a beacon announcing to its creators that the species on that nearby beautiful blue planet has at last become a space-faring one.. ..; could possibly be oblivious to the Deep Impact caused on our space-age civilization by the man who invented (sic) the geo- synchronous satellite, foresaw the internet, commented live on TV during the first (official) human landing on the moon, and, of course, wrote a little script for a weird psychedelic film based on one of his most obscure short stories that would soon become the best science-fiction film of all time: 2001: A Space Odyssey."

What does this blubbering swill mean, anyway?

Break out the rotgut.

Unbridled enthusiasm, unshared, has lain waste to your technique, child. Stream of consciousness is the beginning of writing, not the end.

My advice:

  1. Take a class. Or,
  2. Take what you've got and rewrite it, half as long. Then write it again, half as long, again. Then throw it away.

And god, stop wasting our time.