godisthyname

I've found that the people I ask to review my literature (the risque stuff) seem to not appreciate any high-brow jokes or literary references and I have to explain these references and intellectual jokes. I think I'm in danger of being too intellectual and thus reducing my audience - dwindling it down but I don't want to dumb down.

Guineapiggy

I think you may hold too low an opinion of your readers. Much of the time when material is unread or uncommented it's because the grammar, flow or just general style is flawed. Other than this it could be that the forum was full of lazy people who would write but not read.
I'd be careful what you post, this does strike me as somewhat arrogant and I'm not afraid to say so. Nothing personal, I'll accept this at face value but I doubt everyone else will.

Willyshakespeare

I read your short story, Godisthyname. At this point, you don't have an audience, I assure you, and you've got much more important issues to worry about than high brow jokes and literary references. Worry about craft first.

godisthyname

Hmm Mr Shakespeare I appreciate your comments. I am arrogant, yes and I quite like it, I think great things can spring from arrogance. When I say about being too intellectual I am generally referring to my audience who physically surround me - those I have shown the work to personally.

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My king! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!

Guineapiggy

Suffice to say that was far from a great thing. Mental health and grammar lessons should be on the agenda, not recieving feedback.

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I'll sing along, yeah with every emergency. Just sing along, I'm the king of catastrophies. I'm so far gone that deep down inside I think it's fine by me that I'm my own worst enemy.

Willyshakespeare

Arrogance, Godisthyname, is just insecurity in disguise. Truly confident people aren't arrogant and don't deny their own shortcomings and thus have a much easier time with self-improvement.

" 'Naked have I seen both of them, the greatest man and the smallest man: All too similar are they still to each other. Verily, even the greatest found I all too human!' Thus spake Zarathustra." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

Fantasia

Goodness, godisthyname. ::rolls eyes around::

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"God says he can get me out of this mess, but he's pretty sure you're f%#ked." --Stephen, from "Braveheart"

Guineapiggy

*shrugs* You said it better than I could, Fantasia.

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I'll sing along, yeah with every emergency. Just sing along, I'm the king of catastrophies. I'm so far gone that deep down inside I think it's fine by me that I'm my own worst enemy.

Kitten Courna

General response: Are you all commenting on your dislike of the author personally, or on his question? Which of those matters most to you?

Response: Dumbing it down is not something I would recommend unless you are writing for a specific audience. And specific types of writing will often attract a specific audience. I have never relished the idea of dumbing things down, personally. It all depends on which you'd prefer to do.

-Kitten

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Cadmus: Poor child, like a white swan warding its weak old father, why do you clasp those white arms about my neck?
Euripides; 'The Bacchae'

Lily

Don't dumb it down. If they can't understand it, that's their problem. Take comfort in the fact that there'll almost always be someone who can understand your work, even if it is only one person. If you feel good about it and are absolutely convinced that you're in the right, don't change a thing. However, form and grammar are two completely different things. Grammar is something that's absolutely necessary when you're a writer- that's what creates the logic in what you write. If you don't have grammar, you can be as intelligent and clever as you want, but even the smartest person in the entire world won't be able to understand what you're trying to say, and no one's going to bother reading your writing.

Secondly- keep in mind, I'm only mentioning this since other people (including yourself) have brought this up- I've learned that being arrogant will get you nowhere. Of course you have to be aggressive, but never arrogant- that'll just create enemies against you and that's the last thing you need. You don't have to agree with me, I'm just telling you what I've learned from all seventeen years of my earthly experience .

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Insufferable Know-it-all.

godisthyname

Maybe in future I should be incredibly specific. I was referring to my previous work - for the more adult audience shall I say. Considering the material I managed to write 2 songs for it and quoted Henry IV parts 1 and 2, Othello, Titus Andronicus, Henry V, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear and also Vonnegut, Sherwood Anderson, Evelyn Waugh, Ernest Hemingway and one of my songs is inspired by an aria by Donizetti - sure it's arrogant and self-congatulating but didn't Shakespeare say that self-love was not as great a crime as self-neglect?

I think you are being too harsh on me, Nietzsche said that "In all my work I have written with my whole body and my whole life." To some people that could seem arrogant to others not. Arrogance is only arrogance if you call it that - compared to many people I am increedibly modest - after all there is a thin line between self-confidence and brazen arrogance.

Fantasia

Well, I didn't mean to be too harsh. I am sorry about that, but your question kinda took me by surprise, and then it kind of put me off. But then I don't know you. Maybe next time, I'd know enough what to expect from you.

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"God says he can get me out of this mess, but he's pretty sure you're f%#ked." --Stephen, from "Braveheart"

modified7

This is bad.......maybe because it is late....I don't know. When reading this post I had immediate reactions that compelled me to respond. Now after clicking on the reply button I'm pondering what exactly I would say, and then I'm having flashbacks of the Enforced Bliss "Blight" post and now think I won't even respond. Tact......and better use of my time are going to prevail this time...... Keith

Beatrice Boyle

You're right Keith, in this case...silence is the better part of valor. But then, at 75, age has priviledges! So here goes...God must be laughting his head off at his self named namesake...as my old mother used to say, "empty barrels make the most noise, and the proof is in the pudding!" So far, we haven't tasted the pudding...what time is dessert?

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To a Sr. Citizen, age is an attitude, not a number...To the young, attitude will get you fired!

Willyshakespeare

"God must be laughing his head off at his self named namesake..."

Not that I'm convinced Godisthyname knows this, despite a professed interest in the Bard, but his moniker translated into modern English would be: "God-is-your-name," so he's calling us all God.

Source: The Collins English Dictionary © 2000 HarperCollins Publishers: thy*[›a?] determiner* [usually preceding a consonant] (archaic) (or) (British) (dialect) belonging to or associated in some way with you (thou)

Or maybe Godisthyname is meant to mean "Go-dis-your-name," which is what I'm sure he'd want us all to do.