Voracious Writer

Voracious reader slash writer. Here to vent my reading slash writing frustrations slash unfinished ideas slash DNF books. Asks and Rant Submissions are welcome!

[kenstaroyco]

Andrew Garfield on The Stephen Colbert Show discussing his problem with certainty of faith. [x]

[voraciouswriter]

A Man Called Ove

DID NOT FINISH -> Why would anyone read this book when the same emotions can be felt in the first 15 minutes of UP (in a much better, more streamlined manner)? “Booktok sensation” disappoints again...

[voraciouswriter]

Neil Gaiman

I have been reading and watching @neil-gaiman works of late. My dreams have become so much more interesting. And also my waking world. I love how his books make me see wonder and intrigue in common things in and around me.

[voraciouswriter]

Content Length

I wonder often the impact broadcasting norms have had on the definition of an “adaptation”. I am reading a book at present, whose ideal form of screen adaptation should be a series of 10 minute episodes at most. However, it is more likely than not, that if said book were to be serialised, the episodes would be stretched to the conventional 20 minutes and stuffed with filler to make that happen.

I hope the democratization of media by way of the internet allows for greater flexibility in content duration, particularly for studio-published films and serials (in the same way YouTube has liberated independent content creation from several constraints)

[voraciouswriter]

Double Quoting in Small-Talk

I hate when people use double quotes in smalltalk. As if recounting past conversations wasn’t tedious enough, people just have to recall inefficiencies and tautologies in past conversations too, don’t they? Let us examine the evil of using double-quotes through two samples.

Sample A: a person uses double quotes to convey a point

So I asked him “do you want to join me for dinner tonight?”

And he said “no I have to takeover someone’s shift tonight”

So I was like “what about tomorrow?”

And he was like “I can’t do dinner tomorrow but I can do lunch around 1”

And I told him “I have a work meeting at 1:30 so can we meet at 12 instead?”

And he said “Umm okay 12 works for me I guess”

And I said “Perfect then we shall meet at 12”

And he was like “yes we shall meet at 12”

Sample B: a person avoids the use of double quotes to convey exactly the same point

So I made lunchplans with him tomorrow afternoon at 12.

[voraciouswriter]

Comic #2: The Long Halloween - the Concept of the Long Defeat

I recently read a few Batman stories. Here are some reflections.

Batman is 55 and has been retired for 10 years. He is a broken man - both emotionally and physically. The city has calmed down a little crime-wise, as Batman helped imprison all the big villains prior to his retirement, but in general, there is an air of despair and hopelessness that runs through the city’s fibre. As a new class of criminal called the Mutant Gang takes form from the aforementioned despair and hopelessness, the Batman feels compelled, nay overwhelmed, by his inner psychosis to don the cape and mask again. His movement and reflexes are slow. There’s weariness and self-doubt. But he just musters sheer determination every night, takes heavy blows, gets his ribs broken and all that, but he scrapes a win every day in one way or another. This spirit of willing through his limitations makes him even more ruthless and dangerous. On the flipside, as was the case in the Long Halloween, with his return, so does begin yet again the descent of Gotham into debauchery and hedonism. However, unlike the Long Halloween, The Dark Knight Returns ends on an optimistic note, with a postulation that Batman’s newfound ruthlessness is what could bring a more definite end to the crime that plagues the town.

The city itself has a fascinating character arc in this story, and it also contains one of the most beautiful philosophical deliberations of the Batman myth.

[voraciouswriter]

Striking when the iron is hot

I don’t post well on my main blog. The concepts are nice but I am usually in a hurry to get them out. So I don't execute them properly. It's not self-doubt - I know this because it's a conscious decision I make while publishing. I do this because if I delay to polish it, I lose interest in it and it stays unpublished. The outcome is that the posts I make there are erratic and quality-wise up and down, but they do come out as raw expressions of gripping ideas. I am not sure whether I like this tradeoff. I shall evaluate and understand, slowly yet surely.

[voraciouswriter]

Comic #1: The Long Halloween - the Concept of the Long Defeat

I recently read a few Batman stories. Here are some reflections.

Credit to Matt Draper for making this observation

The Long Halloween is set in the early years of Batman’s career as a crime fighter. The core idea of the story is how Batman’s ruthless quest to rid the city of organised crime gave birth to a new class of the criminally insane to replace former mobsters. This marks the beginning of the chaos and madness that Gotham is soon to descend into. The concept of Long Defeat, popularised by Tolkien, runs through the story as an undercurrent as the tangible short-term “victory” at the end of the book comes with heavy “intangible” losses that contribute to the motif of a long but inevitable defeat of the good of the city (Batman and Gordon) at the hands of the corruption that runs inherent to Gotham.

[voraciouswriter]

How craving attention makes you less creative (and paying attention makes you more)

Some of my favourite excerpts from this:

“I've been lucky in my life to get a lot more than my fair share of attention. And I'm grateful for that, because like I said, it's a powerful feeling. But there's another powerful feeling that I've also been lucky to experience a lot as an actor. And it's funny, it's sort of the opposite feeling, because it doesn't come from getting attention. It comes from paying attention. When I'm acting,I get so focused that I'm only paying attention to one thing. Like when I'm on set and we're about to shoot and the first AD calls out "Rolling!" And then I hear "speed," "marker," "set,"and then the director calls "Action!" I've heard that sequence so many times, like, it's become this Pavlovian magic spell for me. "Rolling," "speed," "marker," "set" and "action." Something happens to me, I can't even help it. My attention...narrows. And everything else in the world, anything else that might be bothering me or might grab my attention, it all goes away, and I'm just ... there. And that feeling, that is what I love, that, to me, is creativity.”

“The channels of distribution have been democratized, and that's a good thing. But I do think there's an unintended consequence for anybody on the planet with an urge to be creative --myself included, because I'm not immune to this. I think that our creativity is becoming more and more of a means to an end --and that end is to get attention. And so I feel compelled to speak up because in my experience, the more I go after that powerful feeling of paying attention, the happier I am. But the more I go after the powerful feeling of getting attention, the unhappier I am.”

“That feeling of inadequacy is what drives you to post, so you can get more attention, and then that attention that you get is what these companies sell, that's how they make their money.So there is no amount of attention you can get where you feel like you've arrived, and you're like, "Ah, I'm good now."And of course, there are a lot of actors who are more famous than I am, have more followers than I do, but I bet you they would tell you the same thing. If your creativity is driven by a desire to get attention, you're never going to be creatively fulfilled.”

“In fact, some of my favourite things I've ever made,I made with people that I never physically met.And by the way, this, to me, is the beauty of the internet.If we could just stop competing for attention, then the internet becomes a great place to find collaborators.And once I'm collaborating with other people, whether they're on set, or online, wherever, that makes it so much easier for me to find that flow, because we're all just paying attention to the one thing that we're making together.And I fell like I'm part of something larger than myself, and we all sort of shield each other from anything else that might otherwise grab our attention, and we can all just be there.”

[voraciouswriter]

Bespoke Art / Mass Manufactured Art

I have this philosophy, where I prefer to buy bespoke art from small artists. This means buying paintings and sketches from college students who are just starting out, attending small-ish music events with novice cover bands, et al.

The primary reason behind this for me is that with renowned artists, there is an illusion of bespokeness in their performance - not necessarily from the artists' standpoint, but from my own POV as a consumer of said art. I cannot enjoy experiences given by renowned artists in such settings. For example, I am able to enjoy this inexpensive sketch that I happened to buy from a friend of a friend by displaying it proudly and prominently in my room, than say someone who splurges millions on an original piece by a famed painter, only to carefully store it in a secure, dustfree storage facility away from the sun. Another example is music. Even though artists work hard to produce amazing music live as well, the environment is often not conducive enough to enjoy it to the fullest. This observation is truer for rock and pop music than it is for classical, as concerts for the former are notoriously loud and crazy and filled with distractions. It would be more pleasurable for me to listen to concert tapings and soundboard releases for such events.

On the other hand, whenever I go to the concert of a small artist, the environment is tightly knitted, the vibe is excellent, no matter where you sit you are only a few feet away from the artists (who often don't even have a stage and are simply performing on the floor), and after the event I more often than not get to meet the artists and have a pleasant conversation with them.

[voraciouswriter]

From r/books

[voraciouswriter]

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is such a comfort series - funny, witty, brimming with ideas. My favourite aspect is how I turn to it for mindless humour, and it does give me mindless humour, but it also sprinkles in subtle messages about proportion and scale and makes one feel tiny and insignificant and reminds one to take life less seriously

[voraciouswriter]

I have had very few properly DNF books. If I rack my head, four spring to mind:

1. The Fellowship of the Ring - I was actually enjoying it quite a bit but then life around me sped up so the book seemed like a mismatch hence dropped it back then. Will definitely pick it up once again

2. The Afghan and The Odessa File - the opposite of Fellowship in terms of pacing, I feel Forsyth books are those which beg to be read in as few seatings as possible with minimal intervals. Sadly, my attempts to read both were interrupted by one of life’s many distractions hence could not complete them

3. The Time Traveller’s Wife - didn’t connect with the book. The only book I have tried twice and failed twice. The book had so much potential due to its ingenious premise, however I personally felt that the plot did the premise a grave disservice.

[voraciouswriter]

The other day I was on omegle and i matched with a vietnamese woman who was kind enough to recommend me a very specific vietnamese book. Although it was written in Roman script (as Vietnam has adopted the Roman script), the book although popular had no english translation anywhere.

Really shrinks your world, such experiences. You thought you had a fair idea of the scale of literature out there, and a random encounter opens the door to a whole another world that you didn’t know existed, and you can’t easily venture into, but whose existence itself makes you feel a very very tiny reader on the boundless map charting all of literature

[voraciouswriter]

r/books appreciation post

Whenever I go there, I find exactly what I want - no strings attached zero commitment involved book themed phubbing. I don’t even engage in any discussion over there but it is fun to scroll through it while having breakfast because someone or another usually comes up with a divisive question every day. If not, I can always think of one myself and enter it in the search bar, and more often than not, someone has already asked the question so a detailed feed already exists for my pleasure and consumption

[voraciouswriter]

Sex Ratio of Books Read

I am conscious of the sex ratio of the books I read ever since I started marking them on my Goodreads a year ago. Still, as much as I consciously try, it gravitates to become skewed towards men, while my female friends find it easy to keep things balanced. It's not as if I don't have female writers on my TBR; it's just an anomaly (that I so desperately want to rectify) that causes the books I eventually read to be picked up by men. I should investigate why.

[voraciouswriter]

Curiously, the non-fiction books that I have been picking up are skewed the other way 'round, with me subconsciously preferring more women writers whenever...I want to learn something or read about someone's experiences or thoughts I guess?

Idk what to make of this observation but it's a curious one nonetheless

[voraciouswriter]

Sex Ratio of Books Read

I am conscious of the sex ratio of the books I read ever since I started marking them on my Goodreads a year ago. Still, as much as I consciously try, it gravitates to become skewed towards men, while my female friends find it easy to keep things balanced. It's not as if I don't have female writers on my TBR; it's just an anomaly (that I so desperately want to rectify) that causes the books I eventually read to be picked up by men. I should investigate why.