Terry Pratchett lays into JK Rowling!

[BigBadBob141]

I'm 100% behind Terry on this one, while I like Rowling's writing it seems to me it's a very silly thing for her to say she did not realize that Potter was fantasy.
I don't think she knows a great deal about the subject from what she said, she seems to think it's all stuck Tolkien High Fantasy mode.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I kind of get why she didn't realise it was fantasy. I never set out to write fantasy but my stories all seem to go that way.

 

[Christopher Lee]

Rowling (and Pratchett) have made a place for themselves in history as the best selling fantasy authors...

There was a story on the news that said that said that over 70% of authors (not just fantasy) are on or below the breadline... And that writing is only their part-time job... Not a great deal of hope for all the aspiring writers out there...

Just means you gotta want it more than 70% of them.

 

[Narkalui]

I firmly believe that all 100% of them want it just as much as each other. David Gemmell always said that anyone who finishes a novel, published or not, deserves a medal. Put simply, if it was purely down to will we'd all be doing wonderful jobs and earning plenty. But we're not.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Just means you gotta want it more than 70% of them.

It's not that simple. Right idea, right place, right time is what is needed. A whole lotta luck goes into this whole becoming a writer business.

 

[Overread]

Breaking news - CHRONS Members in uproar over newspaper article!

Fights and brawls - Violence comes to Chrons in a wave of hostile commentary set to split the forum!



Newspaper headlines are made to grab attention and to blow things out of all proportion. What is a 4 second comment by an author that maybe wasn't fully thought through is latched onto. One can also see that this is part of interview training; those who become big in the fame world often get coached on how to speak to the media - there's a way of doing it that allows you to speak whilst leaving as few gaps as possible.

In the end I can see what she means, Fantasy has a meaning to many of us and its meaning varies from person to person. For some it purely means Tolkien - anything that isn't based heavily upon it is something new and alien; for most of us here we've a wider view because we went through the "what is fantasy" phase so long ago. We broadened out in our reading so far back that when asked we've a wider appreciation rather than a niche focus.

Such is always the way in any field of interest. Casual understanding is often not wrong but very niche and limited in scope (oft promoted heavily by companies as well because niche and limited scope is a lot easier to produce