[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by Catlady

How much time and energy a writer devotes to writing is completely irrelevant; all that matters is the product at the end of the process. I don't care how long the author took to write the book or how difficult or easy it was to write.

The point is that the kind of writing that survives momentary interest -- or even the interest of a few decades -- is often the kind that took a lifetime of constant work. Whitman was a postal worker for most of his life and wrote a great book, but if you think about it, he was only able to write that one.

You're giving your own opinion an incredible amount of weight. You seem ready to say that [insert name of revered and influential writer from two centuries ago] isn't as good as [insert name of author you'd prefer to read] simply because you think so. I happen to hate Dickens, but I also understand he's necessary.

What is your point here? Let's subsidize anyone who self-identifies as a writer so he or she can write full-time, and the end result will be great literature? Sorry, I don't buy it.

I can't fathom why you'd infer that from what I said. No offense, but if that's how carefully you read, then I can understand why it doesn't matter to you how carefully people write.

Here's the point: Ensuring that writers who publish and expect to be paid for being widely read are actually paid when they're widely read allows them to devote more time to their craft and their oeuvre, which, if they're good, is reflected in the quality, consistency, and breadth of the work itself. This isn't about the first novel as much as it is the second and the tenth.

Here's an analogy: A director busts his ass and spends tons of money to make a blockbuster flick. It's scheduled to appear in a single theater in L.A. But on the night of the premiere, a theater down the street, which has obtained a bootleg copy, shows the exact same film for free and continues to do so from that point on. And the theater owner's friends, who run theaters in every other town, receive copies of the copy and do the same.

One could argue that no one has stolen anything because people have only copied, not physically stolen, the original film. But if the filmmaker garners praise and popularity and still loses everything because no one is actually buying the experience of seeing the film, then how likely is it that that director will be able to make a second movie at all, let alone, with the same budget and level of care?

Forget the moral issue for a moment. Virginia Woolf wrote A Room of One's Own not only as a feminist but also as a writer who required an isolated room and a vast amount of time. Not everyone can afford either thing. If she'd had to work a day job and not been paid for her writing, posterity would have lost.

Forget the question of whose taste is valid. I'm not a fan of Spielberg's, but many people are. Would Spielberg fans have wanted him to be forced to stop with his first film, or to have to make low-budget indies instead of "Schindler's List" because everyone was downloading torrents instead of going to the movies? Well, if you wouldn't deny those fans, then don't be an anti-intellectual snob and deny the rest of us Samuel Beckett. Insisting it didn't matter if he got paid would have reduced or possibly even killed his output and we might not have had Endgame or "All Strange Away."