After all, you yourself propose that these authors are more fundamentally concerned with Writing Great Fiction than with writing stuff that lots of people want to read; what do you think is wrong with that?
I didn’t get that impression; what I heard was that they have internalized the “should” that they want to write Great Fiction, but the want that they care enough to complain about is their want for more readers. Their miscategorization of their wants into two categories- one moral and one not- makes it difficult for them to compare them accurately.
Part of the reason I have that impression is because I never internalized that “should”- I want to write stuff people will want to read. And so when editors look at my work and say things like “use less adverbs,” I’m curious why. As far as I can tell, readers like more adverbs but Great Fiction uses less adverbs, and so the adverbs stay in.
I agree with Vaniver. I didn’t mean it’s wrong to care more about writing Great Fiction. I meant that it’s incorrect to act as though that desire had weight 1, and the desire to have more readers had weight 0, when the latter desire evidently has weight > 0.
I didn’t get that impression; what I heard was that they have internalized the “should” that they want to write Great Fiction, but the want that they care enough to complain about is their want for more readers. Their miscategorization of their wants into two categories- one moral and one not- makes it difficult for them to compare them accurately.
Part of the reason I have that impression is because I never internalized that “should”- I want to write stuff people will want to read. And so when editors look at my work and say things like “use less adverbs,” I’m curious why. As far as I can tell, readers like more adverbs but Great Fiction uses less adverbs, and so the adverbs stay in.
I agree with Vaniver. I didn’t mean it’s wrong to care more about writing Great Fiction. I meant that it’s incorrect to act as though that desire had weight 1, and the desire to have more readers had weight 0, when the latter desire evidently has weight > 0.