tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3525213022142900255.post2011082579727938965..comments2023-10-16T10:49:54.367-04:00Comments on Strickly Speaking: About God...Carol A. Stricklandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03391390443442822145noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3525213022142900255.post-88354004108441020712009-05-22T02:05:52.680-04:002009-05-22T02:05:52.680-04:00Any writer needs to decide if delicate thin-skinne...Any writer needs to decide if delicate thin-skinned readers are the audience she (or he) wants to cultivate. Once you give the easily offended an inch, they'll just complain it wasn't a centimeter. (What are you, some kind of cultural imperialist who refuses to acknowledge that other systems of measurement exist?)<br /><br />Sometimes readers and authors can be pleasantly surprised by a challenging thought. I myself am very atheist, but one of my favorite writers is a chap who wrote under the name Cordwainer Smith and whose science fiction is extremely and overtly Christian. Reading his stories enabled me to see the world through his eyes and understand the beauty of his faith as he saw it. I didn't have to share that faith to get his feelings about it. By the same token, I know devout Christians who love the fantasy of Philip Pullman...and what <I>he</I> has to say about religion in those stories is pretty unsparing. But his vision of the world and the strength of his writing still come through to people who are all about religion. If either of these guys had censored themselves for fear of what readers might accept, readers all over the world would have been criminally deprived.Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01714171897239398438noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3525213022142900255.post-83823447108117301102009-05-21T09:24:33.506-04:002009-05-21T09:24:33.506-04:00My own beliefs are such a huge part of my world vi...My own beliefs are such a huge part of my world view, a huge part of my <B><I>voice</I></B>, that I can't imagine deliberately cutting them out.<br /><br />My fantasy world building in the Children of the Sea books is grounded solidly in <A HREF="http://www.virginiakantra.com/RNTVInterviews.html" REL="nofollow">Christian/Catholic mythology</A>. The themes of what it means to be truly human, of the importance of choice and the power of love, recur in different ways in every book. Hey, the original Little Mermaid was about her search for a soul.<br /><br />That doesn't mean I think authors should preach or adhere rigidly to doctrine(a dear priest friend did point out that the "First Creation" in my books is technically a heresy) or that every character has to model the author's beliefs.<br /><br />But ultimately you need to write what you know, and your religious world view - whatever it may be - is part of what you know.Virginia Kantrahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03718795208546411982noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3525213022142900255.post-26886351837260702902009-05-20T17:00:35.804-04:002009-05-20T17:00:35.804-04:00I think that when you start thinking about what yo...I think that when you start thinking about what you can't put in books because it might turn off readers, you're getting on a slippery slope. I mean, EVERYTHING turns off SOMEONE, right? Mostly, I just tell myself to shut up and write what I want to write, and hope that enough people will like it that I'll sell it.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com